[linux-audio-user] Any MIDI apps that don't suck?

[Chris Cannam]

This should really be on rosegarden-user.  I'm cc'ing it now, and
setting Reply-To: to go there.  I don't want to clutter up LAU with
RG-specific stuff, but I will reply briefly to each of your points
here just because I don't want to leave the LAU subscribers thinking
Rosegarden is no use for anything at all.  I'll assume here that
you're using a version at least as recent as 0.8.

Silvan wrote:
> I'm having a bit of trouble with the whole interface paradigm too.

I think your real problem is that we haven't provided any user
documentation for anything except the notation editor yet.

> If I start from scratch, I create a segment exactly one measure long.

If you click-and-drag with the pencil tool, you should be able to
drag out segments of whatever length you like.  They don't have to be
in multiples of a bar, either -- for example you can hold down Shift
to have no snap-to-grid at all.  You can also create segments by
clicking and dragging with the middle mouse button using the arrow
(select) tool.

> Seems the "join" tool would let me merge segments, but it doesn't
> work.  I can't find any way to combine segments.

Select them all, then use the Segments | Collapse Segments menu
function.  (We will probably rename it to something more obvious
soon.)

> Should the Segments -> Auto Split item turn an imported monosegment
> into one segment per measure?  It doesn't seem to do anything.

It breaks a segment on silent bars, as you discovered.

> Um...  There should be a way to move the blue "play from here" bar by
> hand, instead of having to futz with the transport buttons.

You need to "Show Rulers" from the Settings menu, then you can
click on a ruler to position the playback pointer immediately.

> Also, playback should stop at the end of the
> song.  It seems to continue on forever.

It does stop at the end of the song, it's just that the end of the
song is a marker that by default is something like 100 bars from
the start.  The GUI for moving this marker is not really there yet,
but the Edit | Change Composition Duration menu option will do it,
rather clumsily.

> What I wanted to do after I created the first one-measure segment was
> drag the right side of the thing out several measures.

That's what the resize tool should do.

> For example, select the first one, then shift-click three segments
> over.  It should grab all the ones in between.

Shift-click (with the arrow tool) does individual multi-select,
the function that you expect ctrl-click to do.  You can also drag
out a rectangle with the arrow tool to select everything in it.

> Now say I have three measures in four tracks that I want to copy.  It
> seems I need to do a lot of stuff by hand.

You can select all the segments in a track by clicking on the
track name button at the left, but you can't yet select all the
segments in more than one track, no.

> That, or some easy facility for splitting off everything below
> middle C and dumping it into a separate track.

Yeah, that's a basic function we lack (even Rosegarden 2.1 had
that).

> Now that I consider it, another thing you can do with Cakewalk's
> track/number highlighter thingie is that the Staff view will combine
> all selected staffs into one editor.

Well you can open multiple segments in a notation editor, though
they will all be on separate staffs.  Just select them all then
use the Open in Notation Editor function...


Chris