[jokosher-devel] Weekly Report No 1
Hey everyone, I've posted a new blog about what I've been up to in the first official week of coding. I've pasted it below for ease of reading but you can find it in it's html glory at : http://redache.wordpress.com/ So the Summer of Code has officially begun and I’ve been doing a few things this week (as well as finishing my final exam(yay!)). I’ve been working on writing a GStreamer source element for the MusicXML generator that will allow me to send the generated MusicXML to a GStreamer Pipeline. FIlesrc isn’t suitable as I don’t want to load the file every time I want the MusicXML to play. I’ve been having a little difficulty getting the Source Element to work as there isn’t much information on how the Python GStreamer bindings are used in the context of creating elements. I found a post on the Pitivi wiki that explains some of the basics but isn’t solely based on Source Elements. I’ve been reading the C tutorials for GStreamer as well to try and learn as much as I can about GStreamer and how it interacts with the plugins, which should help me understand how to get things working better. So most of this week has been spent reading Tutorials and Source Code for other GStreamer Source Elements (like audiotestsrc) and trying to transfer those concepts over to Python. I’m nearly finished with the Source Element I just need to figure out how I can pass the data buffer back out into the pipeline, which is the only part I’ve really had issue with. Hopefully I’ll get that done as soon as possible and I can start working on integrating what I have so far into the Jokosher code base and at some point soon starting on a basic UI. Thanks for reading, David Williams Project: Extending Jokosher to include a Musical Notation Editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Friday 4th June 2010 Weekly Report 2
Hi everyone, I've posted my second weekly report and added branch to Launchpad with the current code that I have. The text of the report is below and you can find the blog post itself at [1] This week I've been trying to get a Test GUI working with the Source Element and XML generator, just so I can work on enhancing the model and making sure things work as expected. I've managed to get the source element working after spending what seemed like hours tracing a buffer error. I'm not quite sure why the error occurred but after modifying a few things it seems to work ok now. I'm still having issues with the XML not having an end of stream which means it constantly gets passed to the buffer over and over again, making the pipeline fail after a single play. I'm not quite sure how I'll get it to work but I'll spend the rest of the week working on it and trying to fix it. Once I perfect that I can move on to working on enhancements to the model, like Search and Replace and seeking. I have an idea of how to do search and replace but not so much on seeking, I guess I'll have to use a lot of trial and error to get it working. I'm happy with the progress I've made so far and what may have seemed like a mountain of work is certainly a lot less daunting now. I've also made a simple test gui for it, I'll post screenshots once I have the buffer working. I'll also give instructions on how to run it once I've fixed the End of Stream errors. [1] - http://redache.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/weekly-report-02-buffering-love/ Thanks for reading, David Williams Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Thursday 10th June 2010 - Weekly Report 03
Hi Everyone, Here's my third weekly report which you can find at [0] as well as below. This week I’ve been toying with the Source Element and have managed to get it working correctly (finally!) and I’ve also started working on search and replace on the model and tidying things up. I haven’t done as much as I’d like this week but it took a while to realise how simple the solution to the Source Element issue was (a len() fixed it). Sometimes it’s hard to see the simplest things. I’m also getting a strange bug with the Bus messages that causes the pipeline to crash if I have it listen for error messages, I haven’t debugged the GStreamer pipeline yet, but I bet that there is something throwing an error that isn’t fatal or noticeable. I want to get the Source Element perfect because it’ll be relied on to work every time someone clicks play in the Score Editor. The Test GUI works quite well, although changing the key/time sig doesn’t work after the initial selection, which is what I’ll be doing to test my search and replace and why I’ve started working on it. I’ve been pushing every so often to my Jokosher branch on Launchpad. Once I have search and replace working correctly I’ll begin work on modifying Jokoshers current GUI with a GTK Notebook, which will be the foundation of the Score Viewer. If you want to run the code in the branch you need to do the following: - Grab the MusicXML2Midi plugin from Elleo’s blog. - Branch the source from Launchpad - Navigate to the Score Editor folder (which if you branched in your home directory would be ~/MusicXMLEditor/jokosher/Jokosher/ScoreEditor) - Run PlayMusicXML.py. This is the GUI that connects everything together (Excuse the poorly commented code for that file). You should see the following: http://redache.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/xmledit.png It’s not the prettiest thing in the world but it does its job as well as you'd hope. A couple of caveats: 1. Pressing play without saving something first will lead to Gstreamer dying and the program will have to be restarted if you want sound. 2. Changing the Key/Time Signature won't work after the first time as there's no functionality to do that yet. I'll also update the live.gnome.org wiki with the build instructions. [0] - http://redache.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/weekly-report-no-3-feel-the-source/ Thanks for reading, David Williams, Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Saturday 14th June - Weekly Report No 4
Hi everyone, Below is my report for this week and a link[1] to my blog post. I haven't done as much as I'd like this week, but onwards and upwards I guess. I've also updated my live.gnome.org project page[2] with build instructions for the current branch. ---Report This week I haven't done as much as I'd hoped but I have started work on modifying the Jokosher GUI to accommodate the Score Editor. This will be achieved by having a GTK Notebook that will have tabs for the Audio Editor and Score Editor (and can be extended to include any other GUI additions). I've decided to move on to the GUI early as I think that I won't get a good idea of what the Model needs to do further than the stuff it already does without having a GUI in place. This will then show me the deficiencies in the model and I can add more and more functionality as I go along. I've already added a Notebook to the code that should work when I've finished subclassing the Event Viewer for the Score Editor. My aim is to do it in shorter steps than I've done before as it can be pretty easy to get swallowed up in GUI errors. I think my progress will be slower from now on, but I'm glad that I can move on to something different that has the potential to teach me a lot of new things. I've also been reading about GTK things and trying to get to grips with the GUI code for Jokosher now that I understand Python and GTK a lot better. Hopefully next weeks report will include a lot more actual things being done!. I'm disappointed that I haven't got much to offer this week but I guess that's how things roll sometimes. - Links: [1] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2d [2] - http://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2010/DavidWilliams_Jokosher Thanks for Reading, David Williams Extending Jokosher to Include a Musical Notation Editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Saturday 26th June 2010 Weekly Report 5
Hi Everyone, Below is my fifth weekly report and a link to the blog post[1]. I'm really disappointed this week as I haven't achieved much at all as I've spent a lot of the week trying to figure out how things need to connect together (and I'm still working on figuring it out). Hopefully I'll have more to show next week. Report: What I've achieved this week: This week I've been working on learning Cairo and trying to add the new instrument type needed for Scores to Jokosher. This is harder than I first thought it would be and my progress has slowed to a crawl as I slowly try and figure out how everything connects together. I'm disappointed that I don't have at least a stave working with a new Score instrument but I always knew that this part would be difficult as a lot of the work is modifying existing code to work with a new ScoreViewer class which will handle all the UI stuff for the Scores. I'm slightly ahead of the schedule that I included with my GSoC application, but I'm still frustrated with the lack of progress that I've been having the last 2 weeks. What I plan to do next week: I plan to try and have Score tracks working correctly in the context of the EventLaneViewer, with hopefully some work starting on adding user editable elements to the Cairo code. What I've learned this week: How Cairo works (mostly) and that GUI code can be really frustrating if you spend hours trying to get something to work and it still doesn't. Patience is obviously an important thing for coding and I need to have more of it. I also need to plan more so I don't end up getting lost in code and have no idea what's going on!. I hope that I have something concrete to show for my work by the end of next week. [1] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2h Thanks for reading, David Williams, Extending Jokosher to include a score editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Sunday 4th July - Weekly Report 06
Hi Everyone, This week has been slightly better than previous weeks as I've managed to make some progress with my project. Below is the weekly report which you can find at [0]. - What I've done this week: This week I've been busy trying to get my score instrument working within Jokosher and after a lot of help from Elleo (my mentor) I now have a score instrument that emits correctly when it's added to the Jokosher InstrumentViewer. My lack of experience contributed to me getting confused about the scope of the emit as I had first tried to emit from the constructor (which obviously doesn't work!) and then having moved it to its own function, I attempted to emit it before the InstrumentViewer had been created. Elleo offered guidance with it and helped me get it working. There's a screenshot of it at [1]. I've also finished the MusicXML source element after some more help from Elleo as I couldn't figure out why the Bus was failing when the score was created. It turns out I'd misunderstood what size meant in the context of do_create in Gstreamer source elements. So after he explained what was wrong I managed to implement changes that lead to a source element that works correctly (fingers crossed). During the week I've been playing with Pango and Cairo to get a Stave/Notes rendered. I'm not sure if Pango is the way I will go in the end but it's good to at least test it and see if it works. Plans for next week: Next week I'll hopefully have a stave rendering correctly inside the instrument and some rudimentary ability to add notes. What I've learned: Another set of eyes can be invaluable especially if you spend a few hours on something getting more and more frustrated when it doesn't work. A second set of eyes can spot the mistakes that you might not see for a long time. I've also discovered I'm not always wrong when it comes to what I try and do to fix things but I need to take a step back and consider things more before pushing ahead. [0] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2k [1] - http://redache.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/score-instrument.png Thanks for reading, David Williams Extending Jokosher to include a Musical Notation Editor ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Weekly Report 07 - 12/07/2010
Hi everyone, Here's my report for this week, I haven't done as much as I'd like but I hope that next week I'll get more done. I've been struggling a bit with modifying the existing code as I'm not used to it. You can find the blog post at [0] as well as a mid term summary at [1]. You can also find the Bzr branch of the current code at [2]. Weekly Report text- What I've done this week: This week I've been working on getting a stave/staff to draw correctly in the score track. After some discussion with my Mentor we've decided that the best way to represent the scores is to have a midi track option for every track that currently exists and have the instrument change to whatever has been selected ( so an electric guitar for electric guitar scores etc.). I've been struggling with trying to get the cache overridden so that I can base it on beats/measures and I'd hoped that I'd have that work finished by the end of the week but I've had some family issues to deal with which has meant I haven't had the time to do it towards the end of the week. That's all sorted so I plan on doing as much work as possible this week to get the cache overridden and the notes adding ability nearly completed. You can find the screenshot at [3]. Hopefully I'll have more to report on by the end of next week and maybe something that actually has some use!. What I plan to do next week: Actually finish a lot of the drawing elements for the Score tracks and have the rudimentary ability to add notes. What I've learned: That modifying existing code can be more difficult than I thought. There are a lot of things to consider and I think my lack of experience/skill has really hampered my efforts in the last few weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to overcome these issues and have the work finished by the end of the Summer Of Code as I'm worried that I might not reach the end with a finished product at this point. [0] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2q [1] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2o [2] - https://code.launchpad.net/~redache/jokosher/MusicXMLEditor [3] - http://redache.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/score.png Thanks for reading, David Williams Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Weekly Report 09 - 27/07/2010
Hi Everyone, Below is my report as always which you can find at [0] and you can get my code at [1]. This week has been difficult and very little reward for my efforts but having note drawing that works is nearly in my grasp!. --Weekly Report--- What I’ve done this week: This week I’ve been working on getting a Mouse Listener set up so the user can add notes to the stave. It doesn’t work and I’m not really sure why, I’m fairly certain I’ve got the context set right but further experimentation is needed and it may be worth asking for help from my mentor. If I can get it to update the cairo context with the pango note then it will work on a basic level. I’ve also got a clear idea of how I’m going to get the note based on position, which will be based on the x/y values of the mouse click. So if the click is within say 10-20 pixels then that note will be an A or whatever the correct note for that value will