[Traverso-devel] Jmb GUI concept: how to proceed

[Nicola Döbelin]

Hello everybody,

I'v been testing traverso thoroughly for the last couple of days, and I've 
become a big fan of the Jmb GUI concept. It's just so relaxing not always 
having to target pinhead-sized controls with the cursor, and the initially 
steep learning curve is soon rewarded with an extraordinarily efficient work 
flow.

While testing and discussing future strategies with Remon, I've also racked my 
brains about how to keep the number of hotkeys at a reasonable level. This will 
become even more important as new features are added in near future. As a 
result of my brain storming I would like to present one possible solution, 
which would address the problem in a user friendly way, IMO.

The most important thing with the Jmb concept is to keep it consistent and 
intuitive, which may sound odd for such an innovative concept which is by 
definition not intuitive at all to new users. But the key is, once the user has 
learned that [d] means 'drag', this should apply to every single situation 
where there is something to drag, be it audio clips, points on the gain curve, 
eq bands, cross fades, and whatever there may come in future. The same applies 
for gain; whenever there is a possibility to adjust gain, it should be done by 
[g].

With growing feature set, encapsulation will be required. This could be reached 
by providing custom widgets for certain actions. Let me explain this a bit 
better: Audio clips can have fades at the beginning and end. A fade-in is 
therefore a feature of a clip, and it's presence (i.e. the length) is 
controlled by [fg] while moving the mouse over the clip. The fade itself can 
have (an 'unlimited' number of) features as well, such as the shape of the 
curve (linear, S-type, exp/log-type) and the amount of bending. Moving the 
mouse over the fade region should provide an 'edit' function (<e>), which opens 
a widget to change all parameters of the fade using the well-known keys: [d] to 
drag control points, <m> to switch modes, <<r>> to reset, or whatever makes 
sense, and of course <return> to accept and <esc> to reject. The widget should 
be placed under the mouse cursor and should not be allowed to go out of focus.

This concept could be extended to every object that has more than just one 
basic parameter, such as effect plugins, the master section, tracks (giving 
access to routing and effect plugins) etc. The editing widgets should be 
carefully designed to be consistent with the Jmb concept. By opening the widget 
under the mouse cursor, and letting the left mouse button accept (= <return>) 
and right mouse button reject (= <esc>) the settings, the work flow will not be 
interrupted and should feel similar to the context menu opened with <q>.

In my opinion this concept would allow to add much more features without 
running out of hotkeys, and by recycling the well-known keys the work flow 
would be consistent and intuitive. The user will know that pressing <e> on an 
object will open a dialog which allows him to change parameters the 'obvious' 
way.

Remon, I think we could implement such a dialog for the fade regions in 
relatively short time, to see how it feels in real life.

The subject is open for discussion ;-)

regards
Nic

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