Rosegarden

On Saturday 24 November 2007, D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
> 1) Grace notes
> 2) A new magical percussion clef/staff based on key mappings
> 3) A build-a-new-composition wizard
> 4) Go document something

5) Help me port RG to Qt4 (but *not* KDE4)

That's a rather simple but long job, for which the main resource isn't 
stupendous coding skills but just time.

I'll take this opportunity to state where I stand at the moment : I'm fed up 
with Linux, and switching to OS/X.

But I don't want to quit working on RG, so, while ideally I'd be able to 
convince everyone having a hand in RG to go out and get themselves a 24" 
imac, more realistically I'll settle for stickng with Linux long enough to 
turn RG into a Qt-only app, and get it to build on OS/X (and that's already 
quite a stretch, as given the amount of free time we all have, we're looking 
at a year of work, at least).

Let me develop : a year ago I got myself a macbook, and have been using it 
since as a "spare" machine (just for mail, web browsing, watching videos, and 
handling my ipod). In the meanwhile, on my linux machine I've gone through 
two botched kubuntu upgrades (the 2nd one was last week), and silly issues 
such as a broken mouse after a kernel upgrade (twice too, the 2nd time last 
week as well). And this is on a logitech mouse from last year.

I could rant on kmail's broken imap handling which causes it to crash almost 
every day or on it's inane filtering system (done that on my blog), but the 
mouse thing really takes the cake. Get a mouse, google around to find how 
it's supported, get it work, time passes, kernel upgrade : X won't start. Fix 
xorg.conf, mouse works again, more time passes, new kernel upgrade : some 
buttons are no longer recognized.

What I can follow from KDE4 dev isn't pretty either, like them noticing that 
the whole printing system is non-functional a few weeks before a beta.

The feeling I get with OS/X compared to Linux is roughly the same one I had 
back in 2000 when I ditched Gnome and looked at KDE : a huge quality gap that 
couldn't possibly ever be filled, because the base is just too flaky.

And here I'm just tired of seeing the same setup-related questions being asked 
because the whole alsa/jack/qsynth/<the-user's-distrib> is just way beyond 
anybody's control, with no sign of things getting any better. On OS/X most 
apps are installed by being dropped into the "Application" folder, after 
which they are able to auto-upgrade. Sound works out of the box. And the 
platform has a desktop market share above 0.8%.

So I've recently discussed this in private with Chris. We agreed that an OS/X 
port would be nice, and that the easiest way to achieve it would be to turn 
RG into a Qt-only app. The transition to Qt4 being a nice opportunity.

This is all vaporware for the moment. It's not even sure we'll ever release a 
Qt4-based RG, let alone one running on OS/X. But one thing is certain : the 
machine I'm typing this on is my last Linux PC.

-- 
Guillaume.
http://telegraph-road.org

(side note : don't bother about the topic, it's just a left-over of the copy 
I've sent to Chris to check if he was ok with me mentioning our previous 
conversation on the topic)

-- 
Guillaume.
http://telegraph-road.org

On Sunday 25 November 2007, Guillaume Laurent wrote:
> 5) Help me port RG to Qt4 (but *not* KDE4)

I was afraid something like that was coming.  We use KDE features all *over* 
the place, and this sounds incredibly ugly.

OTOH, every other serious application in our niche is already cross-platform, 
and pure QT.  QT offers portability that KDE doesn't.

I'm also easy to persuade that we want to do something like Hydrogen (or 
Ardour), and impose our own look and feel that ignores user preferences, and 
just always looks like itself, no matter where it is.

We need to work around the dependencies on ALSA and JACK too, if this is to be 
viable.

It all sounds waaaaaaaaaaaaaay the hell over my head though, I have to tell 
you, but I can see advantages to going that route.  Hell, it gives me 
flexibility too if I ever decide to abandon the Linux ship like you.  Nobody 
who reads me regularly would think that I am totally happy here.

So what next, and what do we want to do with this QT4 port?  The same thing, 
or something a little different?

Is this a fork, or a port?  One problem I could see there is that you and I 
are diametrically opposed on the simplification issue.  You'd like it more 
Mac-like with three choices and one button, and that would piss me off fast.  
I see a number of problems with the organic way Rosegarden has accumulated 
features, but everything we have is useful to somebody, and can't be 
duplicated by any other feature.

-- 
D. Michael McIntyre

>
> So what next, and what do we want to do with this QT4 port?  The same thing,
> or something a little different?

Make the notation/Lilypond stuff something that could be pulled out
and integrated into the nascent Ardour MIDI support? <ducks> :-)

On Monday 26 November 2007, D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
>
> OTOH, every other serious application in our niche is already
> cross-platform, and pure QT.  QT offers portability that KDE doesn't.

Actually KDE4 is supposed to run on Windows and OS/X, but it's not an 
acceptable dependency on these platforms.

> I'm also easy to persuade that we want to do something like Hydrogen (or
> Ardour), and impose our own look and feel that ignores user preferences,
> and just always looks like itself, no matter where it is.

L&F isn't really the issue, on the contrary Qt goes to great lengths to keep 
the l&f of the platform it's running on.

> So what next, and what do we want to do with this QT4 port?  The same
> thing, or something a little different?

Same thing. Focus on the UI, get it to compile and run under Qt4, forget sound 
stuff for the time being.

> Is this a fork, or a port?

A port.

> One problem I could see there is that you and I 
> are diametrically opposed on the simplification issue.  You'd like it more
> Mac-like with three choices and one button, and that would piss me off
> fast.

No, I want to keep the UI as it is. Let's be pragmatic here. Yes, RG is too 
complicated. But :

- it's a music app, and as such it can't really be simple. Even Garage Band is 
more complex than most OS/X apps, and it doesn't do much (though it does it 
well).

- it takes a whole lot of resources to make a really simple, yet effective, 
UI. Something which we'll never have, so aside of listening to user feedback 
and a bit of common sense, there's really not much we can do in that area.

-- 
Guillaume.
http://telegraph-road.org