Hi, your message with the pictures was too big, although the team members can read it. Try posting any pictures on a free service like dropbox.com and then posting links to them here instead of the actual pictures.
My response to your proposal was poorly worded. I apologize. It was a bad way to respond. Let us talk constructively. Look at Andrew's mixer change pictures. They were posted a few emails ago. They fill up some of that 'bloated, balloon shaped' space in the mixer strips with new markings and control redesign. I noticed most of your pictures show the MusE Ardour style sheet active. Also a few pictures are from really old MusE without gradients. The MusE style sheets aren't perfect and are not heavily developed. They may make some controls look odd, or too big. It might not be fair to judge MusE based on one, or any, of those stylesheets. As I say below, a nice sheet can require a lot of coding changes. About the picture showing the different track label font points (9pt and 10pt): Yes. Auto font sizing, with line breaks (multiple lines), to accommodate long track names. See the MusE Appearance Settings, in the fonts section, last font, there are tooltips that describe what each font does. It lets you set all font sizes, and the maximum mixer strip label font size. Too small minimum mixer strip label font size? OK. My bad: A programming oversight, I can add a Minimum Size adjustment. But then, using the same large font size all the time, how do we display long track names in the mixer strips? With ellipses (...)? That won't work with multiple track names like: "Lead guitar 3 no slide take 2" "Lead guitar 4 no slide take 3" Especially without automatic line breaks (no multiple lines). So that is why I made auto font sizing. To squeeze in as much as possible. I can try to add the ellipses (...) and minimum size adjustment if you like. A programmer will say: "I can save 10 more vertical pixels by making the mixer strip labels coloured instead of placing a coloured bar on top." Regarding the text colour's contrast with the label background colour: The label background colours never go darker than a certain amount. But if they did, a simple fix can add inverted the text colour depending on label background colour. Note: Here I am speaking of 'standard' MusE without a style sheet applied. I can't speak for the style sheets we do have, but if there's a problem maybe it should be worked out. About the overall colours: OK, black background is nice. I was saying, just put a bit more colour in the controls and readouts. It helps distinguish them from each other. Not so monochromatic. About the proposal for constant 11pt font everywhere: By fixing it to one font size, doesn't that contradict the goal of larger font sizes? 'Larger' is relative. Some users may want 12pt and some 14pt. Our adjustable font sizes allow this. So my point about the horizontal sliders was we are trying to fit a certain range which may be huge into a short bar. Versus using knobs (which all real mixers use). I mentioned some differences and technical issues with both techniques. Each has strengths and weaknesses. I did offer to help with the actual slider controls. Tell me which DAWs you are thinking of with horizontal sliders. About the icons versus letters: Quote: "Understand only record button which can be replaced R letter, but mute and solo have letters in almost all DAWs I ever tried. Why Muse is so different?" I would only half-jokingly ask "Why aren't other DAWs like MusE?" Yes, MusE is different. I did not design the icon buttons in MusE. But I believe that when you see the letters R M S, it takes the brain a moment to remember and associate these letters with the words that mean what they actually do. But an icon can immediately SHOW what it does. Soon you learn to quickly recognize an icon for what it does, not what letter means a word, meaning what it does. The icon has a very unique character that is easy to remember. Help tool-tips are provided for many buttons, to reinforce the effect. For example, once you see the "Solo" tool-tip pop up, you associate that with the solo icon. Even on other DAWs I have used, it still takes me a moment to remember what R M S actually means. Not to be too sarcastic, but I thought we moved away from letters in the text-mode DOS days. Millions in GUI research spent on icons so that we could go back to letters... Our icons can be changed. We can make a more meaningful solo icon. The icons could optionally even be letters. Concerning the part of your strips that say "No Input" and "Master" just below the Pre button: MusE uses a routing system for inputs/outputs to/from a track. I am unsure from the pictures how these drop down boxes would work, but if they are standard drop-down controls, one cannot simply display these routes in the drop-down box and its label. (This is why we have the "In Routes" and "Out Routes" buttons, which pop up a router. ) But if instead these boxes pop up the router menu just like our buttons do now, that's better but I am just wondering what would be displayed in the boxes' label when a route is connected: Does the text change from "No Input" to something like "Input" ? (I am presently working on an advanced router in MusE to either complement or replace the pop up routing menus.) Finally, many people come to a project and say: "I don't like the GUI design. Here is my design." "I am not a programmer, someone needs to make this." This can create challenges. GUI changes need to also make sense from a programming view point. Style sheets can sometimes help here. Non-programmers can contribute different looks. Although if I understand correctly, not complete 'wholesale' changes - that requires coding support,which can be a lot of coding changes for MusE. Several, maybe more, of the GUI controls still need to be tweaked to support style sheets fully. The Open Octave team did that, in their MusE branch/fork. Yes, MusE could use a makeover. No doubt there. It can be done with only style sheet changes, programming changes, or both. Sincerely, Tim. The MusE team. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Lmuse-developer mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/lmuse-developer
