Csound for Macintosh Development Snapshot
Sept. 10, 2004
from Anthony Kozar
This package is a snapshot of the current development work that I am performing on Csound for Macintosh computers running System 7 through OS 9. The snapshot will likely include new features which are in the experimental stage of development. Therefore, they may not be complete, may not work correctly (or at all), and likely will not be (well) documented. The main applications (Csound and Perf) are probably stable enough for everyday use, but other included software may be tempermental.
You are invited though to test this version and send feedback to me about whether you think the work I am doing is headed in a useful direction. All comments and suggestions are very welcome and appreciated.
Below are the specific details on how this release differs from “canonical” Macintosh Csound available from the Csound Sourceforge project. Some of the changes may be added to Sourceforge CVS soon, but others will likely have to wait until Csound 5 is released and the code freeze is over.
What’s New
* Incorporated changes and bug fixes from the Mills Csound 4.23f12 release.
* The front end has a new menu item (“Choose Default Perf…”) to select a default Perf application. This setting complements the previously added “Choose Perf…” menu item and is remembered when you quit Csound. This is useful when you have several different versions of Perf lying around on your hard drive.
* The command-line flag for loading a Cscore plugin has been changed from “–cscorelib=” to “–cscore-lib=” in order to match the flag for loading opcode plugins (“–opcode-lib=”).
* New Perf64 application that uses 64-bit double-precision floating-point numbers for internal calculations. This is (to the best of my knowledge) the first time that the Csound 64 version has been ported to the Legacy Mac platform. It runs a little bit slower (20-25% in my tests) but should theoretically provide greater accuracy in rendering your files. Some people claim to be able to hear the difference in the output. (My own brief listening tests were inconclusive). Regular Perf will be used by default. You must use the “Choose Perf…” menu item and select Perf64 in order to use it.
* Several more standalone utilities have been ported and are partially working: SndInfo, Envelope Extract, Scale Soundfile, and the import/export utilities for analysis files. (For details, see the “utilities” folder).
* Everything has been recompiled with CodeWarrior pro 4 which means that all of the applications should now run under Systems 7 & 8.
* CodeWarrior pro 4 project files are now included for everything in the source code package. The CodeWarrior 8 projects are present where they existed before but may no longer be up-to-date.
* I didn’t include the Cscore standalone programs this time but you can find some examples (or make your own) with the Mac Cscore SDK available from my web site or from Sourceforge. The example Cscore plugins are still included.
Features added in previous snapshots (some changes have now been merged with canonical)
Csound front end:
* New dialog boxes for several groups of options including overriding sr,kr, and tempo; extracting and playing only part of a score; and moving the “Options” menu into a window.
* An dialog for typing any additional command-line parameters which the GUI does not yet have controls for (e.g. “-i” for specifying an input sound file).
* A menu item for selecting which Perf to use (if you always have more than one on your hard drive like I do).
* A “Set All” button in the “Default Directories” dialog box.
Perf:
* Opcode plug-in libraries are now available on the Mac!! (use the “–opcode-lib=” command-line flag)
* Cscore plug-ins: a new experimental feature only on the Mac which allows you to load cscore programs from shared libraries in the Perf folder instead of having to recompile Perf in its entirety. Use the “–cscore-lib=” command-line flag to load some of the example plug-ins (e.g. “–cscorelib=DoubleDurations”). An SDK (software development kit) with details on how to create your own Cscore plug-ins is now available.
* Now deletes temporary files (including “score.srt”) like other platforms do.
New Standalone utilities:
* Score Sort (scsort) * Score Extract (scxtract) * Scot (Score translation language) * standalone versions of Cscore programs * (more to come as I have time!)
Plug-in libraries for the opcodes pans, metro, splitrig, and timedseq.
Cscore example plug-ins: Double Durations, Quad Stretch, and Parallel Fifths.
Copyright Notice and License Information
Perf – A Csound Engine for Macintosh (and Score Sort, Score Extract, Scot, SndInfo, Envelope Extract, Scale Soundfile, Hetro Export/Import, LPC Export/Import, and PV Export/Import which are all part of the Csound package).
Copyright (C) 1991-2002 Barry Vercoe, John ffitch, et al.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.