[PD-dev] displaying when an arg has been overridden

Julian Oliver julian at selectparks.net
Sun Jun 25 13:53:32 CEST 2006


..on Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 06:29:19PM -0400, Martin Peach wrote:
> Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> >
> >On Jun 24, 2006, at 12:44 PM, Julian Oliver wrote:
> >
> >>..on Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 02:47:18PM -0400, Martin Peach wrote:
> >>>Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> >>>>On Sat, 24 Jun 2006, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> >>>>>Hans-Christoph Steiner hat gesagt: // Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> >>>>>>On Jun 23, 2006, at 2:48 PM, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> >>>>>>>I would prefer something like a tooltip. IIRC I never ran into the
> >>>>>>Personally, I find tooltips far more distracting that just a tiny 
> >>>>>>bit
> >>>>>>of color on the screen.
> >>>>>If the tooltips have a longer delay until they show up, may that's
> >>>>>endurable?
> >>>>
> >>>>What if the edit menu has a checkbox to enable canvas-based tooltips?
> >>>>
> >>>>and a box to set the tooltip delay (?) which might not be needed.
> >>>>
> >>>>Usually, when someone doesn't want tooltips, the delay has better be
> >>>>high, very high, and when someone wants tooltips, the delay has better
> >>>>be low, very low. Which makes me think that there should be a toggle
> >>>>between infinite delay and zero delay, at least.
> >>>>
> >>>A lot of applications use something like a control key combo or a
> >>>right-click to display extra info, instantaneously, so, e.g.,
> >>>right-clicking on a wire would show a tooltip. It's faster than 
> >>>toggling
> >>>checkboxes on the main window or in a menu.
> >>>
> >>>I have this recurring idea though that if pd had a GUI API that wasn't
> >>>tied to tcl/tk then openGL could be used to represent patches in 3D, 
> >>>and
> >>>the user could zoom _inside_ objects to set their parameters and check
> >>>on their status.
> >>
> >>jeezz.. me and many others have been saying this for years ;)
> >>
> >>i even reiterated it a few posts back!
> >>
> >>this would be a very smart move IMO - OpenGL makes a very good, GPU
> >>managed fast 2D library, leaving the CPU to do the real work, like
> >>crunching numbers.
> >
> >I think it would be quite nice to get Pd to the point where it would 
> >be relatively straightforward for people to write their own GUIs for 
> >it.  DesireData is that idea, but unfortunately, its more like a fork, 
> >so its very unlikely that those changes will be incorporated by 
> >Miller.  I suppose it would be possible if the DD devs started 
> >submitted patches to the patch tracker.  Miller accepts the majority 
> >of them these days.
> >
> >So there has been much talk over the years about doing this, I think 
> >there needs to be more action.  Any volunteers?
> >
> Well sure, I can work on this. I think probably the existing pd-tcl/tk 
> interface needs to be documented first. I've started a bit on this. I 
> guess it needs a wiki page someplace. 

this is a good idea. perhaps it could begin as a general central site
for consolidating ideas and existing attempts to 're-skin' PD.

> Then there is the question: do we  take the existing socket connection and hook it to a tcl/tk-openGL 
> translator (the easy but slow way) or redo the whole thing to get rid of 
> the special characters and unreadable command strings that cause so much 
> grief (harder but in the long term more robust)?
> 

probably best to rewire it altogether. 

one thing that really needs to be considered is that OpenGL forces a single window interface 
context. this would mean all the PD canvases wouldn't be inside real windows themselves, 
but all fake windows nested within a single larger window for rendering. 
this has it's obvious advantages and disadvantages. 

recently several igh level API's have emerged that aim to make developing rich
2D OpenGL interfaces easier. here's one i found the other day, though
it's intended use is very different from that of PD:

	http://projects.o-hand.com/clutter/

i'd also consider looking at the what Blender could already offer PD, as many similar
UI elements are already in use in Blender: sliders, patch-like interface (w/bezier splines), 
toggles, editeable text fields, 'number boxes'.

cheers,

julian

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