Date: Monday, 08 Jun 2009
From: Anthony Kozar
To: Csound mailing list <csound@lists.bath…>
Subject: Future of the Mac OS 9 Classic version of Csound
The Mac Classic version of Csound has been on an unofficial hiatus for the last year while I pondered the utility of continuing to work on it. As I have now mostly completed upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard and rarely use Mac OS 9 anymore, I am placing the Mac OS Classic port of Csound into official “legacy status” as a supported Csound platform. This means that there will be no more official releases (from me at least) and that bugs and unfinished features in the Mac Classic interface are unlikely to be fixed or completed. Futhermore, support for the Mac Classic platform may be removed in Csound 6.
Csound 5.08 then is the most recent version for Mac OS Classic. It should remain available from Sourceforge for anyone interested in continuing to use it. I will continue to provide email support for Mac Classic users by answering questions and helping to solve usage problems for anyone who emails me directly.
If anyone else, now or at some point in the future, is interested in compiling new versions of Csound 5 for Mac Classic, it should be possible and I will gladly answer any questions on using the build system. I started to write some documentation for how to build Csound 5 on Mac OS 9 but the information is incomplete, so please email me if you need help. You can find the build documentation here:
http://csound.cvs.sourceforge.net/csound/macintosh/BuildDocumentation/
Thank you very much to everyone who used the Mac Classic Csound ports while they were maintained by me and thanks especially to those who provided feedback and encouragement!! Also, big thanks to Matt Ingalls who did most of the original development of a PowerMac version of Csound and to Dave Madole, Mike Berry, Dan Ellis, and Bill Gardner for their work so many years ago. Finally, thanks to the other Csound developers who answered many questions about how the Csound code works and for helping to find solutions to maintain compatibility with the legacy Mac platform.
All the best,
Anthony Kozar