Disclaimer
These documents will be a little rough for a while. Both of us have day jobs (or school), so don't expect that many updates. Everything will be happening real soon now.
Executive Summary
Light 9 is a new approach to what I'll call "event based systems." The primary example of this is theater lighting, which is what Light 9 is being built for. However, it has other applications, as drewp intends to use it to control a "super-toilet":http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~harlan/projects/ToiletPaper.html. Many of the node ideas are borrowed from Max by Cycling '74. OldStyleLighting lacks modularity: When you change part of one cue, you need to propagate those changes to all cues. Additionally, you are not allowed to define decent levels of abstraction in most of the systems. In Light 9, everything is a node. Cues, dimmers, lights, groups, and submasters are all nodes. Even other components such as the GUI (BusyBox) or simulator (OpenGLSimulator?) are also made up of nodes.
Goals
o Produce a working lighting system by this summer.
o Have something to submit to the next "Python":http://www.python.org conference.
Status
Light 9's design has been under discussion for several months and we recently started coding. "Sourceforge":http://sf.net was mostly chosen for CVS access, but also to share this with the community.