[fluid-dev] Re: FluidGUI on OS X

[Ken Ellinwood]

> One other important question: what do you precisely mean by the term 
> "TCP command port"? As with Linux, any OS X process can spawn a child 
> process and execute any command/program in that subprocess.  This is 
> only limited by file system permissions.  Inter-process communication 
> occurs via local domain sockets, pipes, or network sockets (e.g., TCP). 
> In most cases though, this communication occurs through pipes rather 
> than through TCP/IP.
> 

Right, and one goal of FluidGUI is to provide a cross platform GUI.  To do that
it must work on Windows, and my experience is that I/O with a child process on
Windows is considerably more difficult (or impossible).  So when discussing the
problem with Peter, he suggested (and implemented) a TCP interface.  The reason
I say "TCP command port" is because the high-level protocol is exactly the same
as the command shell provided by fluidsynth.  If you fire up fluidsynth with
the "-s" option and the TCP server starts successfuly, then you can do "telnet
localhost 9800" and begin sending fluidsynth commands (load, channels, select,
noteon, etc) and receiving/hearing responses just like you were typing at the
fluidsynth "console".

> 
> Is JNI some kind of a Java superclass?
> 

JNI stands for Java Native Interface.  It is the mechanism by which Java
programs can call native code such as the fluidsynth API written in C.

Ken



        
                
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