[Bluemusic-users] New ideas

[t g. <tg...@gm...>]

Now that I've actually used blue, I must say I am *VERY* impressed
with the changes I have missed over the past year.  Great work Steven.
 I'm coming up with more ideas that I will send your way.  Hopefully
it's nothing you've heard before :)

btw, this is all from blue 0.98.3.  I can't wait to try out the new
version.  Hopefully I have time tonight.

render end time:  I see you can set this by right clicking on the
timeline.  I think this deserves a text box entry similar to the
render start time.

postroll time:  A preset length to continue render after the last
event.  This is useful for allowing global instrument effects like
reverb and delay to tail off gracefully when using <TOTAL_DUR>.  I
currently accomplish the same thing using a score object with i0 to be
a placeholder.

instrument library groups:  It would be great to categorize instrument
libraries similar to the custom code in the repository editor.=20
Looking at the XML for instrument library, I would expect the
functionality, but when I tried, it only loaded the first category,
and overwrote the file deleting the second.  My guess is that blue
only loads the first one, then stops.

time labels:  Possibility to edit the font color used in the timeline
would be nice.  I changed the start script to use the metal look and
feel, and I can barely see the time labels.

object properties:  I think this is more of a minor bug.  If I change
the duration of an object in it's properties dialog, the end time
doesn't update until I close the dialog and reopen it.

tab hotkeys:  I like the tab hotkeys (alt+#), what do you think about
adding arrow support as well (for example alt+left to move a tab to
the left).

zoom hotkeys:  Something to make it easier / faster to zoom in.  Would
need both horiz and vert keys.

line objects:  This is one of my favorite new features, and plan to
use it extensively.  I wouldn't mind being able to select color for
lines (for grouping certain ones together visually).  If it interests
you, you could probably reuse the color selector on objects in the
timeline too.  How about possibly even using some of the other
linear/exponential segment routines in line objects?  Could this same
concept be applied to generating "normal" global tables?

close / accept / cancel on dialogs:  Some dialog windows (like object
properties) have no button to accept changes.  I don't have a close
button on my window manager, so I always end up reverting to a hotkey
to close the window.  If no button is present, how about escape as a
key to close or cancel?

Let me know what you think.  Blue is looking great!

  -Kevin