Re: big picture stuff (was re: widget)

[David O'Toole]

BTW Mitkin, your mailer doesn't seem to be doing line breaks properly...
your paragraphs are all one big line each.

> I dont know why you think this would be helpfull.  I have never seen a
> Buzz machine with too many paramaters.  Even if the pattern view is

Some of the synths have a lot (multiply by number of tracks.) However I
think the widget choices (and eventually that layout extension we
discussed on this list) will make the problem go away. The real problem
wasn't size of the control boxes, it was that Buzz drew only sliders that
all looked identical (and had veeeery tiny handles! :-)) If the widgets
are broken up visually (both with outlines around each track's controls
and by using different widget types) then I don't think it'll be an issue.

> convenient and easy.  Collapsable frames would just clutter it up with
> little collapse buttons and expand buttons.  I have no problems
> scrolling left and right to get to other columns in the pattern editor
> either.  Its easier to scroll left and right than it is to grab the
> mouse and click "collapse" and "restore" buttons.

Oh. This was only for the GUI control boxes, not for the pattern editor.
Yeah, having widgets in the pattern editor would kind of suck :-)

>You can control all of the paramaters of the machine from within the
>pattern editor, which makes a lot more sense than using another scripting
>language to control these paramaters.  You can do sweeps, fades, etc.
>just by knowing what paramaters you want to control and interpolating
>between values or just putting in the values manually.  You have a lot
>more control than could be gained easily through Python or any other
>scripting language.  If you want to trigger something at a specific

I tend to agree---adding interface tools to do better parameter scripting
(fades etc) will reach a wider audience, and also will be saveable with
the song. Now I would like to improve on Buzz's basic "interpolate" hotkey
by also allowing those graphical automations I mentioned, but the code is
basically already written because GTK+ has a widget to do it already :-).


> A lot of people have problem's with Buzz's interface, but after spending a 
> lot of time with Buzz
> I've realized that its GUI makes a lot of sense.  Almost every aspect of
> it is extremely well thought out and I have a hard time thinking of a
> way to design it that would be more efficient.

It is a very efficient way of working, I've found even for live sets.
Almost everything happens from the keyboard. What I want to do is fix
the problems it did have, without losing where it was successful.
In other words, I want to allow the same style of working while still
being a little experimental (the piano-roll editor I mentioned.)

Also, I make code backups offsite every week, so the source is not gonna
be lost like that other project :-)



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