** Why do I even? [[https://orgmode.org/][Org-mode]] makes [[http://literateprogramming.com/][literate programming]] easy via [[https://orgmode.org/worg/library-of-babel.html][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 [[https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider][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 (>=26) and SuperCollider (with emacs support) installed. Modern emacsen and Spacemacs come with bundled org-mode.
It can be installed as a package via [[https://melpa.org/#/i-ching][Melpa]] or manually.
(use-package ob-sclang :config (org-babel-do-load-languages 'org-babel-load-languages '((sclang . t))))
To install manually 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.
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