"Perfect Layout" plugin Windows beta starts soon

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Knut
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Post by Knut » Mon Mar 06, 2017 12:20 pm

motet wrote:When I looked at the PDK several years back it was very poorly documented and arcane. Perhaps MM is reluctant to release and support something in such a state. I think it would be OK to give it to Jan "as-is" and say they won't answer questions about it, though. I'm guessing he would need the help of Patterson or the other two to make any sense of it. Ideally, MM would fix up the documentation, but perhaps they don't have the resources.
Thank you, Motet for that very pertinent and interesting info.

It seems very likely that this is the reason for the PDK not being publicly distributed, although I personally don't think it's a good enough reason. The PDK shouldn't require much support on MakeMusics part, and it would be quite easy for them to release it under these conditions. It does make me curious, though, how the currently supported plug-in developers have acquired their knowledge of the PDK. I'm especially thinking of Jari, who until last year had been dishing out new plug-ins and updates on at least a semi-regular basis. Surely those guys must have acquired a certain fluency in working with it?

All this is to say that even though MM doesn't want to devote it's own programming resources to cleaning up the PDK documentation, this could probably be done with a group effort from the community. Or, if it's just a matter of trial and error, I'm quite sure future plug-in developers could be up to the task.

The only additional reason I can think of from not releasing the PDK is to protect the interests of the for-profit developers (Robert and Tobias) as well as their own, but while not entirely implausible, this seems like a particularly unsatisfactory basis for keeping it under wraps.


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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Mar 06, 2017 5:39 pm

It seems plausible that the PDK was in good shape long ago but hasn't been kept up with all the Finale improvements (at least documentation-wise) due to lack of resources. I recall seeing postings from Jari that led me to believe he has an inside line to MM developers. I can see them not wanting to grant such access to anyone else. It's a shame, though.

BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Mon Mar 06, 2017 6:15 pm

I seem to remember Jari saying that he had developed some form of "intermediary layer" between his code and the PDK. That might explain some of the delay, if he has to rewrite that for 64-bit.
However, without any comment from either Jari or MM, then we're just speculating.MM does of course typically keep its cards very close to its chest until release. I agree that MM (and/or Jari) ought to farm out the code to the community, as currently people are not upgrading because of the lack of functionality.

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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Mar 06, 2017 7:08 pm

Perhaps that intermediate layer, which I think he calls "Finale framework" or somesuch, is indicative of the difficulty of using the PDK directly.

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elbsound
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Post by elbsound » Tue Mar 07, 2017 11:18 am

You can read about more about the PDK on the last post on the old MakeMusic forum:
http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=11&m=487815

Here is a bit more:
- MM doesn't give out the PDK anymore, because they expect much more to do for their support team. Not because the developer needs help (they could simply give out the PDK without giving further support as Motet suggested above). No, they expect that the plugins are so badly written that they cause the Finale documents to be corrupted which leads to more support contacts.

- We have been discussing this decision on Jari's JW Lua mailing list and didn't find a single thing where a JW Lua plugin could mess up a Finale document. Unfortunately Jari didn't contribute anything to that discussion - maybe he knows a way to "kill" a Finale document with JW lua, but at least we didn't find one. And after more than 3 years of development with JW Lua I have never encountered such a situation with more than 100 scores and JW Lua scripts that touch nearly every part of the document that is accessible through Jari's PDK.

- On the contrary: a plugin like the Perfect Layout plugin solves more than 100 Finale issues or adds long requested features. So even if 10 customers had minor problems with it, many, many more other issues would not need support anymore.

- And yes, the PDK is badly documented and probably in a bad state (although I don't know the latest release) and I think it's not worth the effort to start a new big plugin project with that PDK.

- But: that's why Jari developed his Finale Framework. It's excellent! The only drawback: you need the original Finale PDK to compile his framework, but apart from that: you don't need to look into it. So bad documentation or bad state doesn't matter anymore, because the developer only needs to deal with Jari's framework which is pretty good documented, especially in combination with the JW Lua mailing list.

- The reason why I (and others) would need the original PDK is very simple: Jari announced a few months ago that he could upload his framework or even make it open-source (an older release from 2012 is already available on his site).
We (the JW Lua developers) could then contribute to his framework, make it more stable and add new features. Many have been requested in the last two years through his JW Lua mailing list. The original Finale PDK would only be running in the background and would more or less not need to be touched.

And Jari's C++ Finale Famework is also compatible with the JW Lua interface. So it would even be possible to transform a plugin like the Perfect Layout from Lua to C++ which would improve the processing speed drastically.

The dilemma is: Jari doesn't make the Framework open-source, because no one has the Finale PDK and can't compile his Framework without it. And MakeMusic doesn't give out the PDK, because they think it's too risky or useless.
I have had several conversations in the last 18 months with Michael Johnson (head of development) and Mark Adler - but: no way. I have even suggested that they release a "pre-compiled" Finale PDK, so that it's not possible to work with its source code, but that we could use it for Jari's Framework ... and still no way.

In other words a combination of the original PDK and Jari's excellent Finale Framework would solve most of MakeMusic's plugin problems and also my problems with releasing the plugins with an unfinished JW Lua interface.

And finally I don't think that it's difficult to transform Jari's Framework to 64bit. If you look at how fast Robert and Tobias updated their many plugins, it simply can't be. I guess it's one or two days work. But that should be it. Depends a bit on how good it was documented.

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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Mar 07, 2017 5:15 pm

Do you have any idea why Jari has not moved forward with his plug-ins?

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HaraldS
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Post by HaraldS » Tue Mar 07, 2017 11:54 pm

Thanks Jan for the clear words.

I would also be interested in the full PDK. JWLua is great, but far from complete. Jari seems to have stopped all activities which is really sad as there's no other possibility to write plugins. Either an ongoing JWLua development or a public release of the PDK would be necessary.

With each further Finale version, it will be more likely that Finale gets additional functions which won't be available through JWLua, if the JWLua development stays in its current state. Thus, it will get more and more useless. JWLua is such a great step towards easy plugin development (even if it's only a script language) that it would be really sad losing it.

Harald
Finale 3.0-25.5, German edition, Windows 7
trombonist, pianist, conductor / Recklinghausen, Germany

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