testing beast - some results

[Henning Sprang <henning_sprang gmx de>]

Hy,
Motivated by a feedback about my Home Page
(http://www.sprang.de/index.php?page=BeasT  ) from Tim i
will start writing my results from testing beast to this list.

If i have time i will translate and post the things i already wrote
about that topic, plus my thoughts about creating an integrated
AudioComposer Environment (
http://www.sprang.de/gninneh/tavi/index.php?page=AudioComposer ) to this
list - for now I have to note some more things i am just finding out
before they get lost.

O.K., Some things i will note for now:

1) DavSynDrum not available in Debian package

I just tested the problem with DavSynDrum missing in the debian package
beast-0.5.5-2.
The thing is, DavSynDrum is not available in the debian package if
installed with apt from a debian mirror. DavSyndrum is working very well
when i install beast-0.5.5 from sources downloaded from the beast-ftp site.

I tried to see if DavSynDrum works when compiling the deb-src package,
but the same thing.
Trying to compile beast from cvs is still failing, further questions
about this will come if i stay unsuccessfull for some more time - don't
wanna ask too soon :)

I already filed a bug report with reportbug, as suggested in the debian,
but for now i cannot see it in the debian bug database.

2) Some usability remarks about The synthesizer grid
In most common programs selecting objects in such graphical panes
happens with a single right mouse click.
Then on can perform operations such as delete or copy objects, and move
them around on the drawing pane. I am missing that in in beast - there
is no cops/paste/delete keyboard function, moving objects happens by
grabbing them with middle mouse button - which i find very unusual.
In beast a left click leads to opening the properties window directly. I
would await that this is activated by a double click or by selecting
"properties" in the context window activated by a right click. This is
"correct" in beast.

What would also be nice would be the ability to select multiple objects
at once by drawing a recangular on the pane. (sorry, i don't know the
correct technical term for this, i sound a bit silly, please correct me
if there's a better naming). Then one should be able to move those
multiple selected items together, to. Maybe even things like grouping
them together would be cool. Another real far step would be the ability
to copy those selected groups, and paste them into a new/other
synthesizer pane.

3) demo songs vs. demo menu
Why are some demos in /usr/share/docs/beast/examples and only one song
is in the demo menu?

4) saving a file
a) i am missing a save button in the gui - everyone working with
computers for a while should be aware that saving is thing nice to
happen every few minutes when working intensively :)

b) everytime i save via the file menus save entry, i get asked for a
filename, and if i want to overwrite the file with the same name as the
one i'm editing. that should be the function of the "sace as" menu
entry, probably, "save" should just save the file to the same name. If
one would provide security against saving a bad version over a
previously good version, one could think about introducing a project
history in the file data itself

So far for now. I just happen to see, there's an extensive TODO list in 
the beast CVS - I think i will have a look at it, so i don't post 
feature requests for things that are already planned...

Henning