Re: [Traverso-devel] Jmb GUI concept: how to proceed

[Remon Sijrier]

Hi,

Some more comments on the subject :-)

> I'v been testing traverso thoroughly for the last couple of days, and I've
> become a big fan of the Jmb GUI concept. It's just so relaxing not always
> having to target pinhead-sized controls with the cursor, and the initially
> steep learning curve is soon rewarded with an extraordinarily efficient
> work flow.

I realized the website's front page text (also the one on Savannah) isn't 
really up to what Traverso is about.
The above text is just what it is all about!

If anyone has a burst of inspiration to merge this into a nice front page 
text?

> <<r>> to reset, or whatever makes sense, and of course <return> to accept
> and <esc> to reject. The widget should be placed under the mouse cursor and
> should not be allowed to go out of focus.
<snip>
> widget under the mouse cursor, and letting the left mouse button accept (=
> <return>) and right mouse button reject (= <esc>) the settings, the work

Right now <esc> is closing a window/dialog, and it seems logical the stuff you 
did in that windows/dialog won't go away by closing it!
Actually, all editing actions you do right now, and with advanced "jmb enabled 
dialogs" it's the same, the editing will be applied directly!
(And if implemented correctly, can be undone too)

(It makes sense to be able to "discard" changes made after the dialog was 
opened, this would be implemented as "going back into history until the time 
the dialog was opened"
This of course means that _any_ action which can be performed in the dialog 
must be undoable!)

Using mouse buttons to accept or reject your editing actions is well, your 
editing actions are done directly, no need to "accept" the change of Gain or 
Shape.

A much nicer user for mouse buttons I have in mind is this:
Right now the "sensitiveness" of the mouse movement in hold actions is fixed.
Fine adjustments, as the author of another daw pointed out, are hard to 
accomplish this way. (he adviced using a hardware based slider with servo's 
controlled by midi, but that was actually out of the scope of the discussion 
heh)
Either you have to move the mouse over a long distance to adjust the Gain, or 
you need a laser mouse and very fine grained muscle control to do micro 
adjustments with the mouse.

So I thought, what about using the left  (or right, just pick the one which 
seems to work best) mouse button to toggle mouse movement sensitiveness!
It's certainly not a new concept, and some mice have this as a seperate button 
and use a hardware based implementation.

Historically, the mouse buttons were banned from use in JMB enabled 
applications.
However, I think they can be of great use, and are certainly not mutual 
exclusive with the JMB concept!

With little code added to the Command class, this can be made possible, and if 
needed, per Object type.
For example the Gain class is used by Song, Track, AudioClip.
But if you want different sensitiveness adjustments for these objects, it's 
not to hard to add these in a Settings file, and make it configurable in the 
Settings View of Traverso!

Of course, it's up for discussion, let me know please what you think of this 
idea (just 'invented' it one week ago heh)

Remon