[LAU] State of the art GUI

[david]

Hmmm, RG works quite well on my budget laptop's 1280x800 display. As 
does Ardour 2. Haven't tried Ardour3. For comparison, the K CD Ripper 
app on my system always opens its window about 1800px wide and is not 
resizable.

The Zyn UI is a whole 'nother matter - it works fine, but you can't 
resize it, can't fix the font size issues (text chars too big to fully 
display). I understand the issue there is the developer of Zyn likes it 
that way and sees no reason to change it. Similar to why Cal forked Zyn 
as Yoshimi: Zyn developer sees no reason to change things that Cal 
considered important.

I doubt that "most" people on this list use ecasound. ;-) But GUIs are 
NOT the perfect UI for everything!

IDEALLY, your program is split in 2 parts. One part is the back end that 
does the work and has a complete, cleanly-defined and well-documented 
API callable from multiple languages. The other part is the UI. If the 
backend's API is good, the UI can be completely separate from the 
backend. If someone doesn't like the UI (it's too cluttered, too heavy, 
too little) they can roll their own. If someone needs a text UI, they 
can write one, too.

That way, "non-UI-design"-focussed programmers can make a great back 
end, while those more interested in UI design can make a great front end.

allcoms wrote:
> I'm surprised Alex included RG in that list as to be honest, powerful 
> and fully-featured program as it is, I think RG is really let down by 
> its clunky (mainly too big) GUI and I was hoping for a complete overhaul 
> when it got ported to QT4 but sadly that didn't happen. Attractive GUIs 
> are definitely great but are always secondary to functionality and 
> stability, Besides, most people on this list are quite happy to work 
> with apps that have NO gui ie ecasound or minimal, archaic GUIs ala PD.
> 
> For me, the biggest turn off in a GUI is if its too big- ZASFX/Yoshimi, 
> RG and to a lesser extent Ardour all suffer from GUI's that are a 
> nightmare for smaller displays such as netbooks and older/budget 
> laptops. I do like the look of Ardour but I still believe it needs to go 
> on a bit of a diet. There are still many perfectly good laptops (Core 2 
> Duos etc) that can't do any better than 1280x800 but I'd encourage devs 
> to try and get their apps to fit nicely onto 1024x768 to be even more 
> inclusive.
> 
> On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 12:10 PM, <fons at kokkinizita.net 
> <mailto:fons at kokkinizita.net>> wrote:
> 
>     On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 07:27:55AM +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> 
>      > Speaking of pretty interfaces, both MusE and OOM2 need a revamp. OOM2
>      > is a step in the right direction, but it's still in late 90s (as well
>      > as way too many other apps). Sadly, there is only one Thorsten Wilms,
>      > and whoever did Wired is not around anymore. IMO, only Calf from Git
>      > has state of the art UI today, with Ardour 3 next to it and
>     Rosegarden
>      > trotting along.
> 
>     I'd be interested to know what, in your opinion, makes a GUI 'state
>     of the art' as opposed 'late 90s'. In other words, a list of features,
>     properties etc. as opposed to just an example to look at.
> 
>     P.S. I'm not trolling. I really want to know.
> 
>     Ciao,
> 
>     --
>     FA


-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community