user-selectable front panels (kind of skins)

[steph_tsf]

On the Android Play Store, there are dozens of simple audio processors consisting in a 5-band equalizers plus a bass-boost ("Linkwitz Bass Transform").
I Guess they all base on the same, near trivial audio DSP code.
This is a typical case of an application re-skin.

Next time I develop an application from scratch, I would like to architecture it, to accommodate a new skin without running the risk of messing the wires, the buses, the Green code, the RubyEdit modules, etc.
How would you this?

Some applications I develop are quite convoluted. Within a same .fsm or .exe, there need to be "activities" intended for various categories of users. There is a "activity menu". This simplify their work. There don't need to check thirty buttons and selectors, before starting. This goes well beyond the Preset Manager. Why? Because each highly focused control panel must remain compact and reassuring. One cannot rely on the easy solution, consisting into marking some controls as "invisible". One cannot generate the impression that one or another control is missing. Recently, I developed an application consisting into a dozen activities, defined as 5 categories, each containing 2 or 3 subdivisions. I ended up defining 8 highly focused "one page" control panels, numbered from 0 to 7. Then came the question of hiding/showing the right control panel at the right moment. I simply used a used logic comparator, only enabling the redraw of the control panel that was to be shown. To my surprise, I realized that all the other control panels were still executing. Now I realize I should have anticipated such behavior. Albeit hidden, because of not being allowed to redraw, all control panels that were designed for feeding some data on the control bus, were still doing their job. And some other (hidden) control panels were still feeding audio on some audio lines.

Now comes the question. How to implement a proper input/output blocking, sort of 'three state", "high impedance state" inside the control panels that are not allowed to execute a redraw ? There may exist a solution, easier than inserting components and modules on all inputs/outputs.

Any suggestion welcome.

[wlangfor@uoguelph.ca]

use the bus primitive it's very end all and finite.

It's not the whole answer but that's what you should start with in such a venture.

GL