3.9 KiB
Why do I even?
Org-mode makes literate programming easy via Library of Babel. Il simply allows to mix text with executable code blocks (which can also be extracted (tangled) into separate, executable files. The beauty of the Library of Babel implementation in org-mode lies in the fact that it supports many languages. I craved support for SuperCollider and craving became an itch when I needed to document a working pipeline alternating between executing sclang and shell scripts. I scratched an itch with this little module.
How to install?
First of all, you will need emacs (>=25) and SuperCollider (with
emacs support) installed. Modern emacsen and Spacemacs come with bundled
org-mode. At this point I am the sole user of this plugin and have just
written it so I am not itching yet for MELPA or inclusion in the
official org-mode repositories, so installation is manual. You can
either drop file:ob-sclang.el somewhere in
your Emacs' path or add its containing directory to
load-path
in .init
file:
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/ob-sclang/")
You will also have to add it to (org-babel-do-load-languages)
(require 'ob-sclang)
(org-babel-do-load-languages
'org-babel-load-languages
'((sclang . t)))
And then?
Well, then you type a block like this one:
#+BEGIN_SRC sclang
"boo".postln;
#+END_SRC
And after you hit C-c C-c you should see the string appear
in your SCLang:PostBuffer*
Note:, make sure you execute sclang-start
prior to executing any sclang code
blocks
Use of variables
You can also include variables to be passed to you sclang code:
#+BEGIN_SRC sclang :var boo="hoo" :var pi=3.14159 :var year=2000 :var buf='foo
boo.postln;
pi.postln;
year.postln;
buf.postln;
#+END_SRC
Will reformat your sclang body to:
"hoo".postln;
3.141590.postln;
2000.postln;
"foo".asSymbol.postln;
Before passing it on to the sclang process.
The use of sclang's own global variables is persistent between code
blocks so ~boo
#+BEGIN_SRC sclang
~boo = "hoo";
#+END_SRC
is accessible here:
#+BEGIN_SRC sclang
~boo.postln;
#+END_SRC
Known issues
At this point, this plugin has a very crude functionality. It allows unidirectional control of SuperCollider process running inside Emacs. As such, here is a list of issues:
Of course feel free to open questions, suggestions, discussions and even pull requests.
Some tests
The code blocks beyond this point can be executed from an org buffer:
Post some string to SC's Post Buffer:
"boo".postln;
This python code does not need to be evaluated beforehand because it will be evaluated by sclang block below.
1,2,3,4] [
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
And we will use this table as input data
boo | 5 | 9 |
good | 7 | xa |
And here we execute some sclang that simply reads variables specified in code block's header. They include named python codeblock above and the table.
x.postln;
x.class.postln;
y.postln;
y.class.postln;
z.postln;
z.class.postln;
table.postln;
table.class.postln;
table[0].postln;
tb.postln;
tb.class.postln;
And this is the output to SC's Post Buffer.
10
Integer
11
Integer
1.1
Float
[ [ boo, 5, 9 ], [ good, 7, xa ] ]
Array
[ boo, 5, 9 ]
[ 1, 2, 3, 4 ]
Array