Just as we speak that’s what I’m making for Band In A Box, as when I go into a few dialogs I can’t access the main window to play/stop so I send it from the AHK GUI to the menu
WinMenuSelectItem, ahk_class TBandWindow, , Play, Play
WinMenuSelectItem, ahk_class TBandWindow, , Play, Stop
linux does have autokey-gtk, but I think your workflow can work better if you adapted to plugins that can use MIDI control messages… I don’t know anything about Windows plugins, because everything I use is rather on the Linux Desktop that imho is very versatile and customizable, so also this bleeds the question as to what it really is about, as you can do ‘Always-on-top’, but I don’t see how that is connecting to largely a non-Linux application.
What Paul is referring to when he says “window manager”, is around the fact that there are many different “types of Desktops” that have their own global keyboard-shortcut system for performing Window-Minimize, Maximize, etc… “window manager” in more technical detail also means more user-customization plumbing – as it really refers to a “component” of the “Linux Desktop” that can do anything from automatic-tiling, 3D cubing effects, wobbly windows, and perform “Always-on-Top” tricks. Since there’s a million ways of doing this on Linux, there is no possible way to have a quick nudging answer on “what” way this can be done than for another user here(longtime user of Linux) to confirm yes…yes Linux can do that too.
You briefly mentioned about Autokey-GTK way back in January 2020 – and to my surprise when reading up about everything you write – it was actually you who brought it up.
I think your problem, is you are overwhelmed with other aspects that are interfering into applying the technology provided to you.
From it looks like you bounce between being a Mac user and a Windows user.
But never have tried Linux… but you bring up about “Autokey” 9 months later for Linux.
** scratches head **
no point in giving any more attention to these types of users imho…
my two cts…
The reply was for “that scripting GUI things might be able to do, is do things like move the transport bar to the bottom of the screen instead of the top.”
AHK was suggested because there is no GUI scripting in Lua.
I remember I tried AutoHotKey to access the menus in Win Ardour, but it’s not a standard menu, and then I found you can only have so many scripts available in the menu choice so that ruled out using AHK.
Going from Win to Lin to Mac is because I wanted port ReaTrak over to not just Win Ardour but Lin & Mac.
“no point in giving any more attention to these types of users imho…”
I’m not charging $$ for ReaTrak, as I have said it will be a real task to do to port over, and that’s what you say, get the hell out of here and don’t come back ? nice…
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@ahms please do not use images to quote other persons but quote text and refrain from ad hominem. Thank you.
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@Musocity: Nobody has said “get the hell out of here and don’t come back”. Nobody has said anything even remotely close to that.
@ahms: this started out as an informative reply before going totally off the rails. This is not acceptable behavior for this forum.
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not sure what you mean by providing incitive as here I was responding to the entire thread as well as the OP that was created way back in February — I get my notifications via RSS on with Akregator and I was just wondering what was all this weird complaints was about… and seemingly it became active again, i wondered what was so upsetting as clearly, it wasn’t me who said the things that was said.
@paul perhaps he never heard of “Autokey-GTK”, but only “Autokey”. If he wants to give Linux another shot for his system, I would be glad to see what he is able to cover.
Here I am just trying to understand what was all this noise was about, and here I am still scratching my head.
@muscocity has said he doesn’t know how to program C. But when I look at the OP text, at least half of it is about discussing different programming paradigms.
@paul I think you are wrong about muscocity. He seems to care, even though initially here from my side it doesn’t seemed originally as well, but um, don’t think there are many users who enjoy putting you down on your project. If you feel very disrespected, I don’t think it helps us to tell us who is giving you a “hard time”. 
Him telling me he has at least tried Linux is something new of him telling the case – however I think he should be asking for help on Linux directly rather than bouncing between Mac and Windows. What do you think?
I would be able to help him with his homework – but please stay on “Linux” if @muscocity wants my help.
That’s all I can say.
cheerios
you’re correct. I’m just trying to understand what this whole shenaniganing was about.
It seems like it’s a great time to review these: https://discourse.ardour.org/guidelines. The direction this thread’s ended up is a brilliant way to put people off contributing to the Ardour community.
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it was a dead-end debate before it even began, however there is a lot of very great feedback from pretty much everybody as far as I can tell. I don’t think we need to ridicule the project leader’s competence of this project which is the impression I have reflected based off the OP text itself more than anything else. However, it’s not helpful it we remain clueless that we are not able to help others. The majority of the responses I see on this thread are indeed passively positive, so I think people are very well of the guidelines. If you mean the original OP-text and everything that is on it(if you have read it), users (other than me), still have the right to bring forth “concerns” more than personal misinterpretations or anything ad-hominem. If you are referring to me, supposedly I would accept your valid response, but I think you should be referring to everybody.
cheers.
I was the first responder and have kept abreast of the comments.
Thanks 
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Paul good point I never thought about that as I have not had to distribute. I am going to try and build Ardour from source and see how “bad” of an experience it is. Then reply back here. Great thread sir! I would also say I love this community for the passion it has. Paul I appreciate all that you bring to the table and the unlimited amount of love that goes into this project. I can not say enough thank you! Now to go donate and put some money where my mouth is.
