First, props for the project. I’m really looking forward to a potential Win version but the work to date for Linux has been pretty well done IMO. Not sure where you guys find the time.
Anyway, the question is related to windowing. As I look through some open douce offerings like they all seem to have one thing in common, the windowing. There doesn’t seem to be any with a more consolidated window design and I wonder why that is. Is there any chance of Aurdour taking on a more consolidate design in the future with docked editors and all that?
@paul: regarding the plugin windows, as you say, there are many good reasons why, although floating windows may be irritating to some, they actually work better in a lot of cases (depending upon the plugin). For my own plugins, I find that not having the UI window swallowed up by the host application works well for things such as my channel plugins, where they are specifically designed to be quite compact and free of extra clutter (and should automatically launch in a sensible place on screen) - but also they can be resizable, which works nicely if they are not constrained in a host window / UI. (an example of how this doesn’t work is Reaper - on Windows. By default the plugin editor is swallowed by an oversize host window which ruins the look and feel of the plugin UI by having it dwarfed by a host window stuffed with extra clutter. Generally I like Reaper a lot but this has always been an irritation).
As we (plugin developers) move to support more different formats it my be necessary to accept more integration with the host UI - forgive me if I’m a little ‘possessive’ about the way I want my UIs to behave - a huge amount of effort goes into making them look and feel right
I also prefer to be able to have separate windows for different tasks - e.g. editor and mixer etc (I can put them on different virtual desktops and flip between them as required). I find the move towards “everything in one full screen window” which seems to be taking hold of various OS as the fixation that ‘every device is really a phone’ takes hold, to be a little disappointing. I hope eventually people will re-learn to multi-task and work with several applications simultaneously again
I mean where you’d open the mixer or midi key editor or similar and have it all attached to the same main Window, optionally of course, docked underneath the main window or something.
The fewer floating windows the better, although most that do that allow them to detach since not everyone likes that all the time and when using more than one monitor you need them to be separate. I just really prefer not to be managing a bunch of separate floating windows when working on a single screen.
Not sure if you have seen Ardour or not, can you provide screenshots of what you are meaning exactly? The reason I say I am not sure if you have seen it or not is because most of what you describe all takes place in the editor window. There are dialogs for some things and those won’t be able to be gotten around because in general the most commonly used functions are all available through the editor window or mix window depending on what you are working on, including a small editor mixer strip in the editor window so if you didn’t want to you could get by with never opening the mix window.
So yea screenshots highlighting what you mean would probably help(And solutions to improve as well, though note that just because it works for your workflow doesn’t mean it will work for everyone’s).
@JoeC: ardour typically has less floating windows than many other DAWs. the one place i can think of that tends to be irritating to some is if you open up plugin editor windows - these are separate, floating windows for a variety of fairly good reasons (though there is a way to see them embedded in another window for some plugin APIs/formats. In general, most people work in ardour in either the editor window or the mixer window, depending on what they are doing. if they dual monitors, or multiple workspaces, they might have them both open at the same time, but are not likely to work in them both at the same time (particularly since the editor window has a mixer strip within it). in addition, ardour3 does not use a separate MIDI key editor/piano roll. If you read http://ardour.org/a3_features_midi you'll see this highlighted as one of the most significant differences with all/many other MIDI sequencers.
as seablade noted, without more specifics and a clear sense of whether you've actually seen ardour (and which version) or not, its hard to say more.
I was mostly talking about just basic docking, like having a short mixer docked as an option. You can see that with Logic, Reaper and a few other places. Obviously “option” is the key word there being that it doesn’t force anyone who doesn’t like it to work that way and people who do occasionally prefer that don’t like working that way all the time.
I have two monitors in this studio so it’s much less a concern. With laptops that kind of docking can be useful, but again, it’s all optional, not fixed or locked that way.
It was just a thought, nothing of any major concern. Pic with Logic…
I do think there is a general misconception about some modern “single window” designs though. They’re not static, it all optional, so if you prefer to float the mixer or midi key editor windows, you can. If there are times when it works better to dock them, you can.
All of that aside, I’m greatly looking forward to a Windows build of Arudour I can test. That should be pretty cool. I’m patient enough to wait for it. Thanks guys.
@joeC: that’s unlikely to happen any time in the foreseeable future. Ardour considers the editor window and mixer window to be fundamentally different. On the other hand, press shift-e to get a single mixer strip in the editor window, which accomplishes at least 50% of the same thing (idea taken from cubase/nuendo).
