Re: AW: AW: [Jsynthlib-devel] Okay... so why can't I edit a patch with this?

[Joe E. <jo...@em...>]

Joachim Backhaus wrote:

>By the way: It would be helpful if you don't ask questions
>first and then explain your real intention a few mails
>afterwards. It would speed up the process if you come
>in with your intention first. ;)
>  
>
Point taken.

However, there are two reasons why I try to ask questions first.

The first reason is because I'm not familiar enough with it to know if 
it even *does* certain things or why. So I ask.... "Is this the way my 
Device is supposed to interact with JSL?", or "Why do Driver classes 
have to deal with the leading/trailing F0/F7 at all?". Granted, I 
haven't asked those exact questions, but that's sometimes the spirit in 
which I'm asking.

The second reason I ask them is that I sometimes have serious doubts 
about some piece of JSL structure. I know how *I* would do it if I were 
coding that piece from scratch, but the way that it *is* coded might be 
just as (if not more) flexible or it might be *necessary* for a certain 
task that JSL needs to do. So, rather than come right out and proclaim a 
certain portion of the code to be "screwed up", I think that the least I 
can do is to give other developers a chance to explain the reason the 
code needed to be or should be the way that it is.

It's only when they don't provide me with a convicing argument when I 
suggest an alternative. :)

>And it would at least be very helpful for me and I hope also
>for others if you can draw an image or something like that
>with your GUI suggestions for improvement and post it here.
>  
>
Well, you can look at 
http://www.midiquestxl.com/images/MQ9/MQ9.1280x1024.jpg and kinda see 
how the synths are all arranged in one window and then all of the things 
you can mess with on each of those items is shown grouped with that synth.

Also, I'm not a very good artist, so the drawings wouldn't be very exciting.

Lastly, I wasn't (and still am not) certain that there's even a 
readiness to discuss a different interface.

>OK, I must admit that I at least didn't really understand
>what you really want to improve on the JSynthLib GUI.
>  
>
I just think that a lot of it is unintuitive. There are a lot of windows 
that the user sees that they don't need to.... there are some that they 
should see but don't, and the overall UI interaction, although I agree 
that it can be learned, is not very natural.

Here, look at MidiQuest again: 
http://www.squest.com/Windows/Instruments/nanopno/Patch.GIF

Now, don't worry about the fact that it's more pretty. Notice the 
"flow". You open your Alesis NanoPiano and you get to see all of the 
categories you can adjust on it. If you select a bank, then... to the 
right, you see the patch layout for that bank. If you select a patch 
within the bank, again...to the right, you see the editor for the patch.

Look at this one: http://www.squest.com/Windows/Instruments/vfx/Preset.GIF

Again, you open that device and you see all of the things you can do to 
that device.... and the flow is always from the left, where it's more 
general, to the right where it's more specific and detailed. The nice 
thing about it is that there are already several things that the user 
already does that behave this way. The Windows Explorer looks like this 
sometimes, with folders on the left and the contents of the folder on 
the right.

Look at http://www.squest.com/Windows/Instruments/specfilt/Patch.GIF   
...and then tell me that you'd actually have to read the *manual* to 
know how to operate it.

In that light, I think it's safe to say that anybody who currently 
chooses to use JSL over something like MidiQuest is probably because 
it's free. And the primary alure of one's product being the fact that 
you're giving it away isn't exactly a flattering testament.

- Joe