More news preparations

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 <p>
    <span style="font-size: 20px">&gt; KXStudio Monthly Report (January 2019)</span><br/>
    On <i>2019-01-30</i> by<i> falkTX</i>
    On <i>2019-01-18</i> by<i> falkTX</i>
 </p>
 <p>
    Hello all, another monthly report about the KXStudio project is here.<br/>
    Carla 2.1 released<br/>
    Carla move to C++ started, explain why, and means frontend won't change much now, mainly the backend.<br/>
    Office space setup, which took most of the time on the holidays<br/>
 </p>
 <p>
    With Carla v2.1 "done", next up is some much needed DPF and then JACK2 handling.<br/>
    But these will not be rushed, so next month progress report is expected to be smaller than usual.<br/>
 </p>

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    On <i>2020-01-15</i> by<i> falkTX</i>
 </p>
 <p>
    Hello again everyone, and surprise, the stable 2.0 version of Carla is coming!<br/>
    Hello again everyone, ...!<br/>
 </p>
 <p>
    This is the announcement of the first release candidate of Carla 2.1.<br/>
@@ -32,129 +39,124 @@ include_once("includes/header.php");
 </p>
 <p>
    Carla projects/sessions are meant to be fully compatible between between 2.0 and 2.1 versions, except for features marked experimental.<br/>
    The "native" API to access carla as plugin (as used by LMMS) is (ABI and API-wise) backwards compatible compatible with 2.0.<br/>
    The "native" API to access carla as plugin (as used by LMMS) is ABI and API-wise backwards compatible compatible with 2.0.<br/>
    If this is not the case, consider it a bug that needs to be fixed.
 </p>
 <p>
    As with the v2.0 release, the list of changes is a little big, so let's split it by parts.<br/>
    First, the highlights and major changes.<br/>
    First, the highlights and major changes, in no particular order of relevance.<br/>
 </p>

 <h3>Highlights and major changes</h3>

 <h5>...</h5>
 <h5>Better CV Support</h5>
 <p>
    ...<br/>
    In the patchbay<br/>
    Expose parameters as CV ports<br/>
    Added internal MIDI to CV plugin<br/>
    More plugins will be added as needed, ams-lv2 and mod-cv-plugins already do a lot but a few things are likely to be missing<br/>
 </p>

 <h5>High-DPI support</h5>
 <h5>High-DPI support (work in progress)</h5>
 <p>
    ...<br/>
    Most of the icons changed to scalable format<br/>
    UI will scale with the desktop automatically, as Qt takes care of that for us.<br/>
    Some bitmaps still remain, to be replaced by vector images in a future release.
 </p>

 <h5>Proper theme and Carla-Control for Windows</h5>
 <p>
    ...<br/>
    The Windows build stack changed from using official Python and PyQt5 packages to msys ones, allowing us to link against them using mingw (Carla does not support MSVC)<br/>
    This makes possible to use the proper "pro" theme like Linux and macOS already did, and also get Carla-Control finally working on Windows.<br/>
    This brings feature parity for all 3 major desktop OSes. \o/
 </p>

 <h5>UI changes</h5>
 <h5>Canvas changes</h5>
 <p>
    ...<br/>
    canvas connect action<br/>
    small canvas, AA, cut connections, rework nick87720z<br/>
    inline display in canvas, experimental<br/>
 </p>

 <h5>carla-control and osc rework</h5>
 <p>
    ...<br/>
    Carla's OSC support has been reworked, now has its own dedicated page in the settings.<br/>
    Carla-Control has been extended to support all non-local-dependent features of the main Carla (like patchbay management and transport controls).<br/>
    This will be extended even further in future releases.<br/>
 </p>

 <h5>UI changes</h5>
 <p>
    ...<br/>
    Add-plugin dialog<br/>
    Built-in plugin editor parameter list, with groupping<br/>
    Dynamically show knobs in rack view as much as possible<br/>
    colorize all slot skins?<br/>
    Implement clearing xrun count, bottom bar stuff<br/>
 </p>

 <h3>Other changes</h3>
 <h5>juce stuff again, but disabled by default on source builds, etc</h5>
 <p>
    Some changes that make sense or are useful enough, and that deserve to be mentioned.<br/>
    Disabled during a previous beta, support for the JUCE library was added back - but now completlt optional<br/>
    This brings support for VST3 under macOS and Windows, and AU under macOS.<br/>
    As a bonus, it is now possible to show the custom control panel of ASIO devices. :)<br/>
    Support for JUCE is disabled by default under non macOS/Windows builds.<br/>
    Also note that JUCE does not support VST3 under Linux at this point, so neither does Carla even if you build it yourself with JUCE enabled.<br/>
 </p>
 <ul>
    <li>Drop Qt4 support</li>
    <li>Official builds use...</li>
    <li>________</li>
    <li>________</li>
    <li>________</li>
    <li>________</li>
 </ul>

