Hey Everyone,
I’ve been re-working the view management in Cantabile: Watch Here
At the end of the video I raise some questions on how all this relates to live mode. Please let me know what you think.
Brad
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Looks really cool! I think this will go a long way towards improving the UX. To answer your question, I agree, to me live mode is about a single shared fixed view across all songs.
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This appears to address my request to see the bindings and routings at rack level, so that the interaction can be directly monitored - so I love it!
As for Live, my initial feeling is that consistency is vital in Live mode. Radically different screen splits between songs would provide options I personally would not care for, at least until some compelling reason was presented.
But definitely an enhancement to workflow! Nice @brad
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I like the concept, good work Brad. I am for the Live mode view being global across songs. Thanks for your efforts!
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A really neat job, Brad! I agree with the others: better keep live mode global across songs.
Gabriel
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Looks interesting. And the tabbed view would finally let me use the docked plugins comfortably, the feature which I avoid for now.
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Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.
Next question:
What about normal (ie: not Live) mode. Would you want each song to be reloaded as you last left it (ie: the same set of tabs, split mode, arrangement etc… ) or like live mode, just load the song and keep the current view layout.
I personally would prefer complete restore of previous session. I use Cantabile for live play without switching to the live mode all the time.
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I’m not sure if I missed it, but many DAWs offer screen sets or window layouts which can be stored and recalled from a dropdown.
If such a facility were available then the user could create favorite views and restore them globally or to a specific song as required.
Padlocking the window layout for a song could determine whether it would be subject to global recall or not.
Excellent!!
I much prefer the tabs to the split view.
The only slight negative is that I’m not keen on the position and size of the Bindings button. When I’m setting up a system I am constantly flipping between Racks and Bindings, and having to move the mouse so far across the screen to find a tiny button doesn’t appeal.
For non-live mode (this needs a name!) I think as it was left last time.
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@The_Elf
But what if you have a split screen with bindings in one half and racks in the other?
It’s just having to aim for that tiny icon way over on the right that I don’t find appealing. I suppose I only have to do it once, then the tab will just stay there ready for me.
I’m not keen on split views in any software - I find it confusing. I’ve fallen foul of this with the Background Rack. Hopefully the Background Rack can be a tab now too?
Isn’t Split View the only way to directly monitor the effect of bindings on routes/rack contents?
I never felt the need.
A small side note: I would recommend to follow common and well established UI practices. For example, all major software utilizes 3 small icons in one of top corners to maximize, minimize, and close window or pane, and single icon to close tab. This is well established pattern that exist for decades.
Why not accept this approach in Cantabile? As an example, I find the Eject button (both presentation and location) counterintuitive. Especially considering that it does not eject the track, it closes the pane with track presentation inside.
I guess that, like you, I’ve had to constantly flip between windows.
The split screen obviates that.
That’s essentially what live mode is - a limited form of this with just two layouts - normal and live. I’ve never had anyone request more layouts than this.
The problem I’m struggling with is whether to restore open rack-tabs or not. The set of open tabs isn’t a global setting - it’s per-song, because different songs have different racks. But the saved live/normal layouts are global - so I need to somehow rationalize which tabs to restore into which split panels.
The easy to code option would be for every song to store its split mode and which racks, plugins are open in which tabs. But that breaks the appeal of Live mode because now you need to configure it for every song.
The approach I’m considering is:
- normal mode - songs maintain their complete view state, including split mode and open tabs.
- live mode - a globally saved layout overrides the per-song layout and has its own split mode and set of open tabs. But, the set of open tabs will be limited to a well-known set that aren’t specific to each song. ie:
set list grid, show notes, the song itself (and its primary view if set) and the background rack.
My concern over this approach though is that it introduces special functionality for Live Mode, where before it was just a different saved window layout.
I’ll start experimenting with some of these ideas tomorrow and see how it goes.
Now you can have both!
That’s fair, but I’ve been using this for a couple of weeks now and haven’t noticed any difficulties. That said, for fast switching don’t forget there’s keyboard shortcuts.
If you Ctrl+ click it.
It is.
This is common for top level windows but less so for contained document windows. The exception here Microsoft’s Multi-Document Interface (MDI), but this has become less common now, usually replaced with tabs or multiple top-level windows. I can’t think of a modern app that still uses MDI.
I didn’t mention it in the video because I thought it was obvious… the eject button has been removed, replaced with X on the tab itself and there will be a shortcut key.
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I don’t see why the Ctrl key is necessary for this. I’d prefer to just normal click it and have the Bindings panel open immediately as a tab. Maybe Ctrl+ if I want it to replace my current view.