[Denemo-devel] GSoC: Make midi/audio output realtime-capable

[Philipp]

Hi there,
my name is Philipp Überbacher and I'm interested in making denemos
MIDI and audio playback independent of the GUI.

However, I'm a bit uncertain that I'll be able to do it, hence this
informal pre-application. I simply want to know your opinion on how hard
a job it would be and whether you think I could do it. For this purpose,
here's some information about me:

I follow Linux Audio Development since a couple of years and tried
most programs there are. I did use ubuntu studio beginning with its
inception until about two years ago during which time I helped new users
to make their first steps. About two years ago I moved on to Arch Linux
where I maintain scripts that allow users to build applications easily
(I almost exclusively maintain scripts for audio/MIDI applications).
I'm also more or less actively reporting bugs since I use GNU/Linux.

As for my education, I'm enrolled as a computer science student at
Alpen Adria Universität Klagenfurt [2] since October 2010, so I'm in my
second semester now. I did dabble in programming before I started to
study but never had any serious project. My university's program is
quite java-centric, but I'm currently enrolled in a course on operating
systems which is one of the few at this university that require C ([3]
and [4], in German only).

So my programming experience and especially C experience is limited,
however, since the course makes heavy use of C I expect to learn quite
a lot during this semester. The course covers processes, IPC, threads
and kernel programming (and I have to give a short presentation about
making single threaded programs multi-threaded). It counts as one of 
the hardest courses at this university and I don't expect to learn much
more about those topics in the courses to come.

I hope that this course will serve me as a good warm-up and that it will
be sufficient with respect to C programming and threads, but I can't
tell for sure that it will be enough. Realtime programming is something
I have no experience in, but it is something I intend to learn anyway.

One more thing worth mentioning: I have university courses throughout
June, which will limit my time during this period.

So what do you think? Is this a job I could manage to do?

Best regards,
Philipp





[1] http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?SeB=m&L=2&K=hollunder
[2] http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/main/inhalt/1.htm
[3] https://campus.aau.at/studien/lvkarte.jsp?rlvkey=67588
[4] https://campus.aau.at/studien/lvkarte.jsp?rlvkey=67589