Re: big picture stuff (was re: widget)

[David O'Toole]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2001, Danny P. wrote:
> I was wondering if other people had the same problem as me with buzz. I
> often find buzz's GUI controls and tracking-like editor for effects to be
> extremely restrictive.

Can you be more specific? It would be helpful if people would talk more
about specific problems with it, since then we can work out solutions.

One improvement I am going to make is "automations" like I've seen in some
Windows trackers and in pro audio software---where you can click on a
parameter and open up a window where you draw a curve or line segments to
"script" the behavior of that parameter over a period of time. GTK+
contains tools that make this almost trivial... I checked into this early
on and it will be simple to edit envelopes as well as track automations in
this way. I've seen this requested a lot, so I'm glad it will be doable in
the short term.

Another (more long-term) improvement is allowing multiple kinds of
sequencers.

> If there were areas in the app to provide
> scripting-like functionality (like a text editor to write a python script to
> control an effect depending on timing or other events), that would seriously
> rock!

> timing/control functions to python by swigging the c code (which
> allows it to access the c library as if it were a native python
> module). You could then embed python into octal and be able to script
> triggers and other things like that.

It wouldn't be nearly as simple as this makes it sound. OX_API is the only
standardized part of this, but you'd need more than just plain OXAPI to do
what you are talking about (editing things, doing scripting, working with
Octal's user interface.) I also would have to check into "swig" to see if
it would work with this. It might be something that has to be done down
the road, as we are not likely to get a stable "scripting API" at this
point. But it sounds like an interesting idea and I will keep it in mind.

-- 
@@@ david o'toole
@@@ address@hidden
@@@ www.gnu.org/software/octal