[Ardour-Dev] Ardour 2.3 released

[Fons Adriaensen]

[ Second part of my reply to Jesse, which I forgot to 
  copy to the list]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 08:54:02AM -0500, Jesse Chappell wrote:

> If you could elaborate on some of your ideas here, there's a good
> chance someone (other than you, even) might step up and do it!  Good
> GUIs are hard, and we need all the help we can get.

A follow-up to my previous post. There is one
consideration which I forgot to mention, but
which I think is important.

One key to doing things like audio edits precisely,
efficiently, and in a way that doesn't induce stress
very rapidly could very well be to do it in a way that
requires the least amount of visual feedback and
interaction.

This is why vim is faster than MS Word, but in this
case there is also the additional condition that what
you want to evaluate is the *sound* and not the on-
screen result. Your attention should be allowed to
focus on the aural domain and not be forced to switch
to visual input.

Compare it to a musician tuning or adjusting his
instrument, or a sound engineer changing the level
of a track in his mix. Both will typically look away
from the thing they are actually manipulating, or
will even close their eyes.

In fact I remember doing a lot of quite demanding
editing work on early digital systems that had no
visual representation of the edits at all. And yet
they were a pleasure to use.


-- 
FA

Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica
Parma, Italia

Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.