[yoshimi] Re: Top Line reorganisation
- From: Victor <victor@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: yoshimi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2015 01:35:11 +0100
Le 01 Nov 2015, Will Godfrey <willgodfrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> a écrit
:
On Sun, 01 Nov 2015 09:53:21 +0100
Kristian Amlie <kristian@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 01. nov. 2015 01:32, Will Godfrey wrote:
> OK, can people have a look at the current master please.
>
> The button changes are pretty obvious, but also run along the
> tabs along the top.
>
> Do they make sense? Are the names OK?
>
> Even if you absolutely hate it please do say so. Nothing is
> fixed in stone.
>
> Should we make 'Show' generic, and include the preset paths,
> and scales window?
Very minor: Maybe rename 'Show' to 'View', and make it the
second menu after 'Yoshimi'. No strong reason, it just seems
more "standard", take a look at both Firefox and LibreOffice,
for example (it's the third menu there, but we are missing the
'Edit' menu).
Doh! I spent ages trying to think of a better word than
'show'. I'll change that to 'view' on the next commit. As for
position on the menu bar, I've no strong feelings but don't want
to move things around more than necessary.
The problem with either "show" or "view" is that many other things
can be "shown" in just the same way but are not in that menu. The
mixer panel or the virtual kbd for example… and the scales menu
has its own "show scale settings".
I find it also confusing to have at the same time an "Instrument"
menu and an "Instruments…" submenu under "Show".
A solution for both things would be to group everything related to
instrument choosing under the same menu. Something like :
Instruments
* Load
* Save
* Clear
--- [some visual separator]
* Banks
* Root paths
However, I seldom use the menu to display the
instruments/banks/root paths. I change instruments a lot and I
prefer to click on the name of the current instrument : it opens
the window in just one click (vs 2 for the menu). It's also a
bigger target for the mouse. I go that way even if I want to
change the bank : for me, it feels more direct to open the
instruments list and choose the bank from the dropdown list,
because I can see all the bank names in the same window (it's the
same number of clicks in the end though).
Not to say these things should not be replicated in a menu.
Talking about direct access, I wonder whether a button is really
needed for "Reports". Couldn’t Reports be placed under the
"Yoshimi" menu? That way, the position of the current button could
be used for something else that people want to access
directly. (For me it would be the scale settings, but that's
probably just me!)
More generally, maybe we should think about having a 'File'
menu like so many others. It makes sense to group all the
load/save entries there, perhaps with some separators for
logical grouping. I'm just thinking it makes sense, since four
of the six menus have almost nothing but load/save. Just a
suggestion.
This is a difficult one. We used to have a 'file' menu, but Cal
broke it up because it was far too long and contained lots of
quite unrelated items. On a personal level I've been having
similar issues with the 'instrument' menu, and forever hitting
the wrong item when working fast and inspired - it does happen
sometimes :)
If load/save/clear are to remain split in different menus, it
might be good to name/organize them in the same way in each
menu. Currently we have:
Instruments -> load / save / clear
Patch sets -> recent / load / save
Scales -> load scale settings… / save scale settings… / show
scale settings…
State -> load / save
Is it difficult to add "recent" and "clear" (or "reset") to all
the menus ?
"Recent" would display for instruments, scales and states the same
kind of chooser it currently displays for patch sets.
"Clear" in the Scales menu would have the same effect as unticking
"enable microtonal". In the State menu, it would have the same
effect as Reset (clear all dynamic parameters). And a Clear button
would be reinstantiated in the Patch sets menu, with the same
effect.
Then we'd have
recent / load / save / clear
in systematic order in all menus dealing with things which can be
loaded and saved: Instruments, Patch sets, Scales, States.
Just my 2cts of course…
I really would like a lot more opinions on this. We're not very
representative > at the moment :o
@Chris Unfortunately Yoshimi has never managed the Alt{key}
entries on the menu bar, but does once in any of the menus. Old
Zyn got it wrong too in exactly the same way. Presumably it's
some kind of keyboard focus issue. If anyone wants to look at
it, I'd be very grateful.
Yoshimi source code is available from either:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/yoshimi
Or:
https://github.com/Yoshimi/yoshimi
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