Re: [jokosher-devel] Docs, Categories, Effects and Help!

["Stuart Langridge" <sil kryogenix org>]

On 1/2/07, David Corrales <corrales david gmail com> wrote:
> Speaking about effect categories, it was finally decided that we'll keep a
> list to sort the effects. I already started said list, and should probably
> be complete in a few days. This will allows users to have a much... MUCH
> better time, when picking out the effects they want. I set up a spec here:
> http://jokosher.python-hosting.com/wiki/EffectCategories
> (which btw, I have to update a bit) to explain it.

Agreed; it's a shame that LADSPA doesn't do this for us, but if we
have the top 50 or 80 or 100 effects categorised in a hard-coded list
and any others in "Other" then that'll be fine, I'd have thought.

> Another point that was brought up in the last few days is the effects
> dialog. Currently it's lacking in several areas like: effect reordering,
> name label display, widget is unintuitive and the effect combobox from hell.
> I decided to make a mockup and have been refining it during these days,
> looking to solve these problems. I really need to thank vdepizzol for
> sprinkling his design magic over my raw design, as it made coal into
> something beautiful. Please check it out here and do comment on it:
> http://img369.imageshack.us/my.php?image=effectsdialog9eg1.png

Agreed. I commented last night on IRC (no link to the discussion
because Elleo's list of IRC logs is down!) I'd like to see Save and
Load buttons next to Cancel etc so we can save a collection of effects
as a preset. I'd also like to see the effects, where possible, get
little "effect descriptions" next to their names, so you can get a
rough glance at what this collection of effects is without having to
double-click each one to get the settings for it. See
http://img243.imageshack.us/my.php?image=effectsdialog9eg1je5.png for
a suspect mockup; we'd need to teach Jokosher how to create these
"summaries" for lots of plugins, and some of them (like the EQ one)
might be a little hard and graphical, but this sort of thing will make
it easy to see at a glance what a collection of effects does. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkline for a discussion of this sort
of small-size high-density information and how useful it is.

> I pretty much finishing my yelp-integration spec. Please try it out for
> bugs! It should work system-wide and locally via the Help menu item. I still
> have to work on the manual though, which I already merged and it's on
> docbook now. There's a wiki page to discuss the manual contents here:
> http://userdocs.jokosher.org/ManualContents

Can yelp help be installed in the home dir, or does it have to be systemwide?

> Finally, I'd like to discuss the spec for distro-independent-installation
> since I've been doing installation duties also. To unify efforts and testing
> :)

Cool. Discuss away :-)

sil

--
New Year's Day --
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
  -- Kobayashi Issa