[Protux-devel] Questions sent.

[Luciano Domenico]

Hi. I made the small changes you guys suggested on the questions and sent to 
Oreally (Howard Wen).

I am copying it here for appreciation :-)

thanks

========

1) Simple information about you is needed to include into the
article: Your age, job (or student?), where you live (city,
province/state, country), and what your main contributions to
Protux are.

Luciano Domenico Giordana, 33, Java/C++ Developer, Musician, Americana-SP, 
Brazil, Project creator/leader.
Reinhard Amersberger : 36, Germany - Project Coordinator
Remon Sirijer : 26, Netherlands - Main Developer
Martin Herren :  28, engineer, Lausanne, Switzerland : 
Autoconf/Automake/Distribution developer


2) What is the current status of Protux? (For example, its feature-set, or the 
progress of its development.)
usable enough that i regularly use it for 'real' work

We dont consider Protux ready for real work, but if enjoy some adrenaline, you 
can take a risk. Undo stuff is the current big missing thing for real work, 
as well as some alsa backend improvements, so you have to make some tricks to 
work around these lacks. In any case, you can use Protux for small projects. 
I (Luciano) myself made some demo recording using 0.20.x


3) What is the history of Protux? How did it begin?

In 1999 me and my ex-wife started an small audio production studio in 
Americana-SP and used to create small jingles for publicitary material. The 
software available in that time were very good, including Sound Forge, Vegas 
and Samplitude, but I felt that they were very dummy in their usage.
As a programmer, I noticed that people who coded those softwares had too much 
"intuitive-usage" guidelines and "ready-to-use windows API" driven coding, 
perhaps to attend deadlines, something that I disagreed. They didnt want to 
be innovative , just productive. I believe that a software must follow the 
end-user perspective not the coding perspective. Also, I knew that this kind 
of application is normally used by professionals, who tend to use the same 
tool everyday. Professional tools are not like word processors or spreadsheet 
tools. Intuitive usage becomes less important in that case. Thus, I felt that 
those apps should have another approach when developed, I thought that a good 
production tool should consider a more advanced usage approach. If you want 
to mute channel 3, you should be able to press 3 and M, or something like 
that, and not scroll the multitrack, expand the track 3 tab, right button on 
it, open a "properties"dialog, select mute, click on apply and then close. 
That is stupid ! It is like cooking using  a single knife ! 
In that time, the only software available to GNU/Linux was Ardour, but it had 
the same usage problem. That's why I decided to write my own tool. Also , it 
was a opportunity to increase my knowledge of Audio itself. Less than 2 
months after I started it on Sourceforge, Reinhard joined me, adding valuable 
ideas to the project. Some time after that, Martin and Remon joined, and the 
software started to be very mature. Many other contributores help us, in a 
sense and other. In 2002, we moved to savannah, because sourceforge started 
looking too corporative and not-commited with free software principles. This 
year we released 0.20.0, which we consider the first usable protux for small 
projects.



4) Was Protux inspired by any other program?

Initially I indeed wanted to play with the name Protools , which is well-know 
and the word Tux (the Linux Penguin's name). But as long as we noticed that 
we target a very professional segment of audio producers on GNU/Linux , the 
word Protux standing for "Professional Tux" fit better. In any other sense 
protux was inspired by another program. We are really trying to make 
something inovative. We even created a base libray which contains many 
usefull wrapping code, including an engine for faster human-gui interaction 
called JMB (Jog Mouse Board).


5) There are a lot of music production applications that have been
developed specifically for Linux. What are your thoughts about
this? Why do you think there has been such active development in
music applications for Linux?


We don't consider Protux ready for real work, but if enjoy some adrenaline, 
you 
can take a risk. Undo stuff is the current big missing thing for real work, 
as well as some alsa backend improvements, so you have to make some tricks to 
work around these lacks. In any case, you can use Protux for small projects. 
I (Luciano) myself made some demo recording using 0.20.x


3) What is the history of Protux? How did it begin?

In 1999 me and my ex-wife started an small audio production studio in 
Americana-SP and used to create small jingles for publicity material. The 
software available in that time were very good, including Sound Forge, Vegas 
and Samplitude, but I felt that they were very dummy in their usage.
As a programmer, I noticed that people who coded those softwares had too much 
"intuitive-usage" guidelines and "ready-to-use windows API" driven coding, 
perhaps to attend deadlines, something that I disagreed. They didn't want to 
be innovative , just productive. I believe that a software must follow the 
end-user perspective not the coding perspective. Also, I knew that this kind 
of application is normally used by professionals, who tend to use the same 
tool everyday. Professional tools are not like word processors or spreadsheet 
tools. Intuitive usage becomes less important in that case. Thus, I felt that 
those apps should have another approach when developed, I thought that a good 
production tool should consider a more advanced usage approach. If you want 
to mute channel 3, you should be able to press 3 and M, or something like 
that, and not scroll the multitrack, expand the track 3 tab, right button on 
it, open a "properties" dialog, select mute, click on apply and then close. 
That is stupid! It is like cooking using  a single knife! 
In that time, the only software available to GNU/Linux was Ardour, but it had 
the same usage problem. That's why I decided to write my own tool. Also, it 
was a opportunity to increase my knowledge of Audio itself. Less than 2 
months after I started it on Sourceforge, Reinhard joined me, adding valuable 
ideas to the project. Some time after that, Martin and Remon joined, and the 
software started to be very mature. Many other contributors help us, in a 
sense and other. In 2002, we moved to savannah, because sourceforge started 
looking too corporate and not-committed to free software principles. This 
year we released 0.20.0, which we consider the first usable protux for small 
projects.



