[PD] UI developer volunteering to help

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at eds.org
Wed May 14 00:39:56 CEST 2008


I think we can do this incrementally.  I'll try including what you  
have in Pd-extended when you are ready.

As for help, I find that #tcl on freenode IRC is quite helpful.  Some  
of the devs hang out there and often help out.

.hc

On May 13, 2008, at 9:44 PM, David Golightly wrote:

> This is all great feedback, guys - keep it coming.  Keep in mind  
> I'm still learning Tcl/Tk, so some of these ideas, while excellent,  
> are a little beyond my technical grasp at this point and may be  
> improvements that we make incrementally over time.  Also, I have a  
> limited amount of my time to budget for this kind of work - I also  
> work full-time and make music too - so I think prioritizing some of  
> these ideas into subsequent releases is probably the best way to  
> get them into Pd.
>
> Some points:
>
> - On the Startup dialog: I wasn't satisfied with the popup box for  
> editing each list item, and also tried to look for a way to edit  
> list items in place, but couldn't figure out how to make that work  
> in Tcl/Tk, so I settled on the popup box.  The bug you saw with  
> that not working, Hans, I've since fixed.
>
> - I played around with the idea of multiple select in the  
> listboxes, but wasn't wholly satisfied with it and found that it  
> introduced more problems than it solved.  For example, what if you  
> select multiple Paths and then click "Edit"?  What is that supposed  
> to do?
>
> - Having buttons inline with the list items in the listboxes would  
> also be really cool, but it seems like it's a lot more work to do  
> that, since Tk's default listbox widget only wants to deal with  
> arrays of strings.
>
> - I agree with the idea that the "Save all settings" button should  
> be removed everywhere and folded into "Apply" ("OK" does "Apply" +  
> "Cancel").  I think what it originally was supposed to do was give  
> you an opportunity to test settings without saving them, but for  
> that, I think it's best to have something like a "Revert settings"  
> button instead.  Also, I think this functionality is so marginal  
> that we can remove it altogether.
>
> - I also agree that the four Preferences menus (Path, Startup,  
> Audio, and MIDI) should all be different tabs in the same dialog.   
> However, that seems like a feature that can be added at a later  
> time; for now, I'd like to focus on finishing up the improvements  
> that we already have, so we can try & get them into Vanilla, then  
> perhaps go through the menu system at some point and re-evaluate  
> how that's structured, maybe do some further improvements with some  
> of the other menus too.  Plus I'm itching to get on to improving  
> the UI widget settings boxes.
>
> - I'll see what I can do to remove those extra buttons.  I really  
> like having everything keyboard-accessible, which includes stuff  
> like tab order, so I think it's probably best to keep around the  
> buttons for list editing commands for now, although we can  
> certainly investigate ways to reduce the size they take up on the  
> screen.
>
> I'm going to spend some spare time over the next few days working  
> out some of the remaining kinks, then I'll re-post the patch for  
> review before submitting it to the tracker.  Thanks again to  
> everyone who has taken time to look at the proposed changes!
>
> If anyone has specific ideas to improve the layout of these  
> dialogs, it would be amazing to see some sort of low-fi sketch of  
> what you have in mind, just black outlines with text on a white  
> background would be fine.  Also, if anyone has some more advanced  
> Tk wizardry they'd like to impart, or could point me to some better  
> resources, I'd be most grateful - Google has been a lot less  
> helpful than I've experienced with other languages/platforms.
>
> Thanks,
> David
>
>
> On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 7:57 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner  
> <hans at eds.org> wrote:
>
> Oops, one other detail with the "encode" proc.  While namespaces  
> are probably the current way to handle function names, they are not  
> used for any other functions in u_main.tk  So for this function, I  
> think it should be called something like pdtk_encodelist without  
> the namespace, then grouped with pdtk_encode.  Something like this:
>
> proc pdtk_encodelist {listdata} {
> 	set outlist {}
> 	foreach this_path $listdata {
> 		if {0==[string match "" $this_path]} {
> 			lappend outlist [pdtk_encodedialog $this_path]
> 		}
> 	}
> 	return $outlist
> }
>
> Then perhaps namespaces can be introduced later as a more  
> systematic approach.
>
> .hc
>
> On May 11, 2008, at 3:15 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>
>>
>> I just thought of one other thing:  I think it would be very  
>> useful if Path, Startup, Audio Settings, and MIDI settings where  
>> all tabs in one panel, instead of four separate panels.
>>
>> .hc
>>
>> On May 11, 2008, at 1:29 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Wow, what an improvement!  I like it a lot.  I have some comments:
>>>
>>> - minor thing, maybe there could be less space on the sides, so  
>>> the panel would be narrower?
>>>
>>> - about the Apply button, I think it should only show up on  
>>> platforms where it is a common thing.  On Mac OS X, it should  
>>> just be OK and Cancel.  On Windows, there should be Apply.  I  
>>> think GNOME has moved away from Apply, but I don't know anything  
>>> about KDE.
>>>
>>> - some separation of the buttons on the right column would make  
>>> things clearer, I think.  Like maybe Up/Down on the right side,  
