Max 4 (x)daw
It would be very useful and interesting if Cycling74 could follow the Max 4 Live model and apply it to other daw environments, for instance Renoise. Is something like this already under development? If not, it should be. (Maybe I've missed this on another thread?)
It seems like the M4L thing has pros & cons. On the one hand it has fostered a lot of growth & innovation in tool development. On the other hand it is limited to Ableton users. This isn't the place to discuss the problems with the latter, of which there are many, but suffice it to say that it would be great to see this model extended and applied to other workstations, which would enhance their functionality and open up lots of new ideas.
I realize that Cycling74 has gotten into bed with Ableton, and there's nothing wrong with that, I just hope you haven't gotten into a monogamous marriage for all eternity!
That's a fair point : rather than longing for the old lost VST export possiblity, why not let C74 create a new "standard" for plugins after all :) I'll not speak of Renoise which i don't know, but i'd love to see something with Reaper.
However this is a lot of work for each daw ; but that's up to Cycling to figure out :)
I think the issue with this is that there is a lot more than just audio involved in M4L. All the Live API stuff takes a heck of a lot of work from both sides. Even if you were willing to forgo this for other DAWs there would still be the issue of creating GUI objects that resembled the GUIs of the other DAWs and just making sure that everything was much more compatible. I also have a sneaking suspicion that there is a lot more cross pollination between Ableton and Cycling 74, both companies have sales at exactly the same time and extend them as well which suggests to me at least that the two companies are much more interlinked than might otherwise be presumed. In any case I think max for anything other live isn't going to happen any time soon.
what about adding functionality to make max more daw like? ignore if not. :)
something like interface builder for presentation mode? would be nice it was easier to do something like use arrow keys on keyboard to move between num boxes, textedits, toggles, etc, and enter data without a lot of setup before hand.
i like tracker presentation, so i made a mini tracker, really a spread sheet :) the hardest part was making interface to dict and between that and coll and jit.cell which wasn't happy dumping that much data or updating visually. ended up meta-editing, entering coordinates.
i've not used it, but live API seems useful to allow max to interact with live in a way that it would be nice to be able to more easily have max interact with max? :)
if there were easier methods of interfacing with dict, editing, selecting, moving sections of data, much of the useful stuff, for me at least, from daws could be done more simply and fluidly in max. a ways back i ripped off mpc pad/track style, similar to live, nicer because i don't have session/arrangement duality confusion and can feed the 'arrangement' back into the 'session' in real time... but i haven't yet come up with a method that really works for me like mpc list edit mode.