+
+ > Carla 2.0 development progress report
+ On 2013-12-17 by falkTX
+
+ This is a progress report for the new Carla, version 2.0.
+ It will take a while to get a release ready, but there are already a few things done and stuff to show.
+
+ First, the backend is being rewritten to not use any system toolkit.
+ In 1.x series I've used Qt4 to handle graphics, but that might be a problem soon with Qt5 (cannot mix Qt4 and Qt5 stuff together).
+ Plus I want the Carla backend to be toolkit agnostic, so that in the future it may be re-usable for others no matter what their main toolkit is.
+ The main backend header files are now ANSI C compatible, thus increasing the chances of re-usability (as some Linux developers have a weird aversion to C++...).
+
+ Because Qt is no longer used in the backend code, I needed something else to handle graphics and other advanced stuff - Juce was selected for this.
+ Juce is a C++ framework focused on audio applications and plugins, which suits Carla nicely.
+ There's a lot of useful things inside it that will make developing new features much easier (like the internal patchbay mode).
+ Other things like AU and VST3 plugin hosting will be possible too thanks to Juce, although they are not relevant to Linux.
+
+ Loading Carla as a plugin is also being worked on.
+ There target two main targets with this:
+
+ If you been following the LinuxMusicians forums you know that internal Carla plugins are already available as LV2 plugins (yes, that includes zynaddsubfx-lv2!).
+ Once the Carla internal plugin work is complete, you automatically get an LV2 version of it as well! :D
+
+ There has been a few changes on the UI side as well.
+ For example, the plugin edit dialog now looks like this:
+
+ 
+
+ As seen the image, the user will be able to use "Stereo Balance" or "Mono Panning".
+ The new layout also allows for a much smaller window size.
+
+ Lastly, there's plans to bring custom skins to plugin "slots", in a similar way to Reason.
+ This is something I still have to investigate to find the best possible way to do it.
+ It should be expandable so that random plugins can also use skins, probably via a new LV2 extension.
+ More on this later.
+
+ That's all for now.
+ Soon there will be a new DISTRHO release, so stay tuned!
+
> New releases and future plans
On 2013-11-27 by falkTX