linuxaudio.org

On Sat, 12 Feb 2011, Chris Cannam wrote:
> On 12 February 2011 16:54, Brent Busby  wrote:

quoted text
>> If you ever get the old Rosegarden working, let us know. =A0Lots of peop=

le

quoted text
>> seem to think that it's necessary to make something run on GTK or QT to =

make

quoted text
>> it look good. =A0I actually loved the look of the old Rosegarden.

>

> It's not just a question of looks though, of course.  These "proper"

> toolkits provide many basic usability features, including such obvious

> things as keyboard shortcuts and menus that don't go away when you

> release the mouse button, that were absent from Prehistoric

> Rosegarden's Athena-based widgets.

Yeah, that's true, and I realize how awful it is to directly program=20

xlib.  But sometimes the results that people come up with when they're=20

forced to make their own widgets look better to me though than what the=20

any of the toolkits offer.
> Though I did have a soft spot for that flat monochrome look -- which=20

quoted text
> was partly a design consequence of doing much of the initial work=20

> using genuinely mono displays (huge, high-resolution Sun CRT monitors=20

> supporting black and white pixels only, no greyscale).

I think it makes the whole desktop is less gaudy if everything window on=20

the screen isn't trying to use all sixteen million colors by itself.
> Looks aside, if you tried Antique Rosegarden again now I'm sure you'd=20

quoted text
> be surprised by how little it could actually do.

Well, one application niche that doesn't seem to be very well filled=20

though is minimal *console* sequencers for gigging.  In fact, you could=20

go further than X11 Rosegarden and ask why there aren't any good=20

sequencers that run off a console VTY with complete keyboard navigation=20

for everything.
I think a lot of people, if they could have a sequencer that gives them=20

zero concerns over window size and position, widget-dragging, pulldown=20

menus, and all that other stuff that makes you have to mouse around like=20

an idiot on stage, and runs on a thin no-X11 system with Alsa/Jack and=20

not much else, they might be in heaven.
There used to be sequencers like that for DOS, but the only problem was=20

that they ran on DOS, which had almost no Midi support without seriously=20

ugly kludges, especially on laptops that had no soundcards with Midi.=20

(Remember those terrible parallel port interfaces?)
Today you could have the full Alsa/Jack services on a VTY, running on a=20

very thin Linux system, if there was a console sequencer that was made=20

to run like that.  And everything could be done with hotkeys and arrow=20

key navigation.  Really fast and light, like the old DOS sequencers used=20

to be.
--=20

+ Brent A. Busby=09 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys

+ UNIX Systems Admin=09 +  banging on a million typewriters will

+ University of Chicago=09 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of

+ Physical Sciences Div. +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,

+ James Franck Institute +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky