first, jMax is dead because IRCAM killed it. It wasn't dead enough so they killed it again.
It looks as if it was created to compete with Pd and didn't quite succeed at it.
-I don't th§ink that's the real reason why it was created. It was intended to be a platform independent foluw-up to the Max/FTS that ran on the Next machine with the DSP-boards. After Next stopped making hte Cube in 1993/94 IRCAM decided not to be stuck on one platform. Also because general CPU's became more capable of doing the kind of number-crunching that were normally associated with DSP, they revamped FTS and tried to do all te client stuff with a java gui. During the period of 1998 to approx. 2001 it was used for internal performances (so the IRCAM-people say...) and productions (so the IRCAM-people say...), strangely enough all their technical performance manuals all refer to Max/MSP. like in Jonathan Harvey's String Quartet N ° 4 with live electronics: http://www.ircam.fr/fileadmin/sites/WWW_Ircam/fichiers/Cahiers_exploitation/... ey-SQ4_en.pdf As far as the architecture of jMax itself, I quite like the idea of aclient/server in the way it was implemented. But the notion of need a separate machine to run the gui, is ridiculous.
AvS
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