Re: [softwerk-dev] windowsize

[Paul Barton-D. <pb...@op...>]

>Perfect.  I came up with 1000, 750. 

Sounds good. I'll paste them in.

>This program is so much fun. 

My feelings too. I'm glad I'm not alone. i sometimes wish softwerk had
the notion of a "song", so that i could group patterns together, but
hey, i'm a life-long fan of steve reich and one name for softwerk was
originally "reich-in-a-box".

>Is there a way to change the tempo per step, rather than globally? 

Yep. Though in my experience, it get very complex. But first, do you
really mean "per step" or "per sequence" ? For per-sequence, change
the gate-time for that sequence. (remember to generally keep note-time
below gate time unless you have a MIDI device with unlimited polyphony:)

OK, for the more complex case of per-step. This idea comes from
directly from the doepfer sequencers. Set up a row in "Gate Time" mode
(i.e. instead of "noteOn"). Assign it to control the row you want to
have per-step variation. Adjust the gate times for each step. Here's
the critical part (and i've never tested this with the Gtk-- version
of softwerk) - also set the gate time row to control itself. if you
don't do this, then the controlled row and the controlling row are not
in sync, and the result is effectively random gate times in the
controlled row.

>Also, I am having trouble figuring out just how to move the loop points.
>Clicking on the blue squares with my mouse buttons seems to work, but in
>a totally unpredictable manner. 

Yes, this whole thing sucks and I have not been able to figure out a
good UI design for it. The problem is that only the area that
eventually turns blue is actually sensitive to button presses. I
didn't want a whole bunch of "passive-i-am-NOT-the-endpoint"
markers. If you aim the cursor hotspot (typically a few pixels back
from the tip of the arrow cursor) right in the middle of where the
blue square will end up, it will always work.

you may not know that: right button: sets begin point, left button
sets end point. at one time, i used arrows for this, but i could find
no way to hide them properly in GTK. 

i will graciously accept any UI design suggestions for this.

Also, i went to bed last night thinking "gack! this version still has
the TERRIBLE UI design for adjusting the step values (mouse
motion)". Trust me, this will get better. The original XForms version
had a separate button to do this - click on the value display toggled
the step on and off, and clicks on the adjuster button adjusted the
value. but this added to much screen real estate, so i tried various
approaches to controlling step on/off status and step value from the
same visual element. the current one seemed inspired at one time, but
in real life, as you may have discovered, its horrible.

One general UI design note: in many of my applications, I try to use
the mouse as a pair of buttons that operate in opposite directions
when clicked on the same control element in the GUI. So for example,
the gate time and note time displays are actually "buttons" - right
mouse button decreases the value, left mouse button
increases. Additionally, I set up various modifiers to change the size
of the button-driven increment, so that you can get quickly from one
place to another with the value range. I find this a very powerful UI
control paradigm, but its not common in other software, so I thought I
would try to point it out explicitly here.

--p