4) Was Protux inspired by any other program?

Initially I indeed wanted to play with the name Protools , which is well-know 
and the word Tux (the Linux Penguin's name). But as long as we noticed that 
we target a very professional segment of audio producers on GNU/Linux , the 
word Protux standing for "Professional Tux" fit better. In any other sense 
protux was inspired by another program. We are really trying to make 
something innovative.


5) There are a lot of music production applications that have been
developed specifically for Linux. What are your thoughts about
this? Why do you think there has been such active development in
music applications for Linux?


I always noticed that there are a huge number of programmers who enjoy good 
music and play with audio. I believe that since the introduction of digital 
audio technology, everything has been sold in black boxes, such synthesizers, 
sequencers, drum machines, and son on, and those smart guys had never the 
chance to really play with digital audio. Maybe GNU/Linux attracted them 
because of its open architecture. People are all the time searching ways to 
customize the kernel to run audio tools in a very advanced way. That's 
something you just can't do on other platforms, where you are just able to 
install-and-use.


6) So how would you differentiate Protux from other Linux music
applications that are similar to it?

More powerfully that smaller applications, lighter and faster than bigger 
applications... No, more seriously, I think Protux has its own
 niche regarding this.  Furthermore Protux has an unique user interface based 
on JMB, love it  or hate it, but you'll have to admit that once you learned 
the basics,  you are faster than the other to produce your music.

7) What programming language(s) was used to write Protux? Any reason why this 
was chosen?

C++, primarily because of its flexibility, and due the fact we could use the 
great gcc safely. QT is a must when developing GUI, due its great docs and 
Object Oriented Architecture, so the combination seemed to be perfect for our 
project.


8) Does Protux use code or libraries which you/the Protux team did not 
originally develop? Why were these chosen?

Besides the QT, and ALSA, we avoid to link against libraries, in order to make 
protux as independent as possible. But for small things such ogg support, for 
example, we let user decide on compilation to link or not. Alsa is a used in 
a basic way, exactly because we still can't find good programming guides for 
it. 



9) Was any technology specifically created for Protux?

JMB and the MADM (MustuxAudioDeviceMapper) which is a ALSA wrapper. JMB is the 
engine that allow the user to operate protux as a "video game", I mean, 
*very* fast. As you know, in video games, you dont have to worry about icons, 
menus, and stuff. you need to do stuff in the speed of your thoughts. Every 
game have this approach. So we created the JMB, that try to offer that 
approach for Protux and other applications which need this advanced and fast 
usage approach. We are also considering write our own audio server engine, 
which will be an alternative to Jack. Jack is a pool based engine. We want to 
write a thread oriented engine.


10) What are the technical limitations of Protux, thus far?

Almost all them are related to the lack of good ALSA programming guides. All 
we find are jack oriented material, and we decided to access alsa directly. 
So, some of them include partial Multichannel card support, not many filters 
yet... not many import/export file format, available yet... and, as we 
mentioned, the UNDO engine which is still being written.

11) What have been the biggest technical challenges you have faced in 
developing Protux?
Using Alsa. That is for sure our biggest problem. We noticed that the docs are 
getting better, but they still don't have a good programming guide. 


12) Perhaps related to Question #11, what are the inherent issues 
one should keep in mind when developing code that deals with sound
under Linux?

You'll need to dig inside Alsa , and understand the basics of kernel latency, 
real time scheduling and other related issues.


13) What features do you plan to add to the next immediate version(s) of 
Protux?
Undo capabilities. This is the very thing that blocks protux to be widely 
used. Next, add filters,at least the basic ones, some LADSPA support, and 
some other audio format support.



14) What would you like others to pay notice to the most about Protux?

Protux is a very different software. When you open it , you wont see a single 
icon or menu in the screen. That scares a lot of people. But then you just 
press H and a help pops. And then you learn that pressing S and P at the same 
time opens the Song Properties dialog.. And then you start to notice that 
everything is pretty - and surprisingly - intuitive too! When you get used to 
it, you just love it, because you feel like operating a real device in a real 
studio. We believe that this "feeling" is the Protux most noticeable thing. 
It is really fun :-)


15) If somebody wants to contribute to your project (and you're open to this), 
what skills from them could you use now?

For now, we really need people to code filters. People which nows how a good 
reverb or a good compressor works. That's is very hard to find, since such 
programmer must be fluent in C++ , math, audio and good-and-clean coding, 
which is a must for us. Other things are 
writing skills for documentation, tutorials... translate them to other 
languages, and communication skills to demonstrate Protux to others/


16) What advice do you have for those who are interested in developing 
applications that address the creation of music/the
manipulating of sound, regardless of platform?

Don't bother about that rule "do not reinvent the wheel".. if you have a good 
new "wheel", invent it. We hear a lot of people saying that we should join 
Ardour, or Glame or Audacity projects. We admire all them, but Protux is 
really different from them, and we expect to be better too. In many senses, 
we believe it is already. Free software is a wonderful space for being 
creative. Reinventing the wheel, or, better, creating new concepts, new ideas,
is really important, we believe.


17) If there's anything else you'd like to comment on that you think I 
missed :-), feel free to add it here.

We receive many messages from people that either hate protux and the JMB 
engine written for it or love it. Nobody denies that Protux is intriguing. 
But protux is not the only exotic software out there. Blender is another 
software that has an alternative usage (although protux is MUCH easier to 
learn). All intriguing software are potentially interesting and innovative . 
We believe that we are contributing to the free software world not just 
replacing Windoze applications, but really offering new ideas, new standards, 
things that corporate software development cannot offer, exactly because 
it must follow defacto standards.