It is the normal course of events that, for hobby programmers, real life “gets in the way” sometimes.  For Buzzer Cyan Helkaraxe, that was the case with his Squeeky Synth program.  Squeeky Synth has gathered a little dust since it was released last year, but with growing interest in the Haiku, the operating system replacement for BeOS, Cyan has started tooling back up to work on it again.

Cyan is seeking input from musicians and programmers about the best way to proceed.  Initially he isn’t considering including multi-track hard drive recording features into his project, though he seems willing to consider all possibilities.  If you’d like to jump in with your own ideas about the things you’d like included in Squeeky Synth, you can probably do so the most easily by posting them to the Talkback Forum at Bebits.

Buzzer Al Elias of Great Britain has posted a success story to the Haiku user’s group that is certainly encouraging. Quoting…

“I had MeV up and running in Haiku today. Considering this midi sequencer
has languished on sourceforge untouched for over 5 years, I have to say:

:a)  What  a  potentially  fantastic piece of software this is and
b) I was absolutely GOBSMACKED! that MeV fired-up on Haiku without too
many issues.

“This leads me to state the obvious really. What a waste!

“Would anyone be willing to help me resurrect this project? I’m not a
coder but have had a fair amount of experience with the interface kit.
Fact is, the  MeV interface is really quite advanced/mature so my
(limited) skill would be of  little use here.

“I would be prepared to help steer any future development/progress on
MeV, write documention and other such stuff  if we could garner any devs
to help bring the project from ‘also ran’ status to ’showcase’ midi
sequencer for Haiku (I helped Alpha test MeV back in 2001 for Christoper
Lenz and the MeV team).”

So this skillfully written synth program has indeed been successfully tested under Haiku; yet another testimony to the growingly stable, useful nature of this exciting new platform, and an early testament to its usefulness as an audio platform.  Here’s hoping there are those in the lebuzz reading audience who might be interested in contributing coding to the project.  If so, in order to avoid publishing your e-mail address, you can use the Contact form at http://www.tunetrackersystems.com/contact.html and provide me your e-mail address, and I’ll put you in touch with Al.

Wondering what to do with your programming skill?  Want to be certain it isn’t wasted?  Like to be popular, famous, and valuable?

Two words.  Write drivers!

If you want the BeOS/Haiku world to beat a path to your door, there’s one surefire way of doing it.  Write drivers!  Ever since the BeBits download site opened its virtual doors around the turn of the millennium, its list of the top ten most popular downloads has been dominated by hardware drivers; those little intermediary translation programs that let BeOS talk to various sound cards, video, cards, network cards, etc.  While some programs on BeBits get downloaded a few dozen times, or with luck, a few hundred times, hardware drivers get downloaded tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of times.  The ATI Radeon graphics driver for BeOS has been downloaded almost half a million times!

There’s a reason.  BeOS must have drivers matching the hardware in your computer in order to run.   A lot of hardware is natively supported, but a lot is not.  So when a user discovers they can’t make their sound work, or their networking, or or video, they immediately start combing the net for drivers.  They ultimately wind up at BeBits or BeDrivers, and add their downloads to the startling number of others accessing YOUR wonderful work!

Be famous…write drivers!

While having Mozilla Firefox for BeOS has always been “nice,” there have been complaints for years that the BeOS version was a little slow and rough around the edges compared to the version available for Windows.  The release of the Deer Park version was definitely a leap forward, and there have been steady improvements since.  Still, as recently as the previous build, Firefox for BeOS was  slow to launch, and ungraceful about closing down, often leaving a “zombied” entry in the BeOS deskbar.  But with the release of  Bon Echo 2.0.0.8, the BeZilla team has really outdone themselves.

The  new release seems extremely stable, launches more quickly, has snappier performance, and closes gracefully.  Its behaviors, such as parsing web pages, configuring plugins, and handling special coding such as the AJAX pages in Google News, is amazingly good.   Googledocs works well, letting you do online editing of word processor and spreadsheet data for personal use or in collaboration with others.  I have found that a number of other fairly sophisticated applets, such as the GUI HTML blog editor I’m using to write this entry, also run perfectly.  I had less success with them in previous versions.

Obviously, we’re still missing flash, but that’s a completely separate beast requiring another whole effort.  But other than that, at least in my experience, the newest BeZilla version of Firefox behaves and “feels” pretty much identical to Firefox under Windows or Linux

Congratulations to the BeZilla team!

I want to thank Michael Phipps for his tireless efforts to advance the OpenBeOS project, Haiku.  After years of dedication, burnout was inevitable, and Michael stepped down as the project’s leader last week, leaving with very positive comments about the effort, the people involved, and the bright future of Haiku.  May Michael’s future also be bright and full of great opportunities and fulfillment.

Mine isn’t the first accolade for Michael on his departure, and is unlikely to be the last.  But ultimately, the best way the Haiku  effort can honor Michael’s efforts is by carrying Haiku forward speedily toward the release of R1 and beyond.

My best wishes and regards to those who are stepping up to organize and lead the way forward as we all look forward to the official launch of Haiku

One of the top names in high-end audio, M-Audio , appears to be on its way to being fully supported under BeOS.   Buzzer Jerome Leveque has posted a driver at Bebits that supports the ICEnsemble 1712 chipset.  While Jerome hasn’t tested his driver will all of the following cards, he suspects they’ll all work with it.

M-Audio Audiophile2496
Delta 1010
Delta 1010 LT
Delta DIO 2496
Delta 66
Delta 44
Audiophile 2496
Delta 410 VX 442

If all those names and model numbers are meaningless to you because you are unfamiliar with M-Audio, by all means have a look at their Products page. As you can see, these are some extremely exciting products, including multi-channel-in, multi-channel-out breakout boxes that could open the door in significant ways, especially if multi-track recording and editing arrives someday for BeOS/Haiku. So far Jerome has gotten playback working, and we presume/hope, he is now working on the input/recording side of things. Keep up the good work, Jerome…this is potentially a big step forward for Buzzers everywhere!

leBUZZ has moved a number of times, frankly because I haven’t liked any of its previous locations very well. I’m satisfied now. WordPress will do nicely, long-term. My plan is to cross-post a number of recent stories into this new leBUZZ blog, and then change out of my Gypsy gear and settle-in for the long haul.

Please update your links accordingly. From now on, lebuzz will be found here at lebuzzin.wordpress.com.

If you like, you can grab one of our little web badges to use when linking!