[Vorbis-dev] Vorbis and .NET

[Matt Long]

Thanks for the pointers on this. I'm really new to using Vorbis so it's
taking me a long time to make any headway. Anyhow, I had some thoughts on
this for which I would like to get some feedback.

This is really a philosophical ideal for me, but I wanted to pose it to the
list. Keep in mind that I am a newbie, so please take it easy on me.

I am a strong advocate of free (as in freedom) and open software (among many
other free and open things) and am thankful for folks like the Vorbis
developers who give so much to the worldwide development community. I have
tried to contribute myself in several, albeit small, ways because of this.

I can't help but believe, however, that in order to get some of the greater
open-source projects out there (including Vorbis) more widely adopted,
making libraries available for the lowest common denominator (I include
myself in this) would go a long way. In a nutshell, here's my philosophy:
**If the development libraries are simple to use--abstracting away nearly
all complexity, and available for a wide variety of developer skill sets and
programming languages, the broader the development base will be, and
therefore the broader the general adoption will be**.

I realize that Vorbis adoption grows continuously (in hardware as well as
software) and I am not trying to diminish that--it's actually very exciting.
By pointing these things out, I instead intend to make a plea on behalf of
the larger community of programmers who do not have the skills of the audio
programming masters on the Vorbis development team. C and C++ while great
languages of the computer science pioneers, place the bar pretty high for
developers who learned to code using high-level or scripting languages
(which I realize is a whole other philosophical discussion in itself).

Sometimes in open-source projects, there exists a tone that in essence says
"if you're not smart enough to use it in its raw form, then the creators
don't want you using it anyhow". Now, I'M NOT SAYING THAT VORBIS IS LIKE
THIS. I haven't seen anything to say that it is. I just want to contrast
that way of thinking with the belief that if you really want to make
something like Vorbis grow beyond anything you can imagine (including MP3),
create a set of development tools and libraries that make it simple for
nearly *any* developer to utilize. I believe that if the bar is low,
ubiquity is assured.

I understand that the focus of the development team is on the core and I may
be idealistic in this, however, I would suggest at a minimum to release a
request for help to develop Xiph endorsed/sponsored tools and libraries to
fulfill this purpose. I think that having that endorsement is critical.
Sure, third parties can develop said tools, but they won't ever be in sync
with the current core development.
 
Anyhow, thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts. I apologize
profusely if in any way I have offended anyone with my message. Feel free to
tell me that the idea is a pipe dream or that I’m just full of it. Maybe
there just aren't the resources necessary to do this, or maybe it's already
in the works and I'm just not aware of it, or maybe there is something in
your charter that says you simply can't do this. Each of these responses are
acceptable. I just felt I needed to at least express this ideal.

Thanks again.

-Matt


p.s. Meanwhile, I'm going to look into your interop library, Klaus, and into
the DirectShow idea, Dimitry. Thanks.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Klaus Prückl [mailto:klaus.prueckl at aon.at]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 12:23 PM
> To: 'Matt Long'
> Cc: vorbis-dev at xiph.org
> Subject: Re: [Vorbis-dev] Vorbis and .NET
> 
> > I've been watching this list for a couple months now
> > wondering if anyone has
> > used the vorbis libraries from a .NET application. I am now
> > starting to
> > believe that either no one desires to use vorbis in a .NET
> > application on
> > Windows, or there is another project out there already doing
> > this and I am
> > simply on the wrong list. What is the scoop on building
> > Vorbis applications
> > under Microsoft .NET. Any pointers would be appreciated.
> 
> There is an C# port of a Java port existing which is called csvorbis. It
> is
> available from the mono project CVS. But the main problem I'm thinking of
> such a project is maintainance after updates of the original source are
> available.
> 
> So I've started an interop library for myself a year ago, which I've made
> available at
> http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/oggvorbisinterop some time ago.
> I also plan to put the ports of the vorbis-tools on GotDotNet workspaces
> later and to update the interop lib for the new vorbis version 1.1.0. But
> at
> the moment I'm having troubles with the workspaces source control
> provider.
> 
> BTW, the current status of the project is, that vorbiscomment is working.
> Encoding and decoding has some bugs, which I was not able to fix yet. So,
> I'm searching for enthusiastic project members, which have good interop
> knowledge and ideas how to debug the generated interop source (which is
> only
> available in intermediate language).
> 
> 
> Klaus
>