[Ardour-Users] Ardour 3.0 Alpha 7 released

[Paul Davis]

Hot on the heels of alpha6, here is the 7th alpha release of Ardour
3.0. This fixes a major regression related to panning in alpha6, adds
MIDI note selection channel editing, and a variety of other fixes and
improvements (See below for more details). Ready-to-run binary
packages can be found here:

    * Linux 64 bit Intel:
http://ardour.org/files/Ardour_64bit-3.0alpha7_9732-dbg.tar
    * Linux 32 bit Intel:
http://ardour.org/files/Ardour_32bit-3.0alpha7_9732-dbg.tar

I didn't announce alpha 6 here on the mailing list (it was on
ardour.org) but I've included the change log from that release below.

Newness

    * New MIDI note editing: "c" initiates channel editing for the
current MIDI note selection

Fixage

    * Increase the amount of vertical motion required to trigger
zooming while dragging the playhead
    * Fix restoring Panner state for sessions created with alpha1 thru alpha5.
    * Updated spanish translation (mistakenly claimed to be present in alpha6)
    * New Czech translation (mistakenly claimed to be present in alpha6)
    * Include libs/gtkmm2ext in the translation system
    * Monitor bus now (correctly) has no panner
    * Fix cleanup of LV2 plugin external GUIs (for those plugins whose
GUI "cleanup" handling is itself correct, like those from LinuxDSP)
    * Fix non-working AFL and PFL soloing modes (broken somewhere around alpha5)
    * Sends to the monitor bus now do panning; control is shared with
the main panner for the track/bus

Changes in Alpha 6
------------------------

    * New implementation of AudioClock widget that reduces overhead
and increases flexibility
    * New "time info box" in transport bar shows dynamic duration
information on the current (relevant) selection (object selection when
in object mode; range selection in range mode) and the current punch
range.
    * "Click" button moved and granted a new lease on life with a
metronome icon from Thorsten Wilms.
    * New "delete" operation that works similarly to "cut" but does
not put deleted objects into the cut buffer (i.e. you can't paste
them, and whatever was in the cut buffer stays there). This works for
regions and automation data right now - for MIDI notes it still works
like "cut". To use this from the keyboard (would you believe it - the
Delete key?), you'll need to remove any
~/,config/ardour3/ardour.bindings file that you may have, or use the
keybindings editor.

Fixage

    * Handle install paths that include spaces
    * Hide MIDI notes after track height drops below 20 pixels (too
small otherwise)
    * Compile time fixes for gcc 4.6
    * Fixes crashes caused when refilling diskstream buffers with
compound regions
    * Properly queue "immediate" MIDI data (e.g. a MIDI panic message
block) if it cannot all be delivered in a single JACK process
callback. Previously Ardour would just throw away the data that could
not be delivered within 1 cycle.
    * Various fixes for compound region display and handling
    * Properly handle locating deep inside the MIDI machinery and use
an equivalent to "MIDI Panic" when this happens rather than trying to
just send NoteOff messages for on notes (this fails to turn off notes
played while the MIDI sustain control was on).
    * Correctly turn on and off notes just before the loop point
    * Create and destroy (non-external) LV2 plugin UIs as window is
shown/hidden.
    * Quantize notes to session tempo time, not relative to start of
region (fix issue #4069).
    * Fix a few untranslatable strings, or badly formed-for-translation strings;
    * Updated Czech translation
    * New Spanish translation
    * Fix crashes when double clicking on fader plugin in 'Tracks &
Buses' window (#4082)
    * Remove "smaller" track height (basically just a broken version
of small anyway).
    * Remove no-longer-necessary cruft related to non-editable track
names (which do not exist).
    * Fix smallest height to be correctly padded (just large enough to
hold the button row without ugly clipping).
    * Fix resizing of tracks when renaming (issue #4075).
    * Make button 1 rather than button 3 the default for inserting
notes via modifier shortcut in object mouse mode
    * Remove "Off" as a clock mode
    * Split style files apart to better maintain consistency
(generates a useless error during program startup - thanks GTK);
    * Fix serious breakage with setup of plugin automatable
controls/parameters, causing crash during loading sessions with plugin
automation.
    * Major, substantive reworking of how we store GUI information
(visibility, height) for automation data.
    * Changed labelling of automation tracks to just show the name of
the controlled parameter - more info can be viewed in the tooltip for
the track headers.
    * Build against latest releases of lilv and suil, to fix some
issues with some LV2 plugin GUIs.