[linux-audio-dev] [ANN] Gungirl Sequencer 0.1

[Paul Davis]

>Great!   Another linux audio tool inaccessible
>to the blind.  I am feeling very very left out...
>
>Is there any chance that some of you might realize
>that providing such functionality in a UI independent
>way would be great?  Every new LAD program I see is
>basicly GUI dependent, and its functionality can not
>be easily used from without command-line or ncurses environments.
>
>I know, I know, we are not important to you, and a too
>small group of interest.  But I had to make my
>frustration some air.

i understand your frustration. but please remember that the challenge
of making non-visual interfaces for editing multi-track audio that can
be used dynamically (i.e its not just a file saying when to play which
audio chunk when, and you edit the file with a text editor) ... this
is still basically a research project that could probably justify at
least a masters, if not a full doctoral degree :)

the visual interface frees the user from having to remember a
potentially huge amount of information because its made persistent in
the visual display. i have not yet seen or heard any ideas about how
to use a plain text interface to do most of the things that a visual
editor like this makes possible. dynamically positioning audio when
you can see it is an completely different process from editing a text
playlist, for example.

programs like this are typically 70% GUI and 30% audio backend. asking
the developers to take such a program and remove the GUI is really
like asking them to develop a second program. i say this with some
experience, having developed a text-only interface to ardour. the
people who have worked on and used that interface have had lots of
discussions about how to de-visualize ardour's editor, but it appears
extremely difficult, and is an independent project at least as large
and complex as ardour's GUI interface.

--p