While my rant about “intutive” software design would not really be on point here, I would still caution against the use of this word in this context.
For example, I think that pre-selecting the most-recently worked on session is an excellent idea that will probably help some people (though note: not brand new users, nor those who start up Ardour by dbl-clicking on a session folder in their desktop’s presentation of such things).
But I don’t agree that this change has anything to do with “intuitive”, and I don’t think much is gained from using the term. The suggested change is good because of things like reduced cognitive load (“what was the name of that session anyway?”), reduced mousing (you would be able to just press return to work on the last session) and reducing discovery requirements for the user (“oh, i see, i have to select a session first”).
But none of those have anything to do with “intuitive”. They might be just a little connected to the more accurate “how other software I’ve encountered works”, but that’s not the same thing at all (even if a somewhat related topic - the nature of that relation is really what my rant is about).
This topic is swerving all over the road like a drunk driver! In the context of Ardour’s first run and Wine/LinVST plugin scans the biggest hitch has nothing to do with Ardour’s setup sequence, the biggest hitch in the getalong is Wine barfing on it’s shoes while trying to juggle LinVST’s plates and write a significantly complex config folder structure. The biggest issues are simply avoided with ‘winecfg’ running before Ardour, Reaper or any Wine-dependent software is launched so although for proof of concept I have Ardour pre-configured it will (a) still need to run a VST2/3 Plugin scan even with it’s config pre-loaded into the Live Session User’s home and (b) If winecfg hasn’t run the first VST Plugin scan will fail anyway…
Every change I make to preload into the User’s home adds 20 things to a list of 1001 I already have to keep track of just to get the damned thing to boot and show you the correct wallpaper and icons, thread the IRQ’s, run all the JACK helper scripts and have the dozen or so specialized Thunar custom actions all work as expected (not intending to sound pissy). Then if Ardour or Wine changes their config structure and then a future AVL no longer works with those…? Or if I preconfig Ardour why not Mixbus or why not Reaper…Should I make a session with a preloaded MIDI track with a Synth…?? etc etc. etc. It’s a VERY slippery slope to get started on is all I’m saying, plus to me Wine/LinVST being set up at all is going 100X farther than other Linux Audio Respins, how far to go down the road of ‘off-platform’ Audio Plugins is reasonable…?
In all of this the User has learned nothing about setting things up and where things are all located for their own edification and experience…
Agree 100% other than that yabridge (rather than linVST) is definitely the future for all sorts of reasons (plugin performance and compatibility being just two major ones).
Barring some showstopping issue I am planning to move to yabridge for the next full release once I’ve moved to Debian 11 Bullseye… I don’t change horses at the drop of a hat…
