On Tuesday 27 February 2007, Thorsten Wilms wrote: >On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 03:45:18PM +0000, Chris Cannam wrote: >> On Monday 26 Feb 2007 23:40, Leonard Ritter wrote: >> > radial is for weirdos with the motor skills of a clockmaker. >> >> Correct! But where have all the radial supporters gone? There were >> enough to sustain quite a flamewar about this a couple of years back. > >They are tired of this discussion? ;p >(No, it wasn't just me) > >> I prefer linear in both axes (right or up to increment, left or down >> to decrement), so there may be some scope for disagreement after all. > >To me, the main problem is the lack of agreement on wether >plain knobs should be radial, linear-vertical, linear horizontaly, >linear-both. > >That was part of my motivation for fan-sliders: >http://leute.uni-wuppertal.de/~ka0394/en/fan-sliders/index.html > > >I still think classic knob graphics imply radial and anything else >is visual lying. Quite a while ago I worked on a concept of widgets >with a knob-size footprint and graphics that hint at their non radial >nature. > >First I worked out 2 ways how they could be linear without using >only one axis. The first image contains 2 charts to explain >the 2 ways: >- using distance the pointer has been move from the center after >mouse-down >- projecting the current position to the nearest axis > >http://thorwil.affenbande.org/index.php/2007/02/27/circulars/ > > >There was one developer who pretty much insistet on knobs in >Phat and who was at one point willing to implement my design(s), >but then dropped it just because I called them not-knobs at >some point (plus being busy otherwise, I guess). Nobody else was >in sight, so I stopped there. > >> ... panner, fader (based on Hydrogen). > >Looked at Ardour 2 recently? I think you should have a look at >the new sliders and panners.
A well done radial device would have some usefullness in another field, that of machine control, where a continuously rotating 'knob' with a decent calibration dial around it, could be made into a good substitute for the handwheels on a lathe or milling machine. If it could be made into a fairly well self contained module, with only a quadrature encoded output to be steered to the axis where you want to cause a motion, I think the guys on the emc list might be interested. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
