[Ardour-Dev] Set Selected Regions

[Tim Orford]

On Mon, Oct 01, 2007 at 12:35:49PM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-08-27 at 15:35 +0200, Tim Orford wrote:
> > http://designinginterfaces.com/Multi-Level_Undo, 
[...]
> 
> you're wrong. and in addition, ardour's current approach is *precisely*
> what she advocates: 
[...]
> ardour uses "smart menu items", which is the full extent of her
> recommendations for dealing with this issue.

My quote was misplaced. Please accept my apologies.

Nevertheless, the main thing I take from the page is that
it has a picture of a history dialogue box right at the top,
demonstrating that this is a mainstream UI pattern.


> > Even Bash allows you to browse the history.
> 
> you've totally confused two entire different kinds of "history".

I chose to focus on what I perceive to be relevant similarities.

The point is that blindly going through a list is inferior to
having an overview of the list before making changes.


> no, what actually happens in practice, since 99% of the user base
> doesn't think like a programmer, is that they pick some spot in the
> history tree, start making changes, thus creating *more* branches, and
> end up sending an email or a forum post saying "why is ardour's undo so
> complicated to use? i get all these lines every time i try to change
> anything". believe me, i've seen it.

Its sad to hear that the users have worn you down :-)
It might be worth bearing in mind though, that 1) the people
on your forums might not be your long-term target users, and 
2) that it might be the implementation rather than the idea
that is lacking. Support is obviously an important resource
concern of course, but I'm sure you dont fully subscribe to
the idea that good software design is just about 
satisfying the casual user.

I do feel strongly that Undo is a critical feature for
any creative production tool once the basic featureset is complete.
Advanced 'versioning' of a project needs to be incorporated into 
the tool to avoid hitting the brick wall you often get after using 
a tool for a year or 2. Watching some very skilled software users
(in several fields) recently has reminded me how useful good
Undo can be.

I did try some UI coding, but it appears that the Ardour model
classes dont support iterating over the history list and I got 
discouraged at that point. I quite beleive you when you say this
area is a 'nightmare', but did you find the nightmare to be with 
the model or the UI?

Regards
--
Tim Orford