Antonio Components

object, variable, dictionary, name, reference, environment

Antonio supports the creation and manipulation of several types of objects, which are useful for the analysis and synthesis of sounds; an example is the type wave object containing time series; objects may be the result of expression evaluation, may be stored as named objects, and, may be viewed or changed in views or dialogs. Named objects are stored in dictionaries. A dictionary may be temporary; for example, during expression evaluation, a temporary dictionary may be built, filled with named objects, and be deleted before expression evaluation returns the final result. Permanent dictionaries have a name (an identifier of up to 59 characters) and are stored as files with this name and the filename extension ‘vlb’; in permanent dictionary names there is no distinction between upper and lower case, however, object names (identifiers up to 59 characters) are case sensitive. Dictionaries are hierarchically related; a dictionary may contain (be parent of) one or more other dictionaries; the root is the dictionary with the name antonio::, also referred to as the global dictionary; the dictionary antonio:: is the only dictionary (within the current directory (folder), see below), which has no parent; other permanent dictionaries have the dictionary antonio as their parent. In any context, in which references to objects in dictionaries are defined, there is a search chain of dictionaries defined, which is referred to as the current environment; the search chain need not be identical with the parent chain. A complete reference to a named object is of the form dictionary_name::object_name, identifying both, the dictionary and the contained object; a simple reference (object_name only) will be resolved in the current environment; if the identifier does not match an object name in the first dictionary of the chain, the search continues in the preceding element of the chain of dictionaries; the end (the last element in the chain) of the environment is normally the dictionary antonio::; therefore objects contained in this dictionary are globally accessible unless the same name is used for an object in some earlier dictionary

workspace, current directory (folder), workspace view, object view, object dialog, dictionary view

Antonio objects may be created and manipulated in views and/or dialogs; there may be several different types of views to the same object. For example, an expr text object has as primary view a text edit view, in which the expression text may be modified and executed; if the expressions evaluates to a wave object, this object may be viewed in a wave edit view or in a graph view; all three types of views are associated with an expr text object. Other types of objects may have only one type of view or dialog. In Antonio, workspaces serve to access objects and to activate the desired view. After starting Antonio, a workspace must be opened. In the open dialog, a (Windows) file system path must be selected, which identifies the current (Windows) directory entry, from which workspaces may be opened. Multiple workspaces may be opened from the current directory (folder); similarly, only those permanent dictionaries are known, which are stored in the current directory (folder). The current directory (folder) may only be changed if no workspace is open. Associated with each workspace is a link to a dictionary with the same name and a list of links to objects. Workspace and associated dictionary are stored as separate (Windows) files, with the same name and the file name extension ‘vws’ for the workspace or ‘vlb’ for the dictionary. If a new workspace is created (command New in the main menu of Antonio), it must first be saved under a name (command SaveAs); the new workspace is linked to a dictionary with the same name, if it exists, else an empty dictionary with this name is created.

The workspace view shows a list of links in a scheme like this:

       
Each line in this list represents al link; the first line (level 0) links to the associated dictionary; the second line (level 1) links to an object contained (or to be contained) in the associated dictionary; the third line (level 2) links to a supported view or dialog for the linked object; the type of view is given by the (three letter) name of the view or dialog type. Depending on the type of object, there may currently be up to three view or dialog links following the object link. Normally the first view or dialog link is the one, in which the object can be edited. For example, for all text objects, the first view is a text editor, or, for a wave object, the first view is a wave editor. To activate an object view or dialog, select a link and issue the command Show|View, to activate the dictionary view, issue the command Show|Dictionary; alternatively, double clicking on any line in the workspace view activates a corresponding view or dialog. The dictionary view is a list of selected objects in the dictionary (e. g., selection may restrict the shown objects to those of type wave).

view parameters, configuration dialog, global parameters, directories

Some of the view types depend on view parameters, which can be changed in a configuration dialog, similarly a number of global parameters (like sound rates or the maximal number of samples in a wave) may be changed with the Globals|Parameters command of the main window; during start of Antonio these parameters are set from an existing configuration file and then kept in memory while Antonio is active; changes made in dialogs to these parameters are effective only for the current activation of Antonio unless explicitely saved to the configuration file. Configuration files are kept in the (Windows) directory (folder), which contains also the Antonio execution files (‘antonio.exe’’), and have the file name extension ‘vcd’. A global parameter with name nn is also stored in the antonio:: dictionary as a parameter variable of type double and with the name __nn (the name has a prefix of 2 underscores); when Antonio needs to know the current value of parameter nn, it starts a search in the current environment for __nn; thus it is possible to restrict the scope of the effect of changes to parameters. For example, the statement __DefSoundRate = 8000; sets the default sound rate in the current dictionary (the first in the environment chain) to 8000; any (explicit or implicit) conversion of a wave to a sound in this environment will result in a sound with rate 8000 (assuming the list of possible sound rates contains 8000, if not, the smallest supported rate > 8000 is taken).

As mentioned earlier, there are a number of Windows  folders, which are or may become relevant during the use of Antonio. The following lists some of these folders:

exedir                     folder from which antonio is executed

vwsdir                    the current folder containing workspaces and dictionaries

txtdir                       folder for saving text objects as *.txt files

mp3dir                   folder  for saving sounds as *.mp3 files

wavdir                   folder for saving sounds as *.wav files

the paths for txtdir, mp3dir and wavdir  can be retrieved with the  built in functions __txtdir, __mp3dir and __wavdir and can be set with the commands __settxtdir, __setmp3dir, and, __setwavdir.; the path for exedir and vwsdir can be retrieved with the built in functions __exedir or __vwsdir; the vwsdir can be changed within a workspace open dialog, txtdir, wavdir and mp3dir can be changed with the SaveXxx commands in relevant views.