[linux-audio-dev] Alternative Sequencer User Interface

Hi! Firt of all, since this my first post, some words about me: My name's Thorsten Wilms, I'm studying industrial design in Germany/Wuppertal. I'm very interested in interaction / interface design, and of course making music on the Linux platform. My coding skills are _very_ basic:( Used Cubase VST on Windows, but I can't stand Windows anymore, and what people around here have developed / are working on is more interesting anyway, not to forget that open-source just feels better and gives me a chance to influence things :) Ok, now the screenshot Tim Orford linked to (http://80.61.20.184/wiki/smgui_5.png) reminds me of Ableton Live. Everybody who doesn't know it should take a look at this screenshots: http://www.ableton.com/pages/products/live/live3tour/whatislive/live3sessio… http://www.ableton.com/pages/products/live/live3tour/whatislive/live3arrang… It's optimized for live usage. No pseudo 3d look, everything fast and easy to 'read'. Not that everybody should copy this right away, but it might be a source of inspiration. And now for everybody interested in a different approach to a sequencer gui, I would like to point to the 3d application Blender. It has something like it's own windowing system, whereby what is called a Window in Blender is rather like Panes in other environments. You can split windows verticaly and horizontaly and resize every window by dragging the borders. Every window (usualy) has a header (even though these can be at the bottom) wich can hold buttons and menus. But the first control in every header is for selecting the windowtype (3d view, file-browser, schematic view, ...). Setups of these windows can be saved as Screens. Shortcuts allow to switch through Screens, or to maximize the window the mouse is over to full-screen (or minimize afterwards). All this allows to adapt Blender to one's own workflow or current task at hand. Screenshots: http://wrstud.urz.uni-wuppertal.de/~ka0394/forum/04-04-10_blender_1.png http://wrstud.urz.uni-wuppertal.de/~ka0394/forum/04-04-10_blender_2.png The same approach could be used for sequencer / audio suite. To take it a little further, the windowtypes could be seperate applications / plugins. Managing various effects, synths, the mixer and everything else on a single screen in Cubase was a nightmare. I make use of virtual desktops under Linux, but a system like in Blender would be so much more comfortable and fast ... I can't code anything coming only close to such functionality, but I'm more than willing to work on conception and graphics, if there is interest. Thanks for the attention! --- Thorsten Wilms