libsoundio VS GLFW

Audio DSP is definitely the deep end of the pool. I believe the Zig programming language owes its creation to Andrew Kelley (the creator) trying to write stuff for an audio workbench going "damn, this is really hard to do with C, why does C suck so much" and just creating a language that's like C but without the bad parts to do it himself. I'm not joking, this is literally the origin of Zig as I've heard it from a podcast, and here is Andrew's old audio lib for proof: https://github.com/andrewrk/libsoundio

http://libsound.io is a great cross platform library for reading and writing to sound cards. i have used it successfully on macos and i’m sure it supports linux and possibly windows too. you will probably also need lib audio for reading and writing to files.

Hmm... after some research it seems that I've misunderstood Zig's situation a bit. Zig has introduced null-terminated string types a couple of years ago, but still encourages you to do most string operations with slices instead. Let me explain:

Zig's string literals (which you create with parenthesis like "Hello world!") are null-terminated byte arrays, expressed as the type const [N:0]u8 (where the :0 tells you that it's null-terminated), whereas the more typical array might be written as const [N]u8. The reason for this feature is not because the language wants you to use null-terminated strings, but because these static strings need to be stored in the global data section of the ELF executable, and these require you to use null-termination. But if you want to do any mutable operation with this string, you need to convert this into a proper slice (ptr + size). And it seems like Zig developers don't really use null-terminated types that much at the API level, but use it for things like C interop or cases where you really need it for special optimizations.

Noting that from the PR that introduced this feature, Andrew Kelley writes:

> I think you will find that the Zig community in general (and especially myself) agrees with you on this [null-terminated strings being fragile], and APIs in general should prefer slices to null terminated pointers. Even if you are using Zig to create a C library, and even in actual C libraries, I would recommend pointer and length arguments rather than null terminated pointers, like this: https://github.com/andrewrk/libsoundio/blob/1.1.0/soundio/so...

> That being said, I want to repeat what I said earlier about null terminated pointers: A null terminated array is not inherently an evil C concept that is intruding in the Zig language. It's a general data storage technique that is valid for some memory constrained use cases. I also stumbled on a Real Actual Use Case inside LLVM. The bottom line for me is that null terminated pointers exist in the real world, and especially in systems programming. You can see this in interfaces with the operating system in the standard library...

So he acknowledges null-terminated strings can certainly be useful in certain situations outside of legacy reasons, which is good to know. And Zig creating a special type for this shows that a good systems language needs to be designed to accommodate the needs of the outside world.

Perhaps you could use either http://libsound.io/ or SDL2 game library + SDLAudioIn (http://burningsmell.org/sdl_audioin/) which provides low-level APIs to access operating-system sound systems like Alsa, PulseAudio, PipeWire, and CoreAudio (not sure how well it is supported by SDL2).

Comparison: https://github.com/andrewrk/libsoundio/wiki/libsoundio-vs-SD...

Fun fact: Andrew Kelley, the creator of the Zig programming language, kind of created it so he could work on audio processing.

Based on: https://github.com/andrewrk/libsoundio/blob/master/example/sio_sine.c

Does this fit your needs? https://github.com/andrewrk/libsoundio

I listened to the Co-recursive podcast the other day that featured Andrew Kelley, the creator of the Zig programming language. Before Zig he developed Libsoundio - https://github.com/andrewrk/Libsoundio, to solve problems around realtime audio.

Audio will probably come later, but libsoundio will be the first thing in terms of groundwork. Integrating that in the same way we've integrated GLFW, so you can just cross compile and get cross-platform audio to boot.

Minecraft runs on various Javas.

And there's a known issue with an interaction between minecraft, Java, and the video drivers that crashes out and it can be traced back all the way to here: https://github.com/glfw/glfw/issues/1997

It's not fixed.

Window context manager - glfw, sdl

Types of tools for creating a gui (and how those tools approximately work): 1. Utilize the native _graphical interface API_, and depending on the platform, they have specific layers to interface: * Wayland, X11, for Linux * [GDI](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/gdi/windows-gdi) for windows * [Quartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz\_(graphics\_layer)) for macOS Example - GTK uses [wayland](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/blob/main/docs/reference/gdk/wayland.md) ([source code](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/tree/main/gdk/win32)) [X11](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/blob/main/docs/reference/gdk/x11.md) ([source code](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/tree/main/gdk/x11)) GDI ([source code](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/tree/main/gdk/win32)) Quartz ([source code](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/tree/main/gdk/macos)) [How to use wayland display server](https://bugaevc.gitbooks.io/writing-wayland-clients/content/black-square/the-wayland-client-library.html) (TODO missing "animation" section) 2. Utilize opengl _or other low level graphics api's_ with window context, use GPU to render widgets * Window context manager - [glfw](https://github.com/glfw/glfw), [sdl](https://www.libsdl.org/) * contexts and surfaces, reading input, handling events Example: ImGui, NanoVG, Nuklear, raylib Why? Mainly used for game development, but also good for gui's. _(i haven't seen any examples that uses this method that are used for developing general-use graphical user interfaces.)_

GLFW: A library for window creation and managing user input.

Not SDL2, but GLFW has something like that under the tests/ directory:

https://github.com/glfw/glfw/blob/master/tests/triangle-vulk...

I'm not familiar with LWJGL, my 5 seconds on their website makes me think you might be looking for something like GLFW https://www.glfw.org/ to handle I/O and window creation/management.

Consider GLFW3 for windowing and GLAD for function loading. I've used this combination myself successfully. Granted, that is "two things" you need, but OTOH it'll work well.

There is a pattern to it which is usable with every GitHub repository. For example, GLFW v3.3.8 can be fetched from: https://github.com/glfw/glfw/archive/refs/tags/3.3.8.tar.gz

That is a static or import library for glfw. You need add the path to the directory where this file is located to the "library directories", see: https://www.learncpp.com/cpp-tutorial/a2-using-libraries-with-visual-studio-2005-express/