[PD] Reverse Kickstarter Update

[Jonathan Wilkes]

On 07/30/2013 03:16 PM, Dan Wilcox wrote:
> On Jul 30, 2013, at 2:55 PM, Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com 
> <mailto:jancsika at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> * the Apple interface guidelines generally frown on "Apply" buttons 
>>> like the "Connect" button in the audio/midi dialogs. The expected 
>>> behavior is that you also connect when you select the device in the 
>>> drop down, the idea being you don't require 2 steps. At least that's 
>>> how I would do it. It's a niggle, but thought I'd throw it in.
>>
>> But then what about the blocksize, samplerate, and callbacks? If 
>> those don't immediately update then the user would have to switch 
>> devs to get them to update.  If they immediately update then the user 
>> would need to press <tab> or click somewhere to make the text entry 
>> lose focus.  Both of those seem problematic, but if there's an 
>> Apple-like HIG solution I'll try to implement it.
>>
>> -Jonathan
>
>
> Yeah, as I said, it's a niggle and more Mac specific but you do it 
> this way, for instance, in the GUI pane.
>
> The Apply button concept is more firmly entrenched on the other 
> desktops. I really only understood that after writing a Mac-only app 
> and trying to make it work like the other native apps. There are 
> certain situations where you need to start and stop things which does 
> have a separate button. In some cases, certain options are disabled 
> (greyed out / deactivated) when changing them has no effect and 
> deactivated based on another control, say starting/stopping some 
> background process.
>
> At the very least, I think "Connect" is a bit confusing. It implies 
> that there can be an unconnected state when the main purpose of the 
> dialog is managing which things are connected. Maybe "Apply Settings", 
> "Update Connection Settings", or even "Update", etc is better.

Ok.  I think "Update" or "Update Connection Settings" is probably best.

>
> Ok a few more now that I'm looking more closely:
>
> * the MIDI channels text box should probably be filled by default aka 
> "16". Better yet, maybe it should be a drop down box? Also, we weren't 
> able to set the number of channels per device in the old Midi settings 
> dialog?

I'm a little restricted because I don't have any MIDI devices to test with.

> Does this mean we can split up channels now?

I haven't changed anything on the C side, nor really any of the settings 
in the MIDI dialog.

> Say use two devices but give them only 8 each? If we can't, then maybe 
> you don't need this text box.
>
> * in the MIDI dialog pane, I get an error when I switch to Multiple 
> devices then back again: can't read "::midi_inchan2": no such variable

Ok, sounds like a bug on my part.  I'll check it out.

>
> * in the Audio dialog pane, you could shorten "msec" to "ms"IMO, and I 
> would add some text to explain what "Use callbacks"  and "Delay" mean 
> and why there's a setting for them. Everything else makes sense 
> really, but those always bothered me.

Actually, I still have some work to do testing with Jack and probably 
changing some of those settings when it's the API, because I don't think 
"Delay" has an effect in that case.

Also if you notice the "Help" window for the Audio dialog, you will see 
I clearly explained "Use callbacks" with
"???". :)

I haven't looked at the API code closely enough to understand what it 
does.  If anyone can supply a nice
user-facing explanation I'll add it.

>
> * I wish the API dropdown box + "Number of devices" button was 
> centered like the content below it

Hm... I'll try that.

>
> * The toggle nature of the "Use single/multiples devices" never made 
> sense to me. IMO is should really be a toggle button: Use multiple 
> devices? [x]

Ah, yes!  That will help a lot on OSX, too-- a disabled button doesn't 
really look disabled for some reason...

>    Better yet, there wouldn't need to be a direct control if there was 
> a [+] [-] mechanism in the device section itself. The option would be 
> implied: if you are
>    only using 1 device then yeah "Using single device", as soon as you 
> add a second one, then "Using multiple devices". This makes sense for 
> both
>    Audio and Midi. I know this is probably more work on the GUI side, 
> but I thought I'd bring it up from a UI point of view.

Yeah, that's probably the right way to do it.

>
> * in the GUI dialog pane, I'd put the color swatch buttons first, then 
> the labels. This way they'd be aligned to the left better.

That should be pretty easy to test out.  I'll try it.

Thanks for the feedback!

-Jonathan

>
> --------
> Dan Wilcox
> @danomatika
> danomatika.com <http://danomatika.com>
> robotcowboy.com <http://robotcowboy.com>
>
>
>
>
>

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