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Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

wavacity.com

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Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#21

Post by TheRealPomax »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #2

Alright, it's at a kind of uncanny valley situation where we have Windows XP applications running real-time in our browsers. Is the end-game just a universal sandboxed VM that's cross-platform? What do we do next?

Fun fact: when you don't give a shit about whether your UI looks like what "the OS looks like" (no offense to Tantacrul, but audacity clearly doesn't), you can get a surprising amount of work done. This isn't a Windows XP application, it looked like this well before Windows XP existed.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#22

Post by jakearmitage »

lagniappe wrote: post #8
grotorea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can already do that for DOS programs, right? So a few more decades and it should work for XP too.

I still can't find Unreal Tournament 2000 running in the browser :( and not Return to Napali either :/ My heart will go on.

https://icculus.org/ut99-emscripten/

Here you go.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#23

Post by thomond »

lfmunoz4 wrote: post #14

Can anyone summarize how this works. Guessing Audacity is some C++ program. How did they take all the dependencies and make them work on browser, using WASM? What about the frontend? Is the UI just completely re-written?

It uses wxwidgets so they can just compile that to webassembly too.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#24

Post by xd1936 »

lfmunoz4 wrote: post #14

Can anyone summarize how this works. Guessing Audacity is some C++ program. How did they take all the dependencies and make them work on browser, using WASM? What about the frontend? Is the UI just completely re-written?

I think so. They use Emscripten to compile.

https://github.com/ahilss/wavacity

Remarkable.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#25

Post by londons_explore »

asfgiaosnio wrote: post #18
esperkin39 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For better or for worse, that's what Google is aiming at with ChromeOS. Especially now that the overarching "OS" is really just a Linux shell for multiple VMs. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/l...

People often claim that ChromeOS is versatile enough to replace a normal computer because it has these various compatibility layers. They often fail to mention that they work terribly . You wind up with the poor performance and annoying isolation that VMs give, but with an extra helping of instability and incompatibility. Running anything Google hasn't approved is gated behind "developer mode", and even for a develop…

Test of if an OS is ready for regular users:

Does drag and drop work? Can I choose a random image/file somewhere in one tab/application and drop it into another.

Just testing that now...

* Drag HN logo to Whatsapp Web: Pass

* Drag from Google Photos to Photopea: Pass

* Drag a zip file from Google Drive to Dropbox: Fail.

* Drag an attachment from an email from gmail into an online hex editor: Fail

Conclusion: The web platform isn't yet ready.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#26

Post by malux85 »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #2

Alright, it's at a kind of uncanny valley situation where we have Windows XP applications running real-time in our browsers. Is the end-game just a universal sandboxed VM that's cross-platform? What do we do next?

Much further in each direction, on the left, we compile LLMs to bare metal and boot them without an operating system.

On the right, we have more layers, so we must boot a VM in the browser, visit the same webpage, boot a vm on that page, and then run wavacity in that.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#27

Post by tyingq »

lfmunoz4 wrote: post #14

Can anyone summarize how this works. Guessing Audacity is some C++ program. How did they take all the dependencies and make them work on browser, using WASM? What about the frontend? Is the UI just completely re-written?

See this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32610129

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#28

Post by hyperhopper »

pixelpoet wrote: post #10
1-6 wrote: post #7

We'll need to stop calling web browsers web browsers.

On reddit at least it seems like everyone under a certain age doesn't use the term at all and just calls everything, including websites, an app.

To be fair, they aren't wrong. Web applications are applications. Who says native mobile applications are the only kind of applications?

Though if you call the PNG file that's a menu for your restaurant an app, that's just wrong.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#29

Post by dspillett »

pixelpoet wrote: post #10
1-6 wrote: post #7

We'll need to stop calling web browsers web browsers.

On reddit at least it seems like everyone under a certain age doesn't use the term at all and just calls everything, including websites, an app.

I can see their point. Even a static website can be seen as a very (very) simple multi-page app.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#30

Post by Fudgel »

esperkin39 wrote: post #9
evrimoztamur wrote: post #2

Alright, it's at a kind of uncanny valley situation where we have Windows XP applications running real-time in our browsers. Is the end-game just a universal sandboxed VM that's cross-platform? What do we do next?

For better or for worse, that's what Google is aiming at with ChromeOS. Especially now that the overarching "OS" is really just a Linux shell for multiple VMs. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/l...

Also project Fugu: https://www.chromium.org/teams/web-capabilities-fugu/
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