On Friday 06 June 2003 03:01 am, you wrote: > GUI about them. This is necessary after loading a file, because the > GUI reinitialises its Studio configuration when the file is loaded > (i.e. using information found in the file, such as the patch maps > and so on) and then needs to synchronise the resulting information > with the actual devices that the Studio knows about. > > Yes, this is a rather fundamental issue actually. If new ALSA > clients are created while Rosegarden is running, it should pick them > up and offer you devices corresponding to them -- but it can't tell > the difference between this situation and the situation in which > you've just loaded a file with fewer devices in it than existed > previously, because both of them are handled through the same > syncDevices mechanism. In both cases the GUI simply sees the excess > devices as "new". >
Chris, I have some observations about how this works for me with what I am trying to do. The studio handling not smooth yet; I'm not yet sure if it is still "in progress" or if I don't understand the design, or maybe the design just doesn't fit my mode of operation very well. So, as typical with open source projects, you can take what I have to say or leave it. 8-) Basically, in the old days when I loaded a sequence into a sequencer program using all hardware synths, all the outboard gear used the same MIDI port and channel as it did the last time, unless I rerouted cables or programmed in new MIDI channels on the gear, neither of which hardly ever happened. Generally, the sequencer had no idea what was on the other end of those cables. If something didn't make noise or perform it's function, it was usually because it wasn't turned on or something like that. Although this situation made reconfiguring your (hardware) studio a lot of work, it also provided a very stable configuration and, generally, the sequence that you were working on yesterday would work just as well today because the configuration hadn't changed. With rosegarden, of course, we have software synths and all sorts of flexibility to route MIDI or audio around "virtually". This is a great feature in general, but right now it feels like the stability of the hardware setup, which was one (the only?) of it's strengths, is lost. Right now, every time I load a sequence into rosegarden I have to go reconfigure my "virtual studio", because the dynamic configuration hardly ever comes up the same way twice. Often, the names of the devices (like ZynAddSubFX) are intact, but they are associated with the wrong device. What happens if I haven't yet started a synth that I had running the last time? I would prefer that rosegarden just point to a nonexistant port, waiting for me to start that other program. This is similar to a "oops, forgot to turn it on" error which, IMHO, is much simpler than "oops, I forgot to turn it on and now my sequencer has rerouted that channel somewhere else so I have to reroute that back after I start the synth". This turns out to be more work overall than using a full hardware setup. Also, because my system has a complex MIDI setup, the Rosegarden Studio is always maximally complex, even for a sequence that only uses one port. I suppose this wouldn't be too bad, except that the scans take so long that I have to think twice before opening the "studio" setup box. In the hardware situation, you just have MIDI ports going nowhere and the system ignores the ones you aren't using. Again, it would be nice to have the flexibility of the "virtual studio" but the simplicity of the old days. > And of course in many cases after loading a file you _do_ want any > additional devices not listed in the file to continue to be > present -- for example, the default autoload.rg loaded at startup > may have fewer devices in it than are actually present, but you > still want the additional ones to be visible. Or if you borrow a > .rg file from someone else, you don't necessarily want it to get > rid of most of the devices in your setup that your friend doesn't > have. I guess this is where we need the option to merge studios > between files. This is a feature that I would like to disable most of the time. I can definitely appreciate the coolness of sharing a sequence with somebody else and having it work, but I doubt this feature is used very often, and there are a zillion things that can break the feature even when rosegarden does it's part of the job correctly. The way it works now, whenever a ALSA device appears or disappears, rosegarden makes a huge deal about it with a lengthy scan, even though the change is probably temporary and maybe doesn't even concern rosegarden in the first place. I would rather use a mode where rosegarden never scanned for devices, and only used the ones that were explicitly aconnected to it. Again, this is similar to a hardware setup where I can move a MIDI cable without having some component in the rack freak out about it. Well, thanks for reading this far. 8-) Please realize that I wouldn't even care how Rosegarden handled it's studio if I didn't think that Rosegarden might one day be the app that finally kills the need for Windoze sequencers, at least for me. I am currently working on a very complex project, and would like to use Rosegarden if at all possible. If you like this kind of discussion, I will continue to raise these kinds of issues. If, on the other hard, you find me annoying, then I will quietly deal with what I have. 8-) John ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Etnus, makers of TotalView, The best thread debugger on the planet. Designed with thread debugging features you've never dreamed of, try TotalView 6 free at www.etnus.com. _______________________________________________ Rosegarden-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-devel
