[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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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> --------
>>>
>>> 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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