Host-generated LV2 file choosers

LV2 has been slowly but surely moving towards message-based control to overcome the limitations of static ports. The required low level facilities have been available for a while now, but the lack of a standard way to document message-based parameters and host UI support has been a sticking point. One particularly pressing need is file parameters. The current sample example has a stop-gap UI to enable sample loading, but parameters really should be host controllable and simple plugins should not need a custom UI to be usable. Today I did some work towards resolving that situation.

Here is ConvoLV2 running in Jalv:

Note this is the built-in UI generated by Jalv and not a custom plugin UI. Unlike traditional LADSPA style controls, the impulse parameter is not a port, but is set by sending a message to an event port. The plugin lists parameters with the new patch:writable property, so the host knows which controls to display (or which parameters it can automatically set). Parameters are described as normal RDF properties, so any existing property can be used, or plugins can define them as needed in their data files (don't let the "RDF" scare you, the description of a Property is as simple as LV2 ports). One nice advantage of this over ports is that a project can describe a parameter once and use it in many plugins, without having to describe the parameter every time. This really adds up when you have hundreds of plugins with, say, an identical gain parameter.

These conventions will be established in the next LV2 release (1.4.0), and the sampler example will serve as a test case. When host support becomes established, we can also move towards using messages for numeric parameters, which will finally allow for dynamic parameters, control ramps, and so on.