[HN Gopher] Wavacity - a FOSS port of Audacity to the web
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       Wavacity - a FOSS port of Audacity to the web
        
       Author : _Microft
       Score  : 130 points
       Date   : 2023-09-01 21:46 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wavacity.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wavacity.com)
        
       | wasm123 wrote:
       | Mic Recording on the Web still a little rough. Could just be my
       | machine, M1 MBP
        
       | mrtksn wrote:
       | The page loads fairly quickly, I guess most people miss the
       | loading screen with the link to the github repo:
       | https://github.com/ahilss/wavacity
       | 
       | So yes, this is a WebAssembly app. It loads a 5.2MB .wasm file
       | and 2.3MB .data file.
       | 
       | Neat, isn't it?
        
       | evrimoztamur wrote:
       | Alright, it's at a kind of uncanny valley situation where we have
       | Windows XP applications running real-time in our browsers. Is the
       | end-game just a universal sandboxed VM that's cross-platform?
       | What do we do next?
        
         | TheRealPomax wrote:
         | Fun fact: when you don't give a shit about whether your UI
         | looks like what "the OS looks like" (no offense to Tantacrul,
         | but audacity clearly doesn't), you can get a surprising amount
         | of work done. This isn't a Windows XP application, it looked
         | like this well before Windows XP existed.
        
         | londons_explore wrote:
         | Run a web browser in the sandboxed VM duh. Must always add more
         | layers.
        
         | adamrezich wrote:
         | "The Birth & Death of JavaScript" called it...
        
         | grotorea wrote:
         | We can already do that for DOS programs, right? So a few more
         | decades and it should work for XP too.
        
           | lagniappe wrote:
           | I still can't find Unreal Tournament 2000 running in the
           | browser :( and not Return to Napali either :/
           | 
           | My heart will go on.
        
             | jakearmitage wrote:
             | https://icculus.org/ut99-emscripten/
             | 
             | Here you go.
        
         | malux85 wrote:
         | Much further in each direction, on the left, we compile LLMs to
         | bare metal and boot them without an operating system.
         | 
         | On the right, we have more layers, so we must boot a VM in the
         | browser, visit the same webpage, boot a vm on that page, and
         | then run wavacity in that.
        
         | esperkin39 wrote:
         | For better or for worse, that's what Google is aiming at with
         | ChromeOS. Especially now that the overarching "OS" is really
         | just a Linux shell for multiple VMs.
         | 
         | https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/l...
        
           | asfgiaosnio wrote:
           | People often claim that ChromeOS is versatile enough to
           | replace a normal computer because it has these various
           | compatibility layers. They often fail to mention that they
           | work _terribly_. You wind up with the poor performance and
           | annoying isolation that VMs give, but with an extra helping
           | of instability and incompatibility. Running anything except a
           | web app is gated behind  "developer mode", and even for a
           | developer it's difficult. I regularly encounter problems
           | (like needing to run Wireshark) that I believe are simply
           | unsolvable.
           | 
           | I don't understand anything about ChromeOS. At one point it
           | was a bad but clear idea: a machine with just a web browser,
           | capable only of running web apps. Then at some point they
           | decided to just make the world's most complicated and
           | confusing Linux distro, with the vestigial browser-centric
           | design kept around just to make things as inconsistent as
           | possible.
        
             | londons_explore wrote:
             | Test of if an OS is ready for regular users:
             | 
             | Does drag and drop work? Can I choose a random image/file
             | somewhere in one tab/application and drop it into another.
             | 
             | Just testing that now...
             | 
             | * Drag HN logo to Whatsapp Web: Pass
             | 
             | * Drag from Google Photos to Photopea: Pass
             | 
             | * Drag a zip file from Google Drive to Dropbox: Fail.
             | 
             | * Drag an attachment from an email from gmail into an
             | online hex editor: Fail
             | 
             | Conclusion: The web platform isn't yet ready.
        
         | Alekhine wrote:
         | I mean, that was kind of the idea behind the JVM, wasn't it?
         | It's not a terrible idea.
        
       | bigyikes wrote:
       | Wow, this is incredible! I was not expecting it to work on mobile
       | Safari of all things, but it does! The UI is even usable.
       | 
       | Audacity is an indispensable utility. It's great to see it and
       | other "real" software on the web. I'm reminded of Photopea[1]
       | which is a web clone of Photoshop.
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.photopea.com/
        
         | russellbeattie wrote:
         | If all the browsers, including mobile ones, would implement all
         | of the the FileSystem Access APIs, these types of apps would be
         | even more usable.
         | 
         | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...
        
       | mxmilkiib wrote:
       | I wonder if there any wasm window managers.
        
       | 1-6 wrote:
       | We'll need to stop calling web browsers web browsers.
        
         | russellbeattie wrote:
         | We need to split the web into documents and apps, in my
         | opinion.
         | 
         | We still don't have a standard HTML text editor, instead
         | relying on hundreds of Incompatible WYSIWYG editors which all
         | produce custom output, or worse (much, much worse) the
         | abomination that is MarkDown. Every browser should be an editor
         | which all produce standardized output.
         | 
         | In 2023, we're still relying on asterisk, hash marks and
         | underscores to format text, while simultaneously being able to
         | run full fledged audio editors. It's ridiculous.
        
         | pixelpoet wrote:
         | On reddit at least it seems like everyone under a certain age
         | doesn't use the term at all and just calls everything,
         | including websites, an app.
        
           | hyperhopper wrote:
           | To be fair, they aren't wrong. Web applications are
           | applications. Who says native mobile applications are the
           | only kind of applications?
           | 
           | Though if you call the PNG file that's a menu for your
           | restaurant an app, that's just wrong.
        
         | jauntywundrkind wrote:
         | Honestly it's just so hurtful to me how confined & narrow
         | opinions are on what the web should be, on what should be
         | "allowed", for what it can be.
         | 
         | This sort of stuff is so prime to me, so excellent. There's
         | plenty of scary platforms about, less than great sites, sure.
         | But there is no other connected medium available for humanity,
         | and to let the Fear Uncertainty & Doubt - or to let IMHO
         | pitiful pointless sad grumbling about performance - dog us down
         | is is to miss such huge potential, to grow & expand & improve,
         | in unconstrained & vast greatness. This sort of shit is so
         | excellent. Yes you can. And anyone with any kind of computing
         | device can tune in & try it. Heck yeah!
        
         | postalrat wrote:
         | Call the operating systems and call what was the operating
         | system the kernel.
        
       | lfmunoz4 wrote:
       | Can anyone summarize how this works. Guessing Audacity is some
       | C++ program. How did they take all the dependencies and make them
       | work on browser, using WASM? What about the frontend? Is the UI
       | just completely re-written?
        
         | thomond wrote:
         | It uses wxwidgets so they can just compile that to webassembly
         | too.
        
         | xd1936 wrote:
         | I think so. They use Emscripten to compile.
         | 
         | https://github.com/ahilss/wavacity
         | 
         | Remarkable.
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | See this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32610129
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-01 23:00 UTC)