[ardour-dev] Two jack servers? (One internal to Ardour)

[David Gatwood]

On Dec 12, 2004, at 1:36 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:

>>>    An alternative idea would be some way of marking Ardour's internal
>>> connections in such a way that tools like QJC do not display them.
>>> From my POV connections internal to Ardour should not be meddled with
>>> in QJC, but I'm make so many connections in Ardour that QJC's
>>> connections page is becoming a frustration instead of the tool it
>>> usually is.
>>>
>>>    Again, just thinking aloud about how to make the tools and
>>> environment more friendly.
>>
>> Good idea.  Maybe Rui could give QJC an option to ignore connections
>> from a client to itself.
>
> I copied Rui on the first message thinking that this would be the
> simplest solution. I'm not sure what the right answer is. Maybe there
> are some internal connections you want to see, but I think most you
> don't want. Maybe some button to display/hide connections from an app
> to itself would give people the most flexibility.

Seems to me like the right visual image is one Jack, multiple 
patchbays....
Maybe add something like:

	int port_type;

as an attribute for each jack connection (with default zero).  Make the
description of those port types be defined by the application, but have
a handful of predefined defaults for commonly-used connections, e.g.
"Output to Audio Interface", "Input from Audio Interface", etc.  Better
yet, have two such attributes---one describing the source and one
describing the destination.

Add either a mechanism for the app to upload a list of port type
descriptions upon connecting or add an optional callback mechanism
for Jack to request such a description when asked by QJC and other
similar tools.

Then in such an app, you could have multiple patchbay windows,
each set to filter by a given port type or the user could combine them
as desired simply by checking or unchecking the check mark in a
pop-up "filter" menu in a given window.  The default should probably
be "all connections on".


Thoughts?
David