[LAU] [ANN] Qtractor 0.1.2 (frantic dame) is out!

[Rui Nuno Capela]

Season greetings,

As (almost) everybody knows already, or ought to, Qtractor is an 
Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application, written in C++ on the Qt4 
framework and Linux is about its native platform. Thus, JACK and ALSA 
are the main infrastructures that fit to purpose, respectively for audio 
and MIDI.

Also a known fact is that this is nothing more than my pet, hobby, 
spare-time-burner, whatever project, but... it's actually my own dogfood 
where digital music making and (re)creation matters. Yep. I still have 
this sublime hope to make it evolve as a fairly featured Desktop 
Audio/MIDI Workstation, one special and dedicated to the personal 
home­studio. As joked many times before, it's perfectly tagged for the 
techno-boy bedroom home-studio, but techno-girls can also apply ;). You 
tell me.

   Qtractor 0.1.2 (frantic dame) is out!

As obvious as in any respectable easter egg ;)

This time, some important fixes have sneaked in and other are surely 
popping and will be lurking out. Main ones go down like this:

   * You can finally create new clips from scratch.
   * Track record monitoring with audio effects applied.
   * New Track/View menu items, all shortcut configurable.
   * Overlapped clips rendering hopefully fixed.
   * Improved MIDI editor selection.
   * New clip-split command.
   * VST plug-in parameters are now undo/redo-able (mostly).

You can grab the new stuff from the usual project site:

   http://qtractor.sourceforge.net
   http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor

Direct download links:

   http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.1.2.tar.gz
   http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.1.2-user-manual.pdf

Wait, please take a note: if you ever feel you're having something to 
say, a heads-up call or just a direction to point, do not ever hesitate 
in having your worries known upstream. Please, feel welcome at my

   http://www.rncbc.org

Now the plain change-log follows, since she was just a futile duchess:

- Session length fixed (yet again) while extend recording; also
   improved follow-playhead switching while playback/recording.

- Whitespace sanitization gets leaner for all recorded filenames.

- Run-time SSE optimization detection has been improved while on
   configure; additionally, IEEE 32bit float specific optimizations
   have also sneaked in.

- SSE optimization is now featured over all audio monitoring, and
   most specially on audio bus buffering, lowering the CPU burden a
   bit while doing track and bus gain, pan, metering and mix-down.

- Fixed MIDI clip move into new track, preserving the original
   channel, bank and program whenever possible.

- Fixed session cursor seeking, specially regarding overlapped
   clips, once gain.

- The MIDI editor gets new menu access to current MIDI clip track
   (see File/Track/Inputs, Outputs, Properties); selection of MIDI
   events has also been improved, specially regarding overlapped
   note events.

- Clip split command enters the stage (see Edit/Clip/Split) about
   splitting the current (selected) clip at the current playhead
   position (red cursor line).

- Creating new clips from scratch is now finally permitted (see
   Edit/Clip/New...); additionally, the clip properties dialog is
   now also allowing for changing the filename (and track/channel
   as special to MIDI clips).

- Record armed tracks are now properly monitored and fed through
   their own output audio bus on mix-down, which includes plug-in
   effects processing.

- The files widget get alternating coloured rows.

- VST plug-in preset values are now being restored properly;
   individual parameter changes are now being queued for the
   also convenient undo/redo command pattern.

- Some audio clip buffer-sync tweaks have sneaked in, improving
   and fixing the rendering of full-overlapped, integrally cached
   and/or offset clips altogether.

- Stuffed one primordial shot on XInitThreads() at the main head,
   and let native VST plug-ins start behaving as they should, or
   not; this might be in fact problematic and dangerous for people
   who won't ever try the JUCE based plugins as from JUCETICE
   (http://www.anticore.org/jucetice), due to some broken locking
   mechanism in xcb; thanks anyway to mighty kRAkEn/gORe at JUCETICE
   for this precious hint and from who knows best.

- True deterministic session length update has due fixed.

- Track menu has new accessible actions:
   Track/Inputs - show current track input bus connections;
   Track/Outputs - show current track output bus connections;
   Track/State/Record - arm current track for recording;
   Track/State/Mute - mute current track;
   Track/State/Solo - solo current track;
   Track/Navigate/First - make current the first track;
   Track/Navigate/Previous - make current the previous track;
   Track/Navigate/Next - make current the next track;
   Track/Navigate/Last - make current the last track;
   Track/Move/Top - move current track to top;
   Track/Move/Up - move current track up;
   Track/Move/Down - move current track down;
   Track/Move/Bottom - move current track to bottom;

- View menus have new accessible actions:
   View/Zoom/In - horizontal and vertical zoom-in (Ctrl +);
   View/Zoom/Out - horizontal and vertical zoom-out (Ctrl -);
   View/Zoom/Reset - reset both zoom levels to default;
   View/Snap - select current snap-per-beat setting;

- Plug-in forms don't auto-open on session reload anymore.

- Keyboard shortcuts icon item (Help/Shortcuts...) sneaks in.

That's all folks. For the time being... :)

Cheers && Enjoy
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela