[jokosher-devel] [PATCH] InstrumentViewer volume slider patch (SVN Rev. 1519) (Jeff Ratliff)

["Tom Halligan" <tom halligan gmail com>]

Personally, I've never liked the ScaleButton / VolumeButton. The beef I have with it, primarily, is that it's a popup, and just kind of looks untidy, and looks a bit of a hack, even if it's a real GTK widget. I just think the appearance of it doesn't fit with the overall 'cleanliness' and simplicity that Jokosher is going for. The popup behaviour isn't an issue with, say, the volume control in the Gnome system tray - but in Jokosher it obscures other stuff, and kind of detracts from the polish, so to speak. There's also no way of telling the volume at a glance - at the very least you have to mouse over the widget and see what the tooltip gives you. This isn't great for an audio editor.

What I'm thinking would be best would be some kind of widget with the following behaviour:
Left click: Volume control - ideally one simple movement, such as click and drag (for example, the slider we have now). The ScaleButton can do this, but falls short in other areas.
Right click: Mute.
Middle click (or Ctrl + left click): Center the volume (100%).
There should also be a visual way of telling the volume at a quick glance (or at least a fairly accurate approximation).

I'm not completely against using the ScaleButton - but I think it would be much better if it at least looked like it was part of the InstrumentViewer rather than floating on top of it (and thus obscuring other stuff).

Maybe the easiest solution would be to use a small, horizontal VUWidget rather than the current volume slider? Although this doesn't solve the space issue - it would at least be more intuitive as a volume control, and also doubles up as a level monitor. The mute functionality could be incorporated into this, so then we'd just have three buttons to deal with.

Another option, although a lot more work than the above, would be to implement a rotating 'dial' widget (like those used in FruityLoops, for example). This would look out of place with Jokosher, though - and I don't think many people honestly like these things anyway, so probably best to avoid it.

I do think a sliding control is still the best option, but I guess to some, the horizontal slider would remind them of a pan control. However, the slider's 'groove' (Or whatever you want to call it) does become shaded to the left of the slider handle, which does suggest some kind of 'increase' as we move towards the right, rather than just a left vs right balance. Perhaps if we could make it more obvious that it was a volume control somehow - although I don't think the confusion between volume and pan would be anything serious, even for people used to such a thing. A fixed, vertical slider could be the easiest way around the space issue, although this obviously means something else would have to be compromised.

Tom

From: "Jeff Ratliff" <jefrat gmail com>
To: jokosher-devel-list gnome org
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:33:07 -0400
Subject: Re: [jokosher-devel] [PATCH] InstrumentViewer volume slider patch (SVN Rev. 1519)
Sorry, don't think I sent this to the list:

The volume slider in this position makes the think of a pan control,
not a volume control. This comes from my experience with physical
sound boards though, and a novice may not have this problem.

You could do a volume icon that pops up a volume slider, a la
rhythmbox and others. If you were really clever, you could find a way
to integrate it with the mute button and take up no additional space.
This is less discoverable though, and would really rely on a good
descriptive icon, or a little mini popup arrow thingy (excuse my
advanced technical jargon). :)