OpenGL/DirectX GUI?

[anahuj]

I find the current GUI system too limited.
How about using a game graphics engine?

Simple example is the mute/solo buttons which vanish
if the track is made smaller. With graphics engine, the
available options are numerous, starting from simple
rescaling.

There are so much to add to Audacity but the current GUI
is too limiting.

[steve]

The use of OpenGL has been discussed on the developers mailing list, but the upshot was that it would take years of development at the expense of developing other areas, so it is unlikely to happen any time soon.

[anahuj]

As I imagine, gl/dx would allow overlay of multiple data over a track.
And it would happen transparently: the tool+data coder need not know what else
is rendered on the track. There would not be a single waveform/track widget.
Agree? Or should I explain more?

If I now want add something to the track, how it would be coded?
The widget programming and overprogrammed waveform widget is last what
I want to do.

If Audacity would have some kind of Python engine, I could code there
something. By Python engine I mean, it would run constantly and get
events. The Audacity data structures should be available from Python.
I could code a system which displays the state of Audacity in
a Python OpenGL window (pygl?). Or is it so?

[steve]

Audacity is primarily in C++ with a small amount of C and LISP code.
If you are interested in coding for Audacity, a good place to start is to build Audacity from the current svn source code. You will find links to several resources for new Audacity developers here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Developer_Guide