[ardour-users] GUI pet peeves

[Paul Davis]

On Sat, 2007-02-03 at 16:23 -0500, Dan Tepper wrote:
> I've been playing with Ardour 2.0 beta 11.1 and it is really looking
> good these days. However, I have some pet peeves with the interface
> behavior.
> 
> 1. Buttons (Solo, Mute, etc) highlight as if the were pressed when I
> mouse over them - 

its a very basic piece of GTK functionality. we've disabled it for some
buttons, it needs to be extended to the rest. its not trivial to
disable. the GTK crew think its a very important component of GUI
design.

> 2. Fader DB settings. It is nice to be able to directly enter a db
> setting in the edit window rather than having to slide the fader. This
> is a feature I have really wanted to see. The problem is, the edit
> interface is erratic. If i enter "2" and press return, the window will
> display "1.9". 

this is mostly because of some imprecise math. you set the gain to 2dB,
ardour computes a gain coefficient that corresponds to 2dB, then the GUI
recomputes what dB value to show. sometimes, it comes out as a little
different than the number you entered (even though the actual gain is
precisely what you asked for). please file a mantis report on this so it
is not forgotten.

> If i enter "2.0" it usually works. Also, the way selected
> text is highlighted rather than changing the background around selected
> text is not particularly intuitive. 

will fix.

> I always have to look twice to make
> sure I've selected all the text. Finally, sometimes when I hit enter,
> the cursor remains in the edit window, leaving me to wonder if the
> change was noticed by ardour.

will fix.

> 3. Zoom-In, Zoom-Out and Zoom-To-Session buttons are gone.

they're not gone. they've migrated along with the zoom focus selector
down the lower left.

> 4. Faders. I liked the old style faders. The new design is not as easy
> to see quickly. Maybe I'll get used to it, but the older fader heads
> were easier to read.

sorry, but a lot of people were enthusiastic about the new design. we
can't do both - the drawing techiques are totally different.

> Functionally Ardour2 is working well for me, runs quite stable and fast.
> I use it several hours a day in my home recording studio. I've run Sonar
> and Cubase, but frankly I think Ardour is better than both of those.

thanks for the compliments and the feedback.

--p