Hi! I have been happily using Ardour as a hobbyist since version 5. At the same time I also started learning Pure Data. I was wondering how difficult it would be to implement a feature similar to "The Grid" from Bitwig. I’m not sure whether this could be done as a simple plugin, or if it would require much deeper integration with Ardour.

Most likely we would do a closer-than-normal integration of Cardinal ....

https://cardinal.kx.studio/

You can already load Cardinal as a plugin and get the full scope of is power(s) (or VCV Rack if you paid for the "pro" version). You just don't get the GUI "integrated" into Ardour, and its tied to a specific track.

We might do this via I/O plugins (an existing Ardour feature), which would make the inputs & outputs of Cardinal be just like your hardware. Lots of details to that sort of design, however.

There is also PlugData which could theoretically be handled in a similar way.

What we will not try to do is to implement Yet Another Software Modular Environment ourselves. Cardinal/Rack (or even PD) are approximately infinitely better than anything we could or would do.