[Ardour-Users] Hm...

[Thomas Vecchione]

To again address specific points because for some reason I feel the
need to, not sure why because at this point it sure seems like the
answer to almost every 'question' you have presented as a complaint is
to RTFM...

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 5:49 AM, David Kastrup <dak at gnu.org> wrote:
> Again, implying the knowledge that "export" involves not just exporting,
> but also the part of the editing I wanted to do.  Cutting away parts of
> the region completely (rather than fading) is something I discovered how
> to do, but it is more mode-dependent than desirable (when being able to
> visibly mark a time section with the mouse, it is not helpful that
> "Delete" will only do something discernible with it in a particular mode
> and be ignored otherwise: if Ardour finds nothing more useful to do with
> that keypress, it might well choose to do the obviously intended thing
> rather than nothing).

You have obviously never worked in a professional workflow, which is
where Ardour is intended for.  You specifically will WANT modes that
do not do certain things.  Once I have timing down, I never want it to
move, thus the purpose of LOCK mode.  If I am clicking on a region to
modify gain levels, I don't want that region to move when I click and
drag.  If you think Ardour is bad in this regards by the way, you have
obviously never used Apple's (Since you brought up Apple as an example
of your ideal UI development) professional tools for anything similar
to this.  You can't do anything in Final Cut Pro without being in the
right mode for it on the timeline.  Want to modify a level?  gotta be
in the right tool.  Wanna cut or split a region, gotta be in the right
tool.  Wanna add a cross fade?  Gotta do that by dragging what could
appear as a file onto the track.

> Why are there no hyperlinks to the lucid explanation on the buttons, or
> the toolbar they are situated on?  Where is the point in funneling that
> off to the web where it might be unavailable due to connectivity, and
> not corresponding with the currently running version of Ardour?

You know how few people want to depend on a web browser on a system?
Heck just the inclusion of a hyperlink has stirred up huge amounts of
dialog on this list(Or Ardour-Dev) about professional users and how
stripped down they want their system.  The inclusion of Help>Manual to
point to the manual was far from uncontroversial in that regards.  And
in all honesty, the manual on the web DOES correspond to any version
of Ardour that would link to it currently(Ardour 3 is a moot point
since that has not been released yet and no manual has been released).

>
> How do you ensure integrity between documentation and installed version
> if the documentation is offline and not synchronized to the installed
> version?
>

Good question, are you offering to write the documentation?  I can
tell you that out of people on this list I probably have the most
direct experience of trying to organize documentation to be written
for Ardour, and it is hardly simple.  In fact the technical reference
manual is over 100 pages just covering the functionality of Ardour,
and there is still much to be written.  Until you are offering to
write this documentation and help keep it up to date for every version
of Ardour simultaneously, there isn't much to be said.  Yes we could
do a better job with documentation, of course we would need time to do
it though and most users prefer that developer time gets spent on, you
know fixing bugs and implementing features.


> Annoying as hell.  But after a few years of finally caving in, you have
> to admit that part of what makes your application so great and popular
> is giving in to all those stupid, annoying and unknowledgeable people
> rather than explaining to them why they are stupid, annoying and
> unknowledgeable.
>

Problem here is that many complaints like yours come from people that
are not the target audience of Ardour.  That is something you seem to
continually be missing.

>> Please take time to take a look at the FLOSS manual (
>> http://en.flossmanuals.net/ardour/ ) because Ardour does do things
>> differently; understand that its way of doing things does actually
>> work for the majority of its users (including me), and that it has
>> been in development for ten years (which means that major
>> architectural changes, especially stability-robbing ones, aren't
>> likely.  That being said, Ardour 3 is a fairly major change, and I
>> look forward to trying it out one day....hopefully sooner rather than
>> later, just haven't had time to compile it and run it much yet.....)
>
> Sanitizing the GUI does not typically involve changes in the
> architecture.

Major GUI changes in Ardour that are already planned DO require a
major change in the architecture actually.  To start with an entire
new canvas system.

      Seablade