Manual Changes for Csound 7

(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

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?

What's new in Csound 7

That is definitely very important. Suggestion:

• Write a short text here, kind of overview.
• 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• This introduction is outdated in many ways, and mostly repeats historical facts: REMOVE?

The Csound Command

• ok

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

Score File Preprocessing

• ok?

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

• I am not very happy with these platform dependent descriptions.
• Remove? Move to FLOSS Manual? (See https://flossmanual.csound.com/how-to)

Realtime I/O with JACK

• More or less the same question

Configuring

• This is outdated. Remove?

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

Types, Constants and Variables

• needs some updates but in general ok

Expressions

• ok

Directories and Files

• ok

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

• would it be better to point here to the download page at csound.com or to https://flossmanual.csound.com/how-to/installation?

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