I don’t get it, what’s wrong with GTK? It’s an excellent toolkit and it’s starting to attract much more investors and developers in recent days. Soon enough you’ll have some form of Glade like xml rapid gui prototyping solution available in GNOME Builder. Afaik there already is some stuff for that in Builder but it’s going to get developed for real to be a standard in the recent future.
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Ideology can afford to be, well, ideal. The world and it’s population of 7.6 billion+ humans, un/fortunately, is not. I see no need for the Ardour developers to second guess what they’ve achieved. It’s pretty damned amazing. IMHO Nor is there any need for developers following either model, opensource or proprietary, to justify or defend their chosen development or distribution models. There’s enough to go around.
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Just joined the forum after reading Pauls entry post here. Came initially to check out Ardour VST3 implementation and got curious, this seems to be healthy and lively community.
Ardour beeing open source is what makes it stand out for all the reasons mentioned by others here: Project compatibility, platform choices, core access etc. Imho, scripting APIs alone does not provide enough freedom.
Here are some thoughts why more extensive scriptability might still make sense:
- C++ is fine but boilerplaty, compared to most DSL APIs. System languages require jumping a lot of hoops while proper DSL APIs shield the user from exactly those.
- C++ requires not only rebuilding the software, but also restarting it. Scripting in Blender, Renoise, REAPER, HALion or monome Norns can be done at runtime.
- scripts do not require messing with compiler flags to enable/disable features. If you need a feature on your laptop, and another on your studio box, but not always, you just enable the script.
- Stability and safety are another concern, blender is not the best example here, but Renoise is. It is easy to mess up the memory and crash everything with C++ but not in LUA. The Renoise crew claims that their core is not destructible by their scripting engine.
Some ideas:
- GIT is a great script module storage, vundle for VIM or the norns use it in a nice way.
- Extending the LUA API with access to basic graphic elements (windows, basic geometry, strings) would be nice because it allows stuff such as customized HUDs for midicontroller mappings, context switching for input devices, dashboards and other highly individual stuff that has nothing to do with the core.
I am new to Ardour, so forgive me if I state the obvious somewhere.
Edit: Forgot one important point. If you develop scripts to extend a proprietary software, your efforts will be lost, once that software is discontinued. Writing extensions for open source software is much more future proof. (as open source software is in general)
Edit2: Forgot to add a reference to the initial thread title.
Open source is a necessity for many reasons. Users never need it, but it empowers them anyway. Users need features to achieve their goals. Nobody need source access until they need it, and when they need it, it is a necessity.
Edit3: I just realised we have February 2021… and 2020 was a year ago 
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Just started digging into the docs, impressive. I might actually switch away from REAPER now…
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In Ardour we just expose the C++ API calls as-is. While Lua protects you from null pointers, there are still plenty of ways to mess things up.
Ardour’s backend provides mechanism. Most policy restrictions happen in the GUI and with scripts you can bypass those.
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Sounds dangerous but good to know and powerful. Read earlier in the docs that almost all the calls are bound, pretty cool. Thanks for the warning/clarification.
I think that open-source is not only a useful and ethical choice, but also a guarantee of reliability, a possibility open to the acquisition of new personal skills, a beautiful community of beautiful people who cooperate for noble purposes. And I believe that this beautiful software is a demonstration of how open-source is synonymous with pro!
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I think, you are missing one aspect: If you are a audio engineer, you don’t want to edit source code upon a certain point.
Reaper has a growing sound designers community for video games and movies because it is customizeable deep enough without learning a real programming language. It’s much quicker to do for a not-programmer.
In the music industry there is AFAIK (in my bubble) mostly Pro Tools and Cubase used by pros, because they were the big DAWs for ages and some of the very first. They got used to it and can’t switch that easy – learning for ages the new DAWs, and maybe never use them because they are lacking some essential features for their workflow. Tho there is no real need for it.
Long story short: Most users are simple users and no programmers. They want to get things done.
For me, it’s a nice to have, if I use a FLOSS application, because I like the way to think about freedom of doing anything. But since my c++ skills does not cover anything above a simple calculator BUT I can do anything with Ardour/Reaper, there is no need to learn it.
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I will provide my position on this.
A) I am a back-end developer, so I’m comfortable with “building” (so to speak) but I primarily work in an intermediate language (C#/.NET) so for me a “build” is as simple as hitting F5 on my keyboard within my IDE (Visual Studio). When I start having to deal with installing multiple pieces of software to allow me to build, setting up MAKE scripts, etc. It quickly gets very overwhelming to me and makes me move to a different piece of software that doesn’t require this. Not to say if I had a heavy investment in a project I wouldn’t be willing to learn it an use it, but it does create a barrier to entry for most “casual” developers or developers in higher languages.
B) I am intermediate level proficient in C# but I have very, very little experience with C/C++ so for me, I would love to be able to contribute but my lack of skills in C cause me to avoid getting involved.
C) I would be willing to learn the language to get involved, but, because of the power of C it really is not something you can just take a 4 hour read on and then start coding… to be useful in the language you have to spend a lot of time in it to become proficient.
D) Regardless of reasons A-C, I still would pick an open-source product over a closed-source product any day of the week if they are both comparable. This is because I firmly believe in open source and I want to support it and I want to have the freedom to access/use the source code if it ever did become important enough for me to cross hurdles A-C.
E) I agree with others, I don’t think this is going to make a difference for a majority of the users. Only a subset will really care either way.