 canvas connect action
 small canvas, AA, cut connections, rework nick87720z
 colorize all slot skins?
 internal jack client
 Dynamically show knobs in rack view as much as possible
 carla-control and osc rework
 juce stuff again, but disabled by default on source builds, etc
 Implement clearing xrun count, bottom bar stuff
 Save and restore Session Manager type in add-jack-app dialog
 NSM support for JACK Applications
 Introducing "Cancelable actions"
 Initial support for LV2 params
 Ship vst plugin in windows builds
 Update READMEs to mention VST3 and AU support
 Working wine-native bridge, needs testing
 Respect X11 UIs size hints from plugins
 Build CarlaVstFxShell by default?
 libjack stuff
 internal client
 testing carla-vst exposed parameters
 inline display in canvas
 <h5>Wine-native bridge, sorta experimental</h5>
 <p>
    As a way to load Linux binaries under Windows applications running with Wine, in case you need that somehow<br/>
    (personally, etc etc)<br/>
    Already in the KXStudio repositories as "carla-vst-wine" package, you need to copy... to make it work<br/>
    Presented at Sonoj last year, ...
    Building it is kinda tricky, packager documentation will be added soon to Carla's source code repository<br/>
 </p>

 <h3>Fixes</h3>
 <h5>vst plugin for macOS and windows, plus exposed parameters</h5>
 <p>
    Besides the ones already mentioned for Windows, we also have:
    What was missing for feature parity.<br/>
    Embedding of the full GUI is not possible, so a small window is shown instead etc etc<br/>
    100 parameters are exposed to the host, dynamically used in the order of the plugins loaded<br/>
 </p>

 <h3>Other changes</h3>
 <p>
    Some changes that make sense or are useful enough, and that deserve to be mentioned.<br/>
 </p>
 <ul>
    <li>Big push to get transport working correctly</li>
    <li>General fixes against dynamic buffer sizes</li>
    <li>Several fixes to UI size and UI bridges under macOS</li>
    <li>Fix all PNGs that triggered libpng warnings</li>
    <li>Fix canvas rubberband being invisible after a canvas refresh</li>
    <li>Fix embedded UI covering window controls under certain hosts (in a Qt5 Linux build)</li>
    <li>Fix switching plugin positions in plugin mode</li>
    <li>Official builds use...</li>
    <li>internal jack client</li>
    <li>NSM support for JACK Applications</li>
    <li>Introducing "Cancelable actions"</li>
    <li>Initial support for LV2 params</li>
    <li>Respect X11 UIs size hints from plugins</li>
    <li>More libjack stuff</li>
 </ul>

 <h3>Notes for developers and packagers</h3>
 <ul>
    <li>Base python scripts are no longer installed in dist-packages</li>
    <li>Carla front-end code was moved to its own folder</li>
    <li>FluidSynth version 1.1.7 is now required for soundfont support</li>
    <li>UI bridges can now be started from CLI with just the plugin URI</li>
    <li>New CarlaNativePlugin header and library exported, exposes Carla's Rack and Patchbay internals to 3rd party applications</li>
    <li>Drop Qt4 support</li>
    <li>Link to jack directly with..., allows for internal client</li>
 </ul>
 <p>
    Currently work-in-progress is a complete REST API of Carla's backend, allowing to have full control of a remote Carla instance.<br/>
    (and not in a limited fashion like done with Carla-Control / OSC).<br/>
    Initial code for it is already done, and tested to work.<br/>
    If this interests you, let me know!<br/>
 </p>
 <p>
 </p>

 <h3>Notes for users</h3>
 <p>
    The code for scanning plugins had a little rework, making some internal data structures change.<br/>
    Because of this, a full rescan of your plugins is needed after the update.<br/>
 </p>
 <p>
    When running Patchbay mode in JACK, changing the buffer size might cause a crash.<br/>
    This is not a common action to do, so not a priority to fix.<br/>
 </p>

 <h3>Downloads</h3>
 <p>
    To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the <a href="http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/Downloads" class="external free" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">KXStudio downloads section</a>.<br/>
    To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the <a href="https://kx.studio/Downloads" class="external free" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">KXStudio downloads section</a>.<br/>
    If you're using the KXStudio repositories, you can simply install "carla-git" (plus "carla-lv2" and "carla-vst" if you're so inclined).<br/>
    Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the <a href="https://github.com/falkTX/Carla" class="external free" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Carla's Github project</a> page for those.
 </p>

 <h3>Future</h3>
 <p>
    With Carla done, next up is DPF handling and KXStudio 18.04 ISO release, while trying to get a new JACK2 release out too.<br/>
    Note that after these 3 items are done, I plan to take a well-needed break from open-source project maintenance.
    in progress change of frontend coding language, from Python to C++ (for performance, reliability and debugging reasons).<br/>
    Whenever this is finished a new release will be made.<br/>
    But it is going to be something that, even though means a lot behind the scenes, visibly nothing will change (except performance)<br/>
 </p>

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