[ardour-dev] issues with plugin in/out counts

[Paul Davis]

>I think all of this can be extended into Ardour's N-width track
>structure. A J-in/N-out plugin creates a N-out track. From there on I
>can only use plugins that are:
>
>1) N-in/M-output plugins. The track is now M-output. (where M is any
>number - greater, smaller or equal.)
>
>or
>
>2) 1-in/1-out plugins. The track remains N-out. Ardour does multi-mono.
>
>This does restrict what a user can place on a track. There's no simple
>answer to having a 5-out plugin drive a 3-in plugin. Don;t try placing
>two 3-in plugins into the system and only using 5 of the 6 inputs.
>Just don't go there. Support equal widths and multi-mono and it's
>pretty clean.

the implementation nightmare in that rule arises from another common
user desire: plugin reordering.

if plugins could never be reordered, applying those rules is fairly
easy. as soon as we allow (and i think we should), applying them gets
really hairy really fast.