Re: Does this specific sound library exist?

Dear Carlo (as it seems that nobody else is going to contribute to this
conversation),

thanks again for your time. Every message you write opens new levels of
discussion for me. Take one of the last informations you wrote: "What
I'm looking for is not an IDE, but a widget toolkit". Well, it's this
kind of stuff that makes me google another couple of hours to make sure
I'm not completely out of order when I try to respond. Why is that so?
Because I obviously didn't know I'm looking for a widget toolkit! I
thought it should be enough to check if a certain programming language
dispose of compilers for the platforms I try to cover, and then to
choose an adequate IDE. Now I know that IDE != widget toolkit, even if
some IDEs can contain one.

(So just to be clear: one *could* program also without a widget toolkit,
but it would mean a lot of additional work because they'd have to
program from scratch all those buttons, sliders and other graphical
elements we're used to get from the GUI builder. Right?)

Very well. I also saw that I asked a wrong question about Ruboto and
Rubymine. You answered the first part about Ruboto so well that actually
I doubt if programming for the Android platform is a good idea at all
(especially after reading your link about Android and Gnome). I wrote
the second part of that question wrongly; I didn't mean "RubyMine", but
"RubyMotion". There, it seems, they're trying to make a bridge between
Ruby and iOS. Is this to be seen as the Ruboto initiative?

But a fundamental question remains. Even before learning Max/MSP, I was
well aware of the fact that as a musician I'd like to use so-called
'high-level' programming languages. Because in doing so I wouldn't be
bothered with problems like memory addressing or other low-level,
hardware-near decisions to make. So I thought that in choosing a
high-level language like Ruby, even a problem like "How do I make my
hardware play a cd quality sound file" would been answered by something
like

if condition a is met
    get soundfile(xy)
    play soundfile(xy)
on sound file(xy).end
    continue with whatever

(Don't bite me, I don't know yet how to write that in Ruby.)

And evidently this is everything but "a lot of thought" you're stating
to be necessary to get done a simple thing like play a sound file. I
thought that I wouldn't even been touched by the level of "How do I
handle the DAC chip", let alone by questions like "How do I set
parameters of this or that specific chip and make sure that it's fed
44100 times per second with a sample". But if I understand your point
right, I have to face somehow these very problems if I am to try and
cover several platforms. I find this astonishing. In my imagination, no
programmer who didn't specifically wish to must be bothered with
problems like that one. Evidently very much progress has yet to be made.
Thanks, Carlo, for getting me in the real world.

For what it's worth, neither I feel enthusiastic about covering several
platforms. My problem is that all my computer experience since 1992 is
connected to Apple Macintosh. If I'd used Windows for 20 years, I
probably would try to program for Windows and Windows Mobile, telling
myself that in doing so I cover a big part of computer users, and who
cares about the rest. But now I'd feel uneasy to cut out MacOS and iOS,
and Android seems to be the future of all those handheld devices. So all
this becomes a very hard decision. Even if you show me that I'd
have to choose one platform for my project because it'll be really
difficult for me to entertain other OSes as well, I would not know which
one to choose. Entertaining two or even more codebases on top of
learning the belonging languages and IDEs / widget toolkits is
definitely beyond my resources.


Thanks anyway, Carlos. I hope to continue to hear from you.

-- 
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