JITLib

Introduction

"Passenger to taxtidriver: take me to number 37. I'll give you the street name when we are there."¹

Disclaimer: there is no time, really; punctuality, however, is your personal responsibility.

Just in time programming (or: conversational programming, live coding² , on-the fly-programming, interactive programming) is a paradigm that includes the programming activity in the program's operation. Here, a program is not taken as a tool that is made first to be productive later, but instead as a dynamic construction process of description and conversation. Writing code becomes an integral part of musical or experimental practice.

Being a dynamic programming language, SuperCollider provides several possibilities for modification of a running program - this library extends, unifies and develops them, mainly by providing abstract placeholders, called proxies, which can be used in calculations and modified at runtime.

Overview

JITLib consists of a number of placeholders (server side and client side proxies) and schemes of access³ . These two aspects of space corresponding to inclusion and reference, depend on their context - here the placeholders are like roles which have a certain behaviour and can be fulfilled by certain objects. It is useful to be aware of the three aspects of such a placeholder: a certain set of elements can be their source, they can be used in a set of contexts and have a default source, if none is given.

Frequently used classes: Tdef (for tasks), ProxySpace, NodeProxy and Ndef (for synths), Pdef and Pdefn (for patterns).

NOTE: For some recent changes, see: JITLib Changes in 3.7

For additional functionality, see also JITLib extensions Quark. To install it, run the following:"JITLibExtensions".include;

Tutorial: Interactive Programming with SuperCollider and jitlib

This tutorial focusses on some basic concepts used in JITLib. There are many possibilities, such as server messaging and pattern proxies which are not covered in tutorial form presently.

content:

placeholders in SuperCollider: jitlib_basic_concepts_01
referencing and environments: jitlib_basic_concepts_02
internal structure of node proxy: jitlib_basic_concepts_03
timing in node proxy: jitlib_basic_concepts_04

Overview of the different classes and techniques

Defs: One way or style of access is the def-classes (Pdef, Ndef etc.). It binds a symbol to an object in a specific way:Pdef(\name) //returns the proxy
Pdef(\name, object) //sets the source and returns the proxy
the rest of the behaviour depends on its use.
client side: Pdef, Pdefn, Tdef, Pbindef, Psym, Pnsym, Fdef
server side: Ndef
Environments: Another way, for server side NodeProxies, is an environment that returns placeholders on demand:ProxySpace.push
~out = { ...}
helpfile: ProxySpace for the use together with other environments, see jitlib_basic_concepts_02
Lower Level Proxies: There is also direct access without using the access schemes : NodeProxy, TaskProxy etc. provide it. Internally the former use these as base classes.
language side: PatternProxy, EventPatternProxy, TaskProxy, PbindProxy, Pdict
server side: NodeProxy
History: To record all textual changes, History is provides navigation and a memory of code.
Multichannel systems:, Monitor (used internally) has a playN method.
GUI: overviews and mixers: ProxyMixer, TdefAllGui, PdefAllGui, NdefMixer
(for separate use: TdefGui, PdefGui, MonitorGui, NdefGui, NdefParamGui)

Tutorials

ProxySpace examples: (a broad variety of inputs and uses)
jitlib_efficiency: (optimising code)
the_lazy_proxy: (how the initialisation works)
jitlib_fading: (how crossfade of code works)
jitlib_asCompileString: (storing and reproducing proxies)
recursive_phrasing: (a specific use of Pdef)
jitlib_asCompileString: (how to reproduce source code from objects)
jitlib_networking: (how to collaborative live code with JITLib)
basic_live_coding_techniques: (live coding without jitlib)
NodeProxy roles: (adverbial syntax for NodeProxy sources)

Networking

in remote and local networks thanks to sc-architecture node proxies can be used on any server, as long as it notifies the client and has a correctly initialized default node.
Note that the number of logins or the client id should be set. s.options.maxLogins = 16; // an ensemble with up to 16 servers