Weekly Report 08 - 19/07/2010

[David Williams <redache googlemail com>]

Hi Everyone,

This week has been a much better week for getting stuff done. You can
find the blog post as usual at [0] and the code at [1]. It's now
starting to come together!.

----------Weekly Report text-----------

What I've done this week:

This week is the first week that things have really started to come
together and I think I might be finally getting used to GTK and
Python. I've managed to override the widget size for instruments so
that I can modify the size of the staff/stave being drawn. Elleo's
guidance helped a lot and I now need to get it to do it on a 2 measure
basis (i.e. 1 measure + 1 measure to edit, 1 measure fills, an extra
measure is added) and to add a note adding ability to the score. This
is the stuff that will actually make it useful and do things!.

I've also added a ScoreControlBox to the instrument shelf, Which is
normally used for adding a couple of tools under the waveform when
it's selected (for trimming etc.). I think it looks pretty nice and
took a lot of arguing with Unicode to get working. I had to revet to
using raw unicode code points rather than the u'\U000000' notation  as
Python doesn't like splitting Unicode that uses \U000. The
ScoreControlBox also returns the correct duration for the note
selected which I can use to plug into the model so I can make it aware
of the duration of the current note, then I'll base the actual note on
the position of it in the Score.

You can find a screenshot at [2].

I've also discussed how the Score instruments will be represented with
Elleo. It'd be best to have a tab in the Add Instrument dialog that
offers the option of the same instruments as midi and then base the
midi instrument on the selection. This shouldn't be too difficult to
implement as it's just duplicating the current tracks and adding a
midi type to the Instrument type.

What I plan to do next week:

Work on getting the stave to render on a 2 measure basis and start on
note addition capabilities for the Score Controls. I have a fair idea
of how I want it to look when a note is being added is just a case of
transferring that to Cairo.

What I've learned this week:

Unicode can be a pain when it doesn't work right, especially if you're
using some extended Unicode symbols, like the Musical Notes are. I do
like the look of the Unicode Musical Notes though and I think that
they look as good as a dedicated Music font, it also means that they
can change to the users font setting. I may experiment with the
pre-installed fonts that will exist on most Linux systems and see
which looks best and then lock the font to that.

[0] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2w
[1] - https://code.launchpad.net/~redache/jokosher/MusicXMLEditor
[2] - http://redache.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/scoregoodness.png

Thanks for reading,

David Williams,
Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor.