Almost two years ago at the LA conference a bunch of us agreed that something need to be done to improve LADSPA, and on the approximate direction it should take.
Anyway, I finally got round to making a sketch plugin and .h file: http://plugin.org.uk/ladspa2/ The .ladspa2 plugin is a "bundle", ie. a directory with all the data the plugin needs in it. This idea is nicked from OPENSTEP. I'm not 100% convinced it's a good idea, but I think it makes sense for plugins. The dsp core (amp.c) is just a LADSPA 1.1 plugin with all the fixed data fields taken out, and a URI field added, to allow for working identification. I also dropped the runAdding method, as I dont think it is used enough to justify the effort of supporting it. The plugin is untested, but it compiles and nm reports sane contents for it. The data is in the amp.ttl file (it's in Turtle http://www.dajobe.org/2004/01/turtle/ an easy to hand-write RDF syntax). We could mandate a particular syntax for the spec. There's a shell script (show-data.sh) which, if you have raptor and rasqal installed will do something similar to what analyseplugin does for LADSPA 1.x, but it's very crude. Overall I think this is a much better approach than LADSPA 1.x, it has usable identifiers, a clear route for extensions without compatibility problems and each plugin is quite a lot simpler. - Steve