>>> and then Add..., Edit..., and Delete on the bottom?  Or maybe  
>>> just changing Up and Down to arrows?
>>>
>>> - the startup thing is trickier.  I think that the textfield for  
>>> entering values should be embedded into the panel instead of a  
>>> popup.  Also, it doesn't seem to work for me (I am using 0.41-4  
>>> vanilla).  I can't add items to the list.
>>>
>>> I think once this is worked out, the best plan would be to submit  
>>> a patch to the tracker and assign it to Miller.  Then I'll also  
>>> include it in Pd-extended.
>>>
>>> .hc
>>>
>>> On May 11, 2008, at 2:25 AM, David Golightly wrote:
>>>
>>>> Just verified against my own install of Pd-extended-0.40.3 on OS  
>>>> X 10.4 - enough differences exist otherwise in the nightlies  
>>>> that this version of the file will only work with 0.41.4.
>>>>
>>>> Attached is an updated (slightly bugfixed) version.
>>>>
>>>> So... what's the procedure for checking in to svn :)?
>>>>
>>>> -David
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 4:24 PM, David Golightly  
>>>> <davigoli at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Well scratch that then, perhaps that will only work when you're  
>>>> building pd on your own machine.  If you launch Pd from  
>>>> Terminal, you might see error output in that terminal window -  
>>>> that would be helpful to have.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 3:17 PM, marius schebella  
>>>> <marius.schebella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I tried this with pd extended 0.40-3, but did not get a startup  
>>>> pref window at all and the path window was very small and empty.  
>>>> (os x, 10.5.)
>>>> marius.
>>>>
>>>> David Golightly wrote:
>>>> And, here's a version with an updated Startup dialog.  Simply  
>>>> copy this to bin/pd.tk <http://pd.tk> (make a backup first!) to  
>>>> try it out.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 12:48 PM, David Golightly  
>>>> <davigoli at gmail.com <mailto:davigoli at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 12:36 PM, Steffen Juul <stffn at dibidut.dk
>>>>    <mailto:stffn at dibidut.dk>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        On 10/05/2008, at 19.48, David Golightly wrote:
>>>>
>>>>            Ok, after a busy week this is what I've been able to  
>>>> come up
>>>>            with for the Path dialog.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        Looking really good! The browse functionality is a fair  
>>>> idiom in
>>>>        a such GUI as oppose to entering text, i think.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    Thanks!  I've often been kind of frustrated that I have to  
>>>> type in
>>>>    the full directory name rather than simply browsing to it.   
>>>> For the
>>>>    keyboard-inclined, however, text entry should still be possible.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        "One" comment: I have a beef with the functionality of the
>>>>        buttons. Not the Cancel one. The others. 'Apply' does  
>>>> something.
>>>>        'Ok' does 'apply' plus 'cancel'. 'Save...' does 'Apply' plus
>>>>        saves. But it says the list is only gonna work from next  
>>>> time Pd
>>>>        is lunched, why i don't get the 'Apply' and 'Ok'. 'Ok'  
>>>> should do
>>>>        save and cancel. Thats all one wants, anit?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    I agree.  I've preserved the pre-existing functionality for  
>>>> those
>>>>    buttons from before, but do we really need both "Save" and  
>>>> "Apply"?    Currently, "Save" also "saves preferences" (verbose  
>>>> & use standard
>>>>    extensions).  I think that should also happen when you click
>>>>    "Apply", so we can do away with the "Save" button, and also make
>>>>    sure that the message about needing to restart PD pops up  
>>>> when you
>>>>    click "OK" or "Apply".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>            I'm thinking about adapting this UI for the Startup  
>>>> dialog -
>>>>            shouldn't be hard to do - except instead of choosing
>>>>            directories you want to enter arbitrary text.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        I haven't checked your code but i suppose most "proc's"  
>>>> can be
>>>>        reused?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>            I've set up some various key bindings so I want to  
>>>> make sure
>>>>            it seems usable for everyone.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        Nice. What are they?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    Default key bindings for the listbox widget give you "up" and  
>>>> "down"
>>>>    keys to select, I've added "Delete" to delete the current  
>>>> selection,
>>>>    and "Return" to open the browse dialog (same as pressing  
>>>> "Edit").
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>            So far I've only tested this on Mac OS X
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        OS X.4 here.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>>> --------
>>>
>>>                                               http://at.or.at/hans/
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> -------
>>
>> News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is  
>> publicity.          - Bill Moyers
>>
>>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ------
>
> "[W]e have invented the technology to eliminate scarcity, but we  
> are deliberately throwing it away to benefit those who profit from  
> scarcity."        -John Gilmore
>
>
>



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There is no way to peace, peace is the way.       -A.J. Muste


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