Building Live Mode

Cantabile
21

I’m working on a new tab “show notes”. The idea for this is a simple panel where you can put notes to refer to while performing.

This is what I’m planning for the initial version:

  • A list of “notes” displayed in a vertical stack.
  • Each note can display an image and/or plain text.
  • Images are png or jpeg
  • Text notes can be multi-line and will automatically wrap to the window size
  • Text font size can be adjusted and can be bold or normal
  • Text font can be optionally fixed pitch - for ascii art guitar tabs etc…
  • Text can be left, right or center aligned
  • Each note has a background color (same pre-canned colors as available elsewhere)
  • Each note can be state controlled - so a note’s text, image, color can change between song parts
  • Notes can be hidden - to remove from view in some states
  • Notes support all the usual editing operations - clipboard, undo/redo, move up/down etc…
  • Notes are only available on songs (not racks).

Before getting to far into implementing it though I want to check: is this useful? Are there other simple features that would be make it more useful?

Brad

3 Likes
22

For me: absolutely sufficient! :slight_smile:

23

Sounds great to me! Do you plan to allow text in a note to have multiple colours, for example to emphasise certain words etc?

1 Like
24

Not initially, possibly later. My UI toolkit currently doesn’t support rich text and no time to add it right now.

25

I like this idea and have been waiting to see how it turns out. Many Thanks for this Brad! :smile:

26

Pasted image1920×1138 179 KB

2 Likes
27

That looks great - a picture paints a thousand words, definitely!

Am I right in saying that you could have a list of such notes for each state, and as you step through states in a song, you get a different set of notes for each state? Or is it that a song has a list of notes, and you can make individual notes state-dependent, so for example as you step through song states, the 2nd note may be changing, but the 1st and 3rd may remain the same?

28

Hi Neil,

I think it’s this one from how I interpret it. I’m curious too as to which it is. Another question @brad is what size is the panel we are speaking of in the description, and is it scalable too?

29

Correct.

The notes panel size is the same as any of the other main content tabs. I.e. It resizes to window size less any visible panels/bars.

Each note is sized vertically to the note’s text/image size.

30

Big LIKE from my side - looks very promising!

Cheers,

Torsten

1 Like
31

Build 3111 available now has all this. Also, some guides:

Lots of other stuff too - check the release notes.

2 Likes
32

Having problems loading jpg background image in Notes. Are there procedures or parameters I missed?

Thanks

33

Hi Dave,

Yeah not working here either (weird, I’m sure I tested that). Will look into it.

Brad

Update: Yeah my bad - was a pixel format error, might also fail with some pngs, but I’ve fixed it for the next build.

34

Wow, lots of new toys in this release!!! It’s looking great, and I love the live mode and monitor pane - really excellent!

A few bits of initial feedback:

  • Move note up/down brings “From 0 to 1” dialog (presumably for diagnostics during development)
  • / doesn’t appear to toggle the ticker bar for me
  • Right-clicking on controller bar buttons sometimes brings up wrong menu fixed at the top-left corner of the Show Notes pane, so I haven’t been able to access button customisation anywhere
  • Right-clicking on ticker bar brings up wrong context menu fixed at the top-left of Show Notes pane
  • Hovering in background between buttons on controller bar, we still get <-> pointer, but with nothing to resize
  • Guide says: “You can control the size of the text in the Ticker Bar:- Move keyboard focus to either the song or song part row” - I can’t get keyboard focus onto either row on my machine, either via mouse or keyboard
  • I added two notes, and somehow they’ve duplicated themselves (so I now have 4). Will play more with this to see if I can reproduce it

Neil

35

Hi Neil,

Thanks. I’ve been super busy! :slight_smile:

Hrm… something very weird going on. I can’t reproduce any of these except the first (which yes is left over debug code). Questions:

  • Are you running x64 or x86?
  • Are you running a non-100% scaling of the main window?
  • Does the ticker bar take focus if you use the menu command (View → Ticker Bar) instead of slash? Are you using an unusual keyboard layout? What happens if you setup a custom key binding for it in Options → Hot Keys?

I’ll work through these more tomorrow. Anyone else seeing issue like this?

Brad

36

Ok some more information for you. The machine I’m seeing the problem on is a Core i5-2500 running Windows 10 Pro x64, with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti and an Intel HD integrated display adaptor (3 monitors). I’ve also now installed the same build on my Core i7-4770 box running Windows 10 Home x64 with an Intel Pro Graphics 5200 display adaptor, and don’t see any of these problems. On the machine I see the problems with, I’m running at 100% scaling.

I’m running 3 monitors, and I’ve now discovered that I only see the problem on one my left-most display, which is one of two displays from the Nvidia adaptor. If I drag it to (or launch it on) either of the other displays, I don’t see the problems.

To clarify the focus/context menu problem a bit further, what I’m seeing is:

  • If the ticker bar is focused, then no matter where I right-click in the whole of Cantabile (controller bar, routing pane etc.), I always get the ticker bar context menu, appearing at the top-right of the ticker bar
  • If I go to the routing tab and then to show notes (so the show notes pane is focused), then wherever I right-click (including the ticker bar etc.), I always get the show notes context menu, which appears at the top-right of the show notes pane.
  • If I go to the routing tab with a plugin selected, and right-click anywhere (including the ticker bar, routing pane background etc), I get the plugin context menu.

So I think that on that display, the context menu is being driven entirely by what’s focused, and not the object the right-click event hit.

Regarding slash problem, I think I misinterpreted the guide - it says “To show the Ticker Bar, select “View” menu -> “Ticker Bar”, or press the slash (’/’) key” which I interpreted to mean that either of those actions would toggle the ticker bar. Actually what I see is that the bar will appear (with menu or slash key) and will be focused, but once it’s there I can’t get rid of it. With the onscreen keyboard and timeline I can get rid of them by dragging down to zero size, whereas I can’t find any way to remove the metronome and ticker bar once they’re there. I would have expected those four menu items to toggle the visibility of those items, but they appear to just bring them up and focus them.

37

I’ve found a simple way to reproduce the duplicated show notes thing I’m seeing:

  1. Open song with multiple states
  2. Go to Live Mode (doesn’t happen in normal mode)
  3. Add a couple of notes
  4. Click on the ticker bar to move to a different state, then click back to the original state
  5. Observe that duplicate state(s) have appeared.

If you then delete either the newly-added or duplicate notes and select another, the error reporter comes up (error report sent).

I’m seeing this bug on both machines I’ve installed on, so doesn’t appear to be related to the focus/context menu bug.

Neil

1 Like
38

Can you also start multiple media tracks at the same time now?

39

Hi Carl,

It’s not done yet but is one of the last things left before release according to trello page.

40

Quick feature request…mouse wheel to scroll through songs in the ticker bar (then click to select, as it currently does). Would allow for mid-gig changes to the order of the set-list, without having to step through each intermediate song.