[LAU] Snd learning curve

[Philipp Überbacher]

Excerpts from Bill Schottstaedt's message of 2011-02-10 21:00:31 +0100:
> Thanks for the kind words about Snd!  If any of you have the
> time and inclination, I'd like to hear how Snd should be changed
> to make it easier to use.  My main interest is in the sound
> processing, not the user interface (which I guess is painfully obvious),
> and I use Snd mainly to work on synthesis.  I almost never
> try to, for example, edit a recording.  Right now, the gtk version
> is in transition from gdk to cairo and gtk2 to gtk3, so it's a worse
> mess than usual.  But, it's a good time to make major changes!

Hi Bill,
I tried SND-GTK and here are some things that could be improved.
1) playback. It's very strange that you need to tick a box to start/stop
playback instead of hitting the space bar.
2) general lack of keybindings
3) In the preferences for example the menu section labels look like
buttons, which is confusing.
4) An error I just got when clicking somewhere in the preference menu:
snd: cairo-surface.c:385: _cairo_surface_begin_modification: Assertion
`! surface->finished' failed.
5) sometimes the meaning of checkboxes is less than obvious (sync,
unite)
6) Dragging scrollbars during playback makes playback very choppy or
stops it altogether, most likely some more general graphics issue, it's
just most obvious with those scrollbars
7) information/option overload. It's nice to have options, but seeing
all those rather cryptic options in a new file dialog is intimidating.
I dabble with audio since years, yet all those mus-* tell me nothing.
Imagine a musician sitting in front of that dialog. A sane default is
crucial and it's probably also a good idea to hide intimidating options
like those or make them less intimidating.

What I love:
1) The "Go Away" label
2) The colorful sliders in the preference menu (nice red/green/blue
here)

I know that I've only scratched the surface of SND, and maybe it's
intended to be programmed rather than simply used, I don't know.
However, from my perspective simply using it is a rather difficult task.
I hope this helps a bit.

Best regards,
Philipp
perspective simply using it