Re: [yoshimi-user] MIDI learn/ RMB dial assign and mouse-over keyboard fine tune

  • From: allcoms <allcoms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: cal <cal@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 11:56:45 +0100

Hi Cal!

Great to get a positive sounding response on these two badly needed
features I requested- I've got my fingers and toes crossed that you'll
be able to implement them.

In a vague sort of way, I think the prospects of the Ardour + yoshimi
relationship
were behind the attempts to improve the midi latency. Rosegarden is truly
wonderful,
but for a while I've had a vague feeling that a more intimate pairing with
Ardour
might facilitate good things.

RG remains the only powerful and stable MIDI editor we have for the
moment (I'm sorry but Muse really just doesn't cut it for me) but it
falls down badly with its current wonky and limited implementation of
MIDI controller automation and qtractor still has no automation
support. Ardour 3, thankfully, does MIDI automation in a usable and
fully featured way and looks to be well on its way to revolutionising
the world of free (Linux) electronic music software as a result.


The real, painful shortcoming of zyn for me was its inability for you
to be able to right-click on any dial or slider and then enter a
controller value or click a 'MIDI learn/ detect' button. If this one
feature alone could be implemented, yoshimi would instantly become
massively more powerful and useful.

A real nice idea, and I will give it some thought. Would you care to expand
on how
'MIDI learn/ detect' should/might behave?

This is best demonstrated by compiling/ running phasex and checking
out its 'Update MIDI controller' dialogue that you get when you
right-click on the label of one of the pots. However, I think having
to click the label is slightly confusing so if this was added to
yoshimi I'd much prefer if such a window popped up when you were to
right-click on the actual dial/ slider.


The second problem that should be easy to implement/fix is was zyns
lack of a way of precisely adjusting dials/sliders without the use of
a mouse. What you should be able to do is mouse-over the dial/slider
you wish to adjust and then be able to use the arrow keys to precisely
fine tune that value or type a new one.

Totally agree, and again I can only promise to think about it, maybe even
play about with
it some time soon. I've said a few times that I really don't enjoy gui work,
and tend to
avoid it wherever possible (until things really irritate me). Definitely
worth some
thought & experimentation though.

This surely wouldn't actually require you to redesign or change the
visual make-up of the GUI at all, just tweak the code that lies
behind, same goes for adding the MIDI controller assigns.


Third and final is the GUI. The current one could do with a facelift.
I like fltk and it would be nice if fltk was used again but the GUI
should ideally be usable on an average netbook (1024x600ish) display
and also have a mode for hi-res, large desktop studio displays. QT4
would be the obvious other choice of toolkit for a new GUI and then we
might see yoshimi (and qtractor) for Haiku too!

Ah yes, it simply screams for a nice Qt gui, and I've certainly thought about
what it
would take. And what it would take is a quite a massive effort. At surface
level,
you think "yeah, wouldn't be all that hard", but then when you start looking
at the
number and complexity of screens involved at the lower levels of instrument
and effects
management, it's definitely a _huge_ task, way beyond my capabilities (and
ambitions).

On the netbook display issue - could you clarify what you see as the current
limitations?

I realised that this was no small undertaking and reeked of a
pie-in-the-sky request. Zyn just has too many large windows to be
usable on a netbook display. phasex has a notebook view which spreads
all its controls out across two tabs, both which just about fit a
standard netbook display.

phasex had seemed to die a while back but then had a spurt of activity
a few months back but now it looks like its got abandoned again just
before its 0.12 release, which is real shame.

Have a good weekend list- I'm off to play with the latest A3 svn again

Dan


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