On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 03:57:59 -0400, Silvan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Saturday 04 September 2004 11:27 pm, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > > OK, > > > > Here is the very first mockup: > > > > http://techwriter.land.ru/images/shot4.jpg > > > next mockup. What do you think? > > Honestly? Bleah. That looks really bad. Sorry.
Well, I'm rather playing with what could be done about the mean wideness, so you don't need to be sorry anyway :-) Easy come, easy go ;) > Both times you've posted, I've taken a hard look a this. I understand where > you're trying to go. It's very wide. Getting rid of the labels is just > about the only thing that can be done to make it narrower, because the > various combo boxes have to have a certain minimum size in order to be > functional. Exactly. > Replacing the text with icons is going to be hard to do though. I just had a > little crack at this myself, in the GIMP, and I completely hated the result > of my own effort too. I didn't even finish it. > > Conceptually, I have the hardest problems coming up with a very obvious, > crystal clear icon for Delay, Channel, Program, Bank, and Variation. > Bank/Program/Variation in particular are related to concepts that are already > confusing enough for many people to deal with, and they're very abstract > concepts that are not easy to represent with a simple 16x16 icon. Yes, it was easy to do a repeat icon, but it wasn't same easy about the rest of them. > > I'm not sure I like the whole idea of using LEDs anywhere in here either. It > could *possibly* look cool and high teckish, but I think it has a lot more > potential to be distracting, and even confusing. I also think custom repeat > and percussion buttons would be doomed from the start. We got rid of the > original mute/record buttons because it was difficult to see their state > under certain uncontrollable circumstances. I don't think there's any point > in repeating the experience with new buttons. > > Also, you're obviously thinking of this post 1.0, so you should remember that > you need to work the audio fader controls into this scheme. They've > been //ed out of the source because they didn't work yet, but they're going > to exist eventually, and they need a home in the layout. Is there any text file, where _all_ GUI changes fo post-1.0 are described or at least mentioned? > Similarly, your > idea for having document info in a box might not be all that useful once we > have the promised self-expanding composition. Once that exists, it should > probably be a rare thing for someone to change the document length > explicitly, and I don't expect those controls would get used much. Yes, I remember about it. > > Finally, now that you see I've given this real thought, I must say I really > don't like any of this AT ALL. I managed to save 80 pixels, but I think the > result would be considerably less intuitive to use. I think I'd much sooner > see the labels abbreviated than I would see them replaced with tiny little > icons and a reliance on tooltips to make their meaning clear. > > For that matter, I think perhaps an entirely better approach might be to pull > all the segment parameters back into one column the way they used to be, and > make that pane scrollable. Put the least-used controls so they're scrolled > off. You could tighten up the instrument parameters a bit by moving the > percussion box into line with the channel box, or perhaps shortening the Bank > combo (bank names are usually shorter than program names) and putting it in > the same line. The whole instrument parameters box could be tightened up > horizontally by removing margins, and by shortening the labels to "Bnk. Prg. > Var." or something. While that would be less clear than spelling them out, > it's still more clear than any icon I can think up. Personally, I didn't like this particular idea in MusE, because they have abbreviated everything in the main window and my first, second and other reactions were like "oh my, what am I supposed to do with that?" :-) But let's try to do that and see what it gives ;-) Alexandre ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by BEA Weblogic Workshop FREE Java Enterprise J2EE developer tools! Get your free copy of BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 today. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5047&alloc_id=10808&op=click _______________________________________________ Rosegarden-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-devel
