Re: [Audacity-devel] exporter_dialog branch

[Dominic M. <do...@mi...>]

I hope to finish vertical track resizing tonight.  It's coming along
really well; I think everyone will like it.

I'm getting the impression that it's going to take a lot of thought
and a lot of hard work to improve the Save/Export code.  It sounds
like Shane is interested in working on it, but he's not interested in
putting in the enormous effort it would take to finish this by July 1.

Can anyone think of a compromise that we could implement for 1.2.0,
and then put off the full overhaul until afterwards?

Keep in mind that a 1.2.1 release would not be out of the question.
As long as we don't break compatibility or introduce instability
problems, I'd be okay with backporting a feature like that from
the unstable devel branch to the 1.2 branch once it's finished.

Here are some compromise ideas:

1. Add some "tips" that pop up the first time you use Audacity,
    or the first time you save/export, explaining the difference
    between Project files, WAV/AIFF files, and MP3/Ogg files.

2. Make it possible to Save in the original format of the file,
    if such a format exists, but otherwise keep things much
    the way they are.

3. One of the following:

    A. Add a menu item to Export as Other... that
       brings up a dialog like Shane's (except maybe simplified
       a little so we can finish it in time).

    B. "Export as" with a submenu listing 5-6 different common
       export formats.

    C. Option in the Preferences that says "always ask me the format
       of the file when I export".  Perhaps this could be on by
       default, with a checkbox in the dialog that says "don't ask
       me again".

These ideas are simpler because they enhance the existing interface,
without trying to redesign it.  The hard part, in my opinion, is not
the coding - it's trying to come up with the simplest and most
flexible possible UI.  If we focus on adding a little convenience and
flexibility, without trying to shoot for the absolute perfect rewrite,
it will be a lot easier.

- Dominic

Shane Mueller wrote:
> I think that all the 'complexity and mire' of the different formats
> should be accessible somehow without having to change preferences, but
> agree that this can be daunting. The main concern I have about the
> filter choice control is that it is serving a totally new purpose that
> people will not be familiar with, and it may tie file extension to
> format in an unnatural way (what if I want to save my '.wav' files with
> '.pcm'?), especially on non-windows platforms.
> 
> For .wav files, you can get sample type/sample rate/stereo-mono directly
> from the project, so you shouldn't need any options for a quick save
> interface, so that should be fine.  Same goes for .aup, but it gets
> complicated with the compressed formats, I think. I don't have any
> really good ideas or strong convictions about these simple save dialogs,
> however, and so I'd be happy to leave that part to you or others who
> care about that. I'm not sure how a full-feature export dialog should be
> accessed, whether it should be its own menu or just available through
> 'Save As', but I think it is one of these questions we won't be able to
> solve until we implement it one way and we either like it or find it
> difficult.  I'd probably favor an 'Export...' submenu on the file menu,
> with suboptions 'ogg' 'mp3' 'wav' 'flac' and 'other' or something. These
> would just bring up the exporter dialog with the proper defaults. Such a
> submenu could occur under 'save' or 'save as' as well/instead.
> 
> pcm and mp3 exporters should work now in the exporter branch--I'll try
> to get .ogg implemented in the next few weeks. At that point I'll clean
> up the export dialog and we can figure out where to put it and how to
> make it available.