Hmmmm. Will, I'm glad you're thinking about the vocabulary, it has been a
problem for me. Here's some thought. It will need improvement, because
Yoshimi is big enough that I cannot use most of its capability!, and it is
possible that what we really need to do is take some or all of my words and
use responses to my below to start a Lexicon for the docs wiki. Anyhow,
here's what I have in my head:
1. Patch. I think of a "patch" as one of the saved configuration-entities
in Yoshimi which has a name (not just a filename) set and visible within
Yoshimi, and which can admit of a position in a bank. Yoshimi itself calls
this an "Instrument" at this time, and saves it in an .xiz file. I
personally cannot use the term "instrument" for this in my thinking, but
then again my first synth experience was on a 1978 MiniMoog whose manual I
had almost memorized once :-)
2. Patchset. I haven't used this word yet I don't think, but if I did, I
would tend to think of it as the same as a saved-state of Yoshimi. Yoshimi
calls this "Parameters", and saves it in an .xmz file. I do like
"patchset" for this, it seems to work well for me. However, there is
another item worth discussing with it:
3. Instance. Here is a place I get confused. Am I correct that one
parameter-set (patchset) cannot include more than one instance? Even
regardless of the answer, perhaps we might want to invent something like an
instance-set, defined as a collection of one or more named patchsets, to
handle multi-instance situations, and make overall setup easier to handle?
The concept of a patchset-name would also have to be invented (right now
it's filenames only), but we could simply say that the patchset-name is the
same as the instance-ID and be done with it. Also, we might want a
command-line method by which we can start up multiple instances by name,
calling multiple .xmz files :-)
Not sure I would open an instrument's edit window automatically (by default
anyhow), sounds a bit dangerous :-)
J.E.B.
On Sun, Sep 6, 2015 at 10:50 AM, Will Godfrey <willgodfrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Can anyone think of an alternative name for 'Parameters'? It really doesn't
give any clue as to what it's about and is quite opaque to new users.
The best I can come up with is 'Patchsets', although that's not ideal. It
doesn't have to be just one word, but I think it does need to be short and
no
more than three syllables.
In the Instruments window when you *right* click on an instrument, as well
as
loading the instrument it closes the window (part of our anti-clutter
scheme).
The argument being that it has done all you needed and just gets out of the
way.
This works particularly well if you are using the mixer panel window to
enable
several parts and select the instruments. However, should it then open the
instrument's edit window, or would that again be adding clutter?
--
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.
Yoshimi source code is available from either:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/yoshimi
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