[PD] Hillageizer

[carmen]

> Ableton fanboy, but they really have done a remarkable job at
> maximizing their interface depth vs. space requirements, as well as
> keyboard integration.  All the menus are in the same plane, separated
> by gui panels that can be adjusted or hidden.  The two modes of
> operation can be toggled easily with the tab key, (almost like esc in
> vi or ctrl+e in pd).

quite unlike the Win/OSuX norm.. where the proliferation of unmanaged windows and plugin GUIs requires a pair of 23" flatpanels and several RSI incidences of mousing around..and 'Exposé' features just to find anything..

altho Ableton is a good start, and proabbly made the most pragmatic choice given the host OSes, i think something like 3 panels, one status/console, one patch/plugin/instance/class tree, and one workspace, as seperate clients is a sweet spot, as the user can rearrange those as necessary but never be forced to manage an ever-increasing pile of windows..

Ingen is arranged like this (single window w/ breadcrumbs, and seperate patch/plugin browser, proper jack support, 64 bit compatibility, in-process or external GUI, engine bindings avilable via SWIG), but neither DSSI or LV2 have so much as a sampler object..despite the theoretical plausibility of porting all pd objects and/or creating a flext target platform for LV2...both high on my list if i could afford to sponsor development..

as an example of how broken the PD-gui sea-of-windows paradigm is,

when i open up a patch in desireData, it opens every subpatch, and of course dwm tiles these along the right edge. with so much space wasted on each client with menu bars, button bars, status bars, and scrollbars, the end result is a screenful of JMax icons:

http://whats-your.name/i/dd.png

( i wouldnt consider this a usable interface, but it is proably very comfortable for mac/windows users )


c