Automation

Scriptability

 * LibAudacity - library allowing integration with other C code.  not a pre-requisite for other requests (6 votes )
 * Control Audacity from  (7 votes )
 * Control Audacity from Python (7 votes )
 * When Audacity is being controlled from the command line, let the user specify the current working directory for saving and exporting, not have to use the last remembered one (4 votes )
 * A user made a working patch against 1.2.x to provide this when exporting WAV files - see.
 * User-defined composite operations (scripts) bound to a button (2 votes )
 * Ability to save currently applied filters (those appeared in Undo/Redo) as an editable (probably Nyquist) script. (2 votes )
 * Control Audacity from Visual Basic (2 votes )
 * Control Audacity from TCL/TK (1 vote )
 * Control Audacity from tcp or unix socket - could enable all of the above easily (1 vote )
 * Having a tiny "telnet server like" portion aboard would allow interaction (for automation, triggers, etc...). Existing programming languages support tcp access,... shell-scripting can interact too etc. Liselorev
 * Nyquist debugger within Audacity (1 vote )

Plug-in Support

 * Allow plug-ins to replace any/all of Audacity and expose all of Audacity to plugins for manipulation. Will allow plug-in packages for specialized applications (video-editing, CD ripping, CDDA support, for example) (1 vote )
 * Equals Mezzo ?

Dcop support
It would be great if Audacity could support, which is "a light-weight interprocess and software componentry communication system. The main point of this system is to allow applications to interoperate, and to share complex tasks. Essentially, DCOP is a ‘remote control’ system, which allows an application or a script to enlist the help of other applications."

Ideally, using dcop all of Audacity's functions could be controlled from the command line or through a shell script. Here's a sample shell script to illustrate something that should be easy to do if all of Audacity's functions were available through dcop:

for file in *.mp3 do   dcop audacity import foo.mp3 dcop audacity select 00:00:00 00:00:05 dcop audacity cut dcop audacity export foo.mp3 dcop audacity close done

That script would delete the first five seconds of every mp3 file in the current directory.

Of course, a full-featured dcop interface could accomplish something much more complicated, things that would be difficult or impossible to do using chains, and for which plugins would not really be appropriate (such as operations on multiple files, and incorporating data not already in audacity). A dcop interface would also make integrating audacity with other applications (such as Amarok, for example) very easy. Also consider D-Bus, the successor to dcop.


 * Note: Audacity scripting support may evolve into D-Bus in time. See the developer mailing list for details.

Use of Droplets

 * Incorporate the ability to save export options as droplets, streamlining file conversion and compression to drag-and-drop speed.
 * Case: When frequently dealing with converting multiple wav files to mp3.  Taking those files and dragging them to a droplet would speed up efficiency and productivity.


 * Incorporate the ability to save effect settings as droplets, streamlining the application of effects to files to drag-and-drop speed.


 * (Note: The above two requests were inspired by the use of droplets in Apple's Compressor to automate the compression of audio/video files).