Hi, Since Alberts proposal for a new MIDI support policy things seem to have started moving in a good way. Some developers, like RJ have started to encourage script writers, and also included new and updated controller mappings.
To implement new functionality on the limited amount of buttons on a controller, one might have to change functionality on some buttons, ans controls. While some users are happy with that, others may feel that previous functionality has been broken. Further, a user with both a dj controller and a pad controller may not want hotcues on the dj controller. One way to do this is to have several mappings with slight different functionality. Since it requires more work to maintain several mappings, some script writers have included flags to configure the functionality of their scripts. This will of course lead to more complexity of the script, so there has to be some balance between workload and complexity. The second case however force a user to edit the script, so I guess a lot of users are stuck with the default. This is also the case with the XML mapping, a user can't move a script call from button to another without editing the XML. Another thing that seem to confuse users is that the XML mapping is cached, to store settings from the preferences editor. The script isn't however, so if a mapping is replaced with a new one. the functionality might seem totally broken. I have a few proposals to improve the situation. -Include some type of annotation of script functions that should be listed in the preferences editor -Include an options configuration in the XML (maybe inspired by HTML controls), which can be reflected in and configured by controls in the preferences editor. These configuration values could then be passed to the script through the init function. -Present the mapping description in preferences. -Include a link to a manual for a mapping in the XML, which is also used in the preferences, so the manual can be opened directly from Mixxx. This last point also calls for another thing needed. The wiki has a lot of useful information, but is maybe not structured in the best or most consistent way. For controllers it might be good to have one page per controller. For Hercules controllers for instance there are now two pages that contain info for all Hercules controllers. If approved I can do some work to organize at lest the Hercules controllers, and to gather manuals for them. Keep up the good work! //Anders ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ Mixxx-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mixxx-devel
