[LAD] Packaging advice

Pelle Nilsson perni at lysator.liu.se
Wed Jun 11 07:36:54 UTC 2008


Hi,

Pete Black <pete at marchingcubes.com> writes:

> The actual electribe hardware has a 'virtual keyboard' mode where the  
> 16 step keys can be used as a 1-and-a-bit octave keyboard, but i  
> think i may just implement midi recording + midi thru to allow a real  
> keyboard to be used, or the virtual keyboard of your choice - i  
> really want to make this sequencer simple and modular, rather than an  
> all-things-to-all-people sequencer.

I agree about making things simple and modular, but I still think it
would be preferable to have keys mapped to all the buttons on the
screen (single keys for often used buttons like the 16 steps or to
change to other parts, no combos), and that the step keys could also
be switched to act as a virtual keyboard. It would really increase
usability to not have to switch window to a virtual keyboard to do on
of the most important functions of the application, editing notes.

More sequencers could really be improved by adding the ability to play
on the computer keyboard, and in general making sure it is possible to
control everything from the keyboard, IMHO. Trackers have been doing
it forever. I know that has historic reasons, but I don't see any of
the newer trackers, on linux or elsewhere, requiring an external
(virtual) keyboard to play/edit.

The only good alternative I can see would be to have some kind of
application that could be triggered in the desktop environment to
temporarily take over keyboard events from all other applications and
map them to ALSA/JACK MIDI events instead, without having to switch to
another window. I'm not sure how easy that would be to do in a
portable way (working with Gnome/KDE etc). But even with a tool like
that I would not mind if a virtual electribe to behave more like an
electribe with the same specific keys tied to the 16 step/note keys
just like on a real electribe.

-- 
/Pelle



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