[LAU] The new GUI of QjackCtl renders QjackCtl unusable

[Tim]

Hi, I just installed 5.5 to see what's up...
Maybe best to discuss at their site, but here's my take:

At first I thought I'd made a mistake because it
  was the same old UI. Then I found the magic button...

On 1/28/19 7:52 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> since I'm using Linux nowadays more or less only for mastering with
> imported audio files, I didn't notice a disastrous change of the
> qjackctl GUI, that seemingly already happened a while ago.
> 
> The "Connect" window is replaced by a "Graph" window.

... Not replaced, optional.
See Setup, Misc, "Replace connections with graph button".

> Complex connections are never easy to track visually, but at least the
> old "Connect" GUI is clear, concise, well-structured and readable.
> 
> The new "Graph" GUI is seemingly an attempt to draw virtual Pollock
> pictures, see https://i.imgur.com/3TFRGZF.png, even the text became
> unreadable. However, even without way too small text at tolerable
> zooming for the graph, in one colour on nearly the same colour and even
> without shadow effects, the way the routing is displayed by default
> renders qjackctl unusable.

Ah, connection graphs... There are two kinds: Ugly or butt ugly.
A necessary evil. All kidding aside there are two kinds and
  it was wise to leave them both in there.

It looks great. Nice job!
I'm sure it will be improved just give it time. Talk to them.

However if I may offer some advice to the team:

I agree on those above points.
Please, below around 7pt font, *turn off* the anti-aliasing.
In MusE it did wonders for our small mixer strip fonts.
Wow, did it ever sharpen, *brighten*, and crispen those small fonts!
It really made the text stand out fully.
We added a 'lowest anti-aliased font size' user setting.
Hopefully whatever drawing mechanism is being used would
  allow this tweak. Ours is still good ol' Qt widgets.

That text you see in the graphs could be brightened by, oh about
  30% to 50% more by doing it. And it'll be much sharper.

Also, I agree that for maximum readability, here the text really
  ought to be white. Especially since here it's on different coloured
  backgrounds and worse, those colours are user-selectable and thus
  apparently /random/.
For that reason I strongly agree as well that the text really
  needs a *shadow*. That's easy to do as well.

Thanks for listening.
Tim.

> 
> I'm aware that it is possible to move the items, I also can move my
> computer, synthesizers, mixing console, effects, but for good reasons I
> don't want to move anything from one to another place, if my intention
> is to restore a session and to make music.
> 
> Searching for the last usable qjackctl release, I found out that the last
> version providing the usable "Connect" GUI is 0.5.2.
> 
> [rocketmouse at archlinux tmp]$ cat /var/log/pacman.log | grep qjackctl | grep grade | tail -4
> [2019-01-29 01:12] [ALPM] downgraded qjackctl (0.5.5-1 -> 0.5.4-1)
> [2019-01-29 01:13] [ALPM] downgraded qjackctl (0.5.4-1 -> 0.5.0-1)
> [2019-01-29 01:14] [ALPM] upgraded qjackctl (0.5.0-1 -> 0.5.3-1)
> [2019-01-29 01:16] [ALPM] downgraded qjackctl (0.5.3-1 -> 0.5.2-2)
> 
> Am I the only one who wants to get back the old GUI?
> 
> Regards,
> Ralf
>