Cantabile Development Update

Hey All,

A quick update on Cantabile’s development. Right now it’s focused on two main areas:

a) new features and improvements to the Windows version.
b) a whole ton of work to get the OS X version done.

Since I find that constantly switching between these two modes introduces a lot of mental overhead I’ve decided to alternate between the two on a week by week basis. On a) weeks I’ll be in the forums, knocking off things out of Trello, getting new builds out, new videos, blog posts etc… on the b) weeks I’m going to be fairly silent and dropping into the forums and answering emails probably just once per day.

You might have noticed that last week was a b) week - I spent the entire week researching CoreCLR’s (Microsoft’s open source .NET platform) suitability for Cantabile on OS X. It looks like it’s going to work really well even though it’s a bit bleeding edge - the tools aren’t quite as nice as I’d like, but getting there.

This week I’ll be back on the Windows version.

Brad

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I’m a .NET dev as well and I think you’re doing yourself a favor with this restructure. Also I didn’t know you were considering a Mac version. Very cool!

Hi @Lempface

I’ve been promising an OS X version for so long it’s ridiculous. I originally planned to use Xamarin for this, but the CoreCLR stuff is really close now so putting it off for so long had a silver lining.

Brad

Hi Brad,

I am happy to know you are focusing with more energy on a OS X version of Cantabile, and I am particilary interested in that.
I am infact consider to replace my present Win laptop and my preference would be in direction of a MacBook, but this decision it is also dependent on how long does it takes to release a Cantabile OS X version.
Any plan from your side? A rough idea would be enough.

Thanks.

Regards, Franco

@piffo

It’s a bit hard to guess right now because it will depend heavily on a couple of major decisions I need to make over the next couple of weeks - after which point I’ll have a better idea. If I had to guess I’d say at least a couple of months (but no promises and I’m really good at underestimating).

Brad

Hi Brad,
How far do you are now from to get the Cantabile Mac OS X version done?
Regards.
Franco

If the windows version is coded in dot net why is it so difficult to implement rich text in the show notes section?

@piffo - It’s getting there, but it’s a big job. The UI Library is done and soon I’ll be diving into porting the rest of Cantabile’s UI to it, then it just leaves the audio engine (which is about 90% done). No time frame but I’m keen to get it done.

@BigTwisty - because is uses a custom UI library that is/will be cross platform compatible and I don’t want to bring in anything that makes porting to OS X harder. Once the OS X port is done, I’ll look at solutions for cross platform rich text.

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That makes sense. Thanks for explaining. Porting is probably the most annoying part of software development. Creating a new product/feature is fun and challenging, but porting that product/feature to another platform seems like reading the same book all over again.

Thank you Brad for your feedback and relative working status update.
I hope you will complete that very soon!
Regards, Franco

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