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Manual Changes for Csound 7

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Menno Knevel edited this page Oct 22, 2024 · 4 revisions

(joachim) I go here through the current items in the Csound 7 Manual

Preface

Preface to the Csound Manual

We still have Barry's historical preface here. Suggestion:

  • Write a new preface
  • Put Barry's historical preface (if possible with the year - 1996?) in an own item afterwards

History of the Canonical Csound Reference Manual

  • ok (add Joachim to : The manual is currently maintained by François Pinot, Menno Knevel and Stefano Cucchi with...-Menno)

Copyright Notice

  • Remove mentions of CsoundAC
  • Add present time (1991-2024 rather than 1991-2008 ...)
  • Fix some links (sourceforge ...)

Getting Started with Csound

  • Should this be removed?
  • Or a very short description? Or a collection of links?
  • We have this version on the Csound homepage. Better one place? (i like to centralize things as much as possible. Perhaps a few words on all different platforms Csound runs on, with a link to https://csound.com/get-started.html for the latest news on the topic? - Menno)

What's new in Csound 7

That is definitely very important. Suggestion:

  • Write a short text here, kind of overview. (i always liked this Changelog but not so interesting for the user. For the user Csound is presented as is... words on the new syntax? - Menno)
  • Link to the (to be written) chapter in the FLOSS Manual about the same topic.

Overview

Introduction

  • By the way: here 1984 is said to be the birth of Csound ... =)
  • This introduction is outdated in many ways, and mostly repeats historical facts: REMOVE? (remove or replace to Historical Overview - Menno)

The Csound Command

  • ok ( i think this information could find a better place, it is somewhat lost and will not be found by the user. Add the text to manual/CommandEnvironment.html? - Menno)

Order of Precedence

  • small updates (CSOUND7RC etc)

Description of the command syntax

  • small updates

Csound command line

  • I think the title is not consistent. The usage of Csound in terminal was explained in the previous section.
  • Title suggestion: Command line flags / Options (alphabetically)

Command-line Flags (by Category)

  • Title suggestion: Command line flags / Options (by category)

Csound Environment Variables

  • In general good; needs some updates.

Unified File Format for Orchestras and Scores

  • Remove the HTML paragraph?

Command Line Parameter File (.csound6rc)

  • small updates (add this to Order of Precedence - Menno)

Score File Preprocessing

  • ok? (not ok but don´t know how to improve yet - Menno)

Using Csound

  • in general ok

Csound's Console Output

  • this is written in a different tone: not any more as technical description but as tutorial. I would suggest to keep the tone of a reference, so here more dense and short

How Csound works

  • very nice and short description about the architecture
  • the subchapter "Csound's processing buffers" is not visible in the overview page!

Amplitude Values in Csound

  • In general good but again the tone could be more technial and less tutorial
  • Table 2 should show more precise values for 0dbfs = 1

Real-Time Audio

  • seems good to me, just some updates needed

Optimizing I/O Latency

  • I think this is good; perhaps small additions needed

Realtime I/O on Linux / Mac / Windows

Realtime I/O with JACK

  • More or less the same question (same answer - Menno)

Configuring

  • This is outdated. Remove? (text about the PATH could be added to Order of Precedence - Menno)

Syntax of the Orchestra

  • here is a lot which must be modified and updated

Orchestra Header Statements

  • more or less ok, just some improvements

Instrument and Opcode Block Statements

  • ok

Ordinary Statements

  • it is a bit abstract but ok ( i have never seen this one before. Can this text be put in a better place? - Menno)

Types, Constants and Variables

  • needs some updates but in general ok

Expressions

  • ok ( i have never seen this one before. Can this text be put in a better place? - Menno)

Directories and Files

  • ok (stopped checking, will continue next time - Menno)

Nomenclature

  • ok

Orchestra Macros

  • ok

Named Instruments

  • should be rewritten
  • might be better to have together with numbered instruments

User Defined Opcodes (UDO)

  • needs to be changed for CS7
  • at the end should also mention other UDO collections, like from Steven and Jeanette

Vectors and Arrays

  • must be rewritten

Function Syntax

  • needs update for CS7

UDP Server

  • good

The Standard Numeric Score

  • needs some updates

Preprocessing of Standard Score

  • I think it's fine; perhaps small updates

Score Statements

  • fine

Next-P and Previous-P Symbols

  • ok

Ramping

  • ok

Score Macros

  • the description is good but the formatting follows the paradigm of a manual page rather than being a part of this introduction

Multiple File Score

  • same

Evaluation of Expressions

  • same

Strings in p-fields

  • can be removed I think

Front Ends

Building Csound

*the content is ok; not sure it is necessary here though

Csound Links

  • same question: should it have a place in the reference manual, or on the website
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