Re: GUI thoughts

> After thinking some time about how a general (more or less all in one) 
> but still "live-vj-ing-compliant" GUI perhaps could look, i came up 
> with the following draft (done with qt designer). It's not very much 
> to see - but it should give a general idea.
> Some explanations:
> - The left and right box are edit areas / graph view areas
> - To get a graph in the edit area you would drag/drop an item from the 
> below box (where all you current graphs are shown) into one of those 
> windows
> - If you doubleclick on one of those areas, you would get a fullscreen 
> edit area (tabbed that is actually, the toolbox on the left and the 
> log window would still remain) in which you can edit a graph.
> - The master mixer mixes the output of those to graphs together
> - The controls on the bottom are assigned controls. It's just six for 
> each, but that's not really mandatory (I just made six to make it fit 
> into the main window). The combobox below each slider shows the 
> assigned slot. There are a constant number of slots, each one can be 
> assigned to a certain parameter (in a graph). Also the slot number can 
> be connected to a MIDI input/ Joystick input / Mouse movement (etc pp, 
> just to give the idea). This is handled via a different submenu.


What about the pages on the left (Pornographie, ...)? What are they used 
for?

> I know this is a pretty ambitious draft, but I think this would be a 
> nice compromise between the flexibility of a graph system (which most 
> users of gephex seem to like a lot) and the usability as a live vj-ing 
> tool. The fact that you can easily change graphs and battlemix between 
> them but as well see the basic structure of the graphs you've loaded 
> is the very essence of how to make a really nice gui imho. 

I like the overall concept.
As a first step, it might be good to just implement the "battle mixer" 
part and the slot mechanism and leave out the
graph editor (which is the most difficult part imo).
Martin and I talked some time ago about the possibility to have a 
simplified gui (let's call it "battle mixer gui"),
which can select existing graphs. For advanced users, it could be 
possible to create new graphs and edit
existing graphs in a separate scheme console. Newbie user could simply 
mix some pre-built graphs.

> As for the controls, I don't see where you can really exploit an 
> infinite number of controls connected to many, many inputs. A constant 
> number is enough and it would make the GUI a lot more clearly arranged 
> and comfortable.


Yes, I agree, the battle mixer gui (hehe) should only have a constant 
number of controls.

Georg