[LAU] Editing zynadsuxfx/yoshimi patches?

[S. Massy]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:05:13AM -1000, david wrote:
> S. Massy wrote:
> >On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 10:44:33PM -1000, david wrote:
> >>Julien Claassen wrote:
> >>
> >>> One thought, I think it might be more of a problem in the open
> >>>software world, not knowing about needs for such special groups as
> >>>blind, colour-blind or other people. There are so many guidelines,
> >>>ISO ones and other EU and US goverment ones, some more specific,
> >>>other not so. But as Massy pointed out: We are only 0.x%, in the
> >>>field of music maybe a little more.
> >>I'd say a little more. And many of the blind in music are highly
> >>successful, so you'd think there'd be more interest in the world of
> >>music-making software being accessible to the blind.
> >>
> >>Of course, someone like Stevie Wonder can afford to pay a lot more
> >>for such accessibility than others ...
> >The ultimate accessibility: hire a sighted person. :)
> 
> Actually, I'd think that if you have your DAW set up so you're
> interacting with it solely through hardware controls, you'd have the
> best accessibility: you listen to the sound, modify and control it
> via the hardware. I just think there's no need whatever for a
> musician to require anything visual in order to make sound. I've
In theory, you're quite correct. There are some very nice (and also
expensive) "control surfaces" which are designjed to link up with DAWs
and control them like you would  a regular mixer. The better ones even
have motorised faders so that the faders will match the value of the
control to which it is assigned. In fact, the fellow I talked about was
using such a set-up. Unfortunately, they don't handle *every* aspect or
possible functionality of the DAW or are not necessarily compatible with
every effect or plugin one might need to use. 

One of the worst things for blind people when interacting with
technology are devices with LCDs and buttons with context-sensitive
roles: we have to learn all those little fiddly menus by wrote and hope
not to click one time too many or too little. Oh, and rotary encoders
are pretty bad too. :)

When I was having a bash at using Logic for mixing I came more or less
to the same conclusion you did above and so decided to buy a controler
to drive Logic. I couldn't afford anything like the big mixing consoles,
so I went for a Novation Remote Zero SL. It's a great controler and it
comes with a piece of software that's suppose to bridge with DAWs and
automatically remap the controler to fit the DAW's controls. Anyway, to
cut a long story short, it was an absolute pain to even get going (had
to have the help of *two* sighted people), and once working it wasn't
very reliable. Also, accidentally brushing certain buttons would send
the controler in various special modes from which there were no simple
exit sequences. So I gave it all up as a bad job. The point of this
story is that the very device which was suppose to help me overcome
accessibility issues was itself inaccessible. 

There is indeed no reason why anything music related should be visual,
but that's the way it is neverthe4less.

Cheers,
S.M.