be. It’s frustrating that it doesn’t work as I’m so close to having something I can be proud of and actually have a note editor that’s working. I’ve also modified the Add Instrument dialog to include a seperate Notebook tab of Midi instruments and added midi Instrument copies of the current instruments (apart from a few that I’ve taken out that weren’t suitable for midi instruments, like Effect/Audio File). You can find the screenshots on my blog at [0]. What I plan to do next week: Getting the note drawing to work and different cleffs based on the currently selected Instrument (like a Piano will have both the treble and bass cleff).I’ll also start connecting the model and source element to the rest of Jokosher. With this done I will then start cleaning up any of the elements that are left over from subclassing the Event Viewer and making sure that no weird behavior is experienced when using the note editor. For example I know that shift + left click will try and split the event even though there’s no wave form to split. I think a lot of that work is just disabling a lot of it and modifying the existing elements so they work with the Score events. Only when all of this is done will I start working on the in depth Score Editor, as this is secondary to actually having Score Events that work!. What I’ve learned this week: That Pango is a fairly simple library to use it can just get really confusing to figure out what’s going on at times. I’ve also found that using Glade can be awkward if you aren’t skilled at using GTK, with a lot of the shortcuts being confusing to someone who isn’t used to it. I think I have really started getting used to GTK and all I can do now is learn more and more about it and how to use it effectively. As it’s nearing the end of GSoC I have been thinking about the goals I set out to achieve and the work I’ve put in and I think I’ve learned a massive amount in the last 2 months. I think I’ve learned more in those 2 months than I did in the 9 months I spent at University learning Java, which was my first language. I may have over reached slightly with my project but I think I can come as close as possible to finishing before the Pencils down date. I just need to push forward and get the things that need to be done completed. It may not be 100% complete but it’s going to be as close as I can possibly get it in the time left!. [0] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2A [1] - https://code.launchpad.net/~redache/jokosher/MusicXMLEditor Thanks for reading, David Williams, Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor - Weekly Report 10 03/08/2010
Hi Everyone, This week has again been fairly eventful and I'm much happier with the progress I've been making. As always you can find the blog post at [0] and the launchpad branch at [1]. --Weekly Report Text-- What I’ve done this week: This week I finally managed to get note drawing to work. There’s still some issues with getting the fonts perfectly inline with the stave lines, but I just need to tweak it a bit to get it just right. I’ve also started plugging the model in and I have it generating valid MusicXML on the first addition of notes, I still need to add edit functionality so notes can be moved/deleted. The note drawing now correctly normalizes the Y position so that I can actually get the note from the Y position, I still need to add X normalization so I can make sure the notes look tidy on the stave (and to also make sure I can add new measures easily). You can find a screenshot at [2]. You can also listen to a quick sound sample that I created by taking the Notes from the score and generating the MusicXML at [3]. This is just a very simple example but it does show progress!. What I plan to do next week: I will finish the model so that I can edit the notes and then regenerate the MusicXML based on these edits. I also need to fix the font alignment so that it looks neater. Once I’ve done this I’ll move on to finally connecting the Source Element and Playback bins I need for Score Elements to produce sound. Then it’s on to finishing the UI changes needed to finish the basic score editor. I’ll then move on to the Score Event Viewer and hopefully finish it before the end of coding. What I’ve learned this week: Sometimes the answer to a problem can be much simpler than I presume it to be and it just takes a bit of time away from trying to do it for things to come naturally. [0] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2K [1] - https://code.launchpad.net/~redache/jokosher/MusicXMLEditor [2] - http://redache.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/note.png [3] - http://omploader.org/vNTRrYg/song.ogg Thanks for reading, David Williams Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor - Weekly Report 11: 10/08/2010
Hi everyone, Sorry for the lateness of the report but I'd forgotten all about submitting it this week as I've been busy trying to get things working!. You can find the full blog post at [0] and the code is at [1]. ---Weekly Report Text-- What I’ve done this week: This week I’ve been working on getting drag and drop to function, it’s mostly working I just need to rejig a few things and clean it up. I’ve also added cut/copy/paste but I haven’t connected it to the context menu yet, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ve also managed to figure out a way to count how many notes are in a measure, so I can work on getting more measures generated when one is filled. There aren’t any screenshots this week but that’s because most of what I’ve been doing is related to the backend for the Score Events. What I plan to do next week: For the final week of GSoC I am going to have a big push to finish all the little UI elements I have left and to get Audio working with the tracks. I also need to work on save/load which shouldn’t be *too* difficult but it might take me a while. The only thing I will miss from my original project specification is the in depth score editor, which is really disappointing. It would have been nice to have gotten that finished in time but I will continue working on the score editor after the deadline to make it stable enough for release. What I’ve learned this week: That I should be very careful when I name variables as I had an incident where I had used the same variable name twice in a Function and I kept getting weird results from it. It took me an hour to realise what I’d done wrong, which is very annoying!. I’m reasonably happy what I’ve achieved so far with my project and whilst I have had a lot of issues I think I’ve learned so much from doing it and there’s a lot left for me to learn. But I’m happy to have been given the opportunity to do this and work on something that I have an interest in. [0] - http://redache.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/weekly-report-11-drag-and-drop/ [1] - https://code.launchpad.net/~redache/jokosher/MusicXMLEditor Thanks for reading, David Williams Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
[jokosher-devel] Weekly Report 12 - Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor - 16/08/2010
Hi everyone, You'll find my blog post at [0] and my code at [1], It's finally the end of GSoC and we can all celebrate :). You can find my weekly report below. I've also updated by live.gnome.org wiki page [2] with screenshots of the project as it stands. -Weekly Report text- So this is the last weekly report of the Summer of Code. It’s been a long journey to get to the end and a lot of hard work. What I’ve done this week: I reworked the drag and drop to try and make it less glitchy and it still isn’t perfect. From looking at a lot of other score editors I think I missed a trick on having measures that were automatically filled with rests and then just subtracting the note that gets added from that rest and reworking the rests to fill the rest of the measure. Hindsight can be an annoying thing sometimes. I’ve also managed to make the MusicXML generate correctly, regardless of measure number. I’ve tested it quite a bit and it does seem to work as expected every time. So one of the few bits that doesn’t have strange bugs. I’ve also tried adding audio the the Instruments but I’ve run into problems with my Source Element and I’ve just run out of time to fix it. I would have loved to have had audio working but it just wasn’t possible. I’ve also tried to add scaling changes to the notes, this is far from perfect but it’s a start. I’ve done my best to try and at least implement most of the features I wanted and this as led to some things being a little glitchy but I can accept that as version 0.001 of the Score Editor. This was a pretty big project, much bigger than I anticipated and it’s been a long hard road to get to where I am now. I’m happy to have reached the end and look back on everything that I’ve learned in the last 12 weeks. It has been an amazing experience to be able to focus on code without having to worry about things. What I’ve learned throughout GSoC: That as much as I learn I will always need to learn more. I’ve spent long enough with roughly documented toolkits to know that to master these things is pretty difficult and nearly impossible unless you devote a lot of time to them. I’ve come away wanting to expand and improve on my project and work towards creating something that is really cool to me personally. Yes I didn’t finish my original design, but that wasn’t through lack of trying, I’d just overreached in what I thought I could do. I’ll continue contributing to Jokosher and to any Open Source projects that appeal to me, this whole experience has changed my perspective a great deal and I want to contribute and give back more to the FOSS community. So here’s to the end of my Summer of Code. [0] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2Q [1] - https://code.launchpad.net/~redache/jokosher/MusicXMLEditor [2] - http://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2010/DavidWilliams_Jokosher#preview Thanks for reading! and congratulations to everyone else that finished their summer of code. David Williams, Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor. ___ jokosher-devel-list mailing list jokosher-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/jokosher-devel-list
