Weekly Report 09 - 27/07/2010

[David Williams <redache googlemail com>]

Hi Everyone,

Below is my report as always which you can find at [0] and you can get
my code at [1]. This week has been difficult and very little reward
for my efforts but having note drawing that works is nearly in my
grasp!.

------------------Weekly Report---------------------------

What I’ve done this week:

This week I’ve been working on getting a Mouse Listener set up so the
user can add notes to the stave. It doesn’t work and I’m not really
sure why, I’m fairly certain I’ve got the context set right but
further experimentation is needed and it may be worth asking for help
from my mentor. If I can get it to update the cairo context with the
pango note then it will work on a basic level. I’ve also got a clear
idea of how I’m going to get the note based on position, which will be
based on the x/y values of the mouse click. So if the click is within
say 10-20 pixels then that note will be an A or whatever the correct
note for that value will be. It’s frustrating that it doesn’t work as
I’m so close to having something I can be proud of and actually have a
note editor that’s working. I’ve also modified the Add Instrument
dialog to include a seperate Notebook tab of Midi instruments and
added midi Instrument copies of the current instruments (apart from a
few that I’ve taken out that weren’t suitable for midi instruments,
like Effect/Audio File). You can find the screenshots on my blog at
[0].

What I plan to do next week:

Getting the note drawing to work and different cleffs based on the
currently selected Instrument (like a Piano will have both the treble
and bass cleff).I’ll also start connecting the model and source
element to the rest of Jokosher. With this done I will then start
cleaning up any of the elements that are left over from subclassing
the Event Viewer and making sure that no weird behavior is experienced
when using the note editor. For example I know that shift + left click
will try and split the event even though there’s no wave form to
split. I think a lot of that work is just disabling a lot of it and
modifying the existing elements so they work with the Score events.
Only when all of this is done will I start working on the in depth
Score Editor, as this is secondary to actually having Score Events
that work!.

What I’ve learned this week:

That Pango is a fairly simple library to use it can just get really
confusing to figure out what’s going on at times. I’ve also found that
using Glade can be awkward if you aren’t skilled at using GTK, with a
lot of the shortcuts being confusing to someone who isn’t used to it.
I think I have really started getting used to GTK and all I can do now
is learn more and more about it and how to use it effectively.

As it’s nearing the end of GSoC I have been thinking about the goals I
set out to achieve and the work I’ve put in and I think I’ve learned a
massive amount in the last 2 months. I think I’ve learned more in
those 2 months than I did in the 9 months I spent at University
learning Java, which was my first language. I may have over reached
slightly with my project but I think I can come as close as possible
to finishing before the Pencils down date. I just need to push forward
and get the things that need to be done completed. It may not be 100%
complete but it’s going to be as close as I can possibly get it in the
time left!.

[0] - http://wp.me/pjdJf-2A
[1] - https://code.launchpad.net/~redache/jokosher/MusicXMLEditor

Thanks for reading,
David Williams,
Extending Jokosher with a Musical Notation Editor.