Re: [Just Talk] Re: [linux-audio-user] Why we need graphic designers

This thread is quite relevant to me because I'm trying to build a modular synth gui at the moment. My main motivation is that I want a JACK patchbay that has this type of GUI, but ultimately I would also like to add the ability to wire LADSPA plugins directly into the network (the difference between this and your average modular synth app is that the guis for these plugins will be drawn on top of the plugins' boxes in the network, rather than in their own windows). Also, I would release the GUI as a gtkmm widget so that it could be used in other applications. Anyway, the point of mentioning this here is that what I had originally envisaged was curved wires drawn over the top of the modules, and each wire having a control point which can be dragged around to change the curve it follows (right-clicking would bring up a menu so that the wire can be deleted, changed colour, etc). I was also toying with the idea of making ports dockable so that if you drag a module next to another one so the ports line up they will automatically be connected, making things like chaining stereo effects much quicker. However, drawing wires over the top of widgets turns out to be far from easy in gtkmm, and if people actually prefer the straight-lines-not-crossing-modules approach it would probably be better to do it like that, although I'll have to think hard about the routing algorithm. I'm quite interested in making this GUI as intuitive and efficient to use as possible, so I'd be really interested to hear people's thoughts on how such a GUI should look and behave, and what features you'd like to see. sorry for the long post, Nathaniel. On Wednesday 22 January 2003 2:42 pm, Mike Rawes wrote: