Re: testing beast - some results

[Tim Janik <timj gtk org>]

On Sun, 7 Dec 2003, Henning Sprang wrote:

> 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.

great.

> 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.

the source package 0.5.5-2 is broken in debian and thus the binary also.
i've written sam hocevar, hopefully building new packages from the just
released 0.5.6 will fix matters.

> 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 :)

nah, go ahead, you should have noticed on this list by now, that
you're not the only person with build problems ;)

> 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.

yeah, object selection and rubber-band selection for the router and the
track view are still on the todo list.

> 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.

that's simply gnome standard.

> 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.

properties in context menu does work. about double clicks, that sounds a
bit window-ish. i rarely find myself need to double-click something, since
i switched to gnome.

> 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).

yeah, rubber-band selection is the common term to it i believe.

> Then one should be able to move those
> multiple selected items together, to.
> Maybe even things like grouping
> them together would be cool.

grouping is non trivial, line 164 in the current TODO so
still a way to go. but the basics of how to achieve it are already
lined out there ;)

> Another real far step would be the ability
> to copy those selected groups, and paste them into a new/other
> synthesizer pane.

heh, yeah. an object clippboard, also part of the todo ;)

> 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?

that's debian packaging. beast comes with a couple old test songs in
test/ in the source tarball. these are likely to be removed. debian
puts those und /usr/share/docs/beast/examples/.
the actual demo song also offered through the menu is there only
since 0.5.5, and that's being installed under $(prefix)/bse/v0.5.6/demo/.

we could even shipp more demos there, if people are willing to
contribute some.

> 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 :)

hm, i'm not sure where that button would go. looking at applications that
have such thing (e.g. gnumeric, abiword), the save button is packed into
a per-project toolbar, which beast lacks.

> 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.

yes, on the todo, as well as asking "do you want to save?" when closing
the project window, instead of just closing regardless of modified data.
i mean to get around to this, but haven't yet ;-[]

> 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

not really in the file, but a couple of common backup file naming schemes
for auto-saving exist and are employed by major applications.

> 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...

well, to some extend you did, but then the TODO in CVS is somewhat
cryptic in places. there's only so much one can hack in a 24h day,
so sometimes it seems the TODO is bound to growth and never shrinks... ;)

>
> Henning
>

---
ciaoTJ