[Rosegarden-devel] tablature progress

[Michelle D. <ztr...@ad...>]

I should have something to present soon. For a variety of reasons, I bailed 
out on the "std form" tablature and have been working with the "compact 
form." In the InstrumentParameterBox, I added a combo box to select staff 
type and a dialog to edit the tuning (number of strings, open position pitch, 
and number of frets). All Segments on the track are displayed using the given 
staff type (StdStaff or TabStaff). Each track (or Instrument as it stands 
now) gets its own staff type and tuning. They all seem to display together 
happily in NotationView.

I created TabEventEditDialog, which is basically a SimpleEventEditDialog (the 
thing that pops up when an event in a staff is double clicked) with 
additional fields for tablature string and fret inputs.

My two current main obstacles: 1) It seemed logical to attach the tuning to 
Instrument, but this will cause RG to crash if its run without the sequencer. 
Where else can I put it? Is Track a reasonable place?

2) When I edit a TabStaff event with TabEventEditDialog, the pitch, string, 
and fret data change just fine, but the staff display doesn't update 
properly. Fret numbers are properly modified, but there's no vertical 
movement (corresponding to changing a string in the dialog). Bringing up the 
dialog again shows the data correctly. It's just not being redrawn properly. 
I suppose this is a question for Chris. Where should I be looking for the 
culprit? Somewhere, and old vertical position isn't being updated in 
layout/display.

A third thing I'm working on is where the automatic generation of tab data 
should go. I stuck it in the staff initialization for simplicity, but that's 
not a very good place. I'm thinking of putting it in with staff type / tuning 
selection. Whenever the tuning changes, the tablature gets regenerated.

Once these three things are taken care of, a minimally functional tablature 
should be available (with essentially no extra hassles for those who don't 
want to use it).


Thinking ahead, the next step is to come up with some sort of tablature 
insertion mode. Bringing up a dialog for each note is more than a little 
tedious. Also, I was thinking about how to display tablature effects. I'll 
probably start out with something simple, like vibrato. Most should be 
similar in implementation to existing notational effects. Bends will likely 
be the most difficult.