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Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

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

#72
post #3

Wow, this is incredible! I was not expecting it to work on mobile Safari of all things, but it does! The UI is even usable. Audacity is an indispensable utility. It’s great to see it and other “real” software on the web. I’m reminded of Photopea[1] which is a web clone of Photoshop. [1]: https://www.photopea.com/

> Audacity is an indispensable utility. It’s great to see it and other “real” software on the web.

It's been a very long time since I used it, but didn't Audacity turn evil, add a bunch of networking code it never needed before, and start spying on people? (https://fosspost.org/audacity-is-now-a-spyware/). I remember people reverting to older "safe" versions.

I guess that doesn't much matter for this web app since it's collecting your IP and data by design (their privacy policy seems very vague and handwavy), but for the desktop app it seemed like kind of a big deal at the time.

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

#73
post #3

Wow, this is incredible! I was not expecting it to work on mobile Safari of all things, but it does! The UI is even usable. Audacity is an indispensable utility. It’s great to see it and other “real” software on the web. I’m reminded of Photopea[1] which is a web clone of Photoshop. [1]: https://www.photopea.com/

Yeah I didn't expect Photopea to be any good but now I use it all the time. Perfect Photoshop replacement for light editing.

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

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've never even considered doing many of those things, and I've worked in IT for ~10 years and been using computers for 25

[deleted]

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

#75
post #32

Wavacity developer here. I released this a year ago under the name "wavvy" but needed to rename the project because of a trademark conflict. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32688646

What motivated you to build this? Just because it's cool (it is cool!) or to serve a practical need?

There was a lot of discussion back when Audacity decided to make some changes. I don't remember what they were specifically, but I do remember a few threads here about forks of the project. I don't remember the name wavvy, so maybe this is another fork. I was thinking the fork discussed here previously also was a play on the "*city" name as well.

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

#76
post #39
post #32

Wavacity developer here. I released this a year ago under the name "wavvy" but needed to rename the project because of a trademark conflict. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32688646

I like this name too, it's even better.

I can't believe they have the audacity to rename their project

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

#77
post #23

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.

wxWidgets uses native controls, so just compiling to "WebAssembly" (I'm assuming it's compiled to WebAssembly, plus some JavaScript for DOM manipulation) was probably a significant amount of work. I'm actually curious how it was done!

Edit: the previous submission had a helpful thread on this very topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32689423

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

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it running on mobile safari is incredible - I wouldn’t call the UI ‘usable’ though, it’s a straight duplicate of the desktop UI, which isn’t geared for mobile by any stretch of the imagination, and is actually unusable on my iPhone due to (I assume) far too small a clickable area for most controls. A UI rework to incorporate mobile-friendly design would be a ton of effort, but it would really take this p…

Does EVERY desktop application really need to run on mobile? Some apps are just... call me crazy... desktop apps! (NOTE: "native vs. browser-based" is separate distinction from "desktop vs. mobile".) That's not to say that there can't be mobile audio apps, or mobile whatever. I just think that's a separate app, and should be designed and written as a mobile app from conception. I realize that a large cohort finds des…

Sometimes I don’t need to do “serious audio editing” with audacity. I need to trim a clip or something. I can’t think of a reason why I SHOULDNT be able to do that on my phone that has more processing power than most computers a decade ago

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

#79
post #49
post #32

Wavacity developer here. I released this a year ago under the name "wavvy" but needed to rename the project because of a trademark conflict. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32688646

How did you get wxwidgets to compile to the web? Was it a lot of work?

This is the part I want to know also

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

#80
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does EVERY desktop application really need to run on mobile? Some apps are just... call me crazy... desktop apps! (NOTE: "native vs. browser-based" is separate distinction from "desktop vs. mobile".) That's not to say that there can't be mobile audio apps, or mobile whatever. I just think that's a separate app, and should be designed and written as a mobile app from conception. I realize that a large cohort finds des…

Sometimes I don’t need to do “serious audio editing” with audacity. I need to trim a clip or something. I can’t think of a reason why I SHOULDNT be able to do that on my phone that has more processing power than most computers a decade ago

You can. With software that's not audacity.
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