Originally Posted By: Tom0016
Hi Larry

Yes, I would be interested in understanding this. Was rather hoping VideoTrack might be in a position to give a rough idea .. ?

Tom

Originally Posted By: VideoTrack
I've put a big effort into promoting ideas for changes that the UI desperately needs.







OK, ball's in my court, so here goes:

Well, it's really difficult to state what effort is involved, but let's think about the main two issues and corresponding approaches

1: the User Interface

2: the Menus

What remains constant is the underlying engine driving it all. Very little of that probably needs to change. What needs to change is the interface, with the addition of new presentation layers that then integrate into the existing substrate code.

The menus are programmatically probably not difficult. I think the most tenuous part is establishing a redesigned model that is pragmatic and more realistically categorizes functions, and clears up naming conventions. This is not a criticism, and I have stated that online and offline to Peter himself many times: I fully understand how the program got these problems in the first place - it's because it has evolved and delivered amazing features that could never have been anticipated during its earlier ongoing development. It's because sometimes there was no logical place to put 'this and that' new feature, so we put it 'here and there', and this happened multiple times, and eventually some of the delivered menu functionality at these locations started to make less and less sense.

So it's time to step back and study the structures, probably with the assistance of new, fresh, independent participants who don't automatically know exactly where to go to select a feature, or what 'Force Track to Simple Arrangement : Strings' means, when the track is actually a RealTracks track with Guitar. Get independents to use it and analyze and state clearly what they don't understand.

The User Interface also is not impossible. Presuming (and I'm being simplistic here) there is a reasonable disconnect between things like the button 'Click' events and the 'OnClickEvent' code, other newer buttons could call the same underlying code. These other new button 'click' events could be coming from a new fresh interface (a different 'skin').

Yes, it's easy to just say 'do it', but I know and Peter and his Team knows there are many hidden challenges. Nevertheless, it really has come time to embrace this, even if it requires an ongoing staged implementation.

There has been an indication that work is already being done on the interface.

So to answer the question: How much effort is required? I can't really say as I don't intimately know the code. Days? No. Years? No. A few months would be my guess to deliver something that new and potentially new users could start to be really excited about.

I for one would be thrilled to see changes implemented like I have tried to identify. There would definitely be "No Strings Attached" if they decided to take on some of those ideas.

Hope this assist in some way. I'm really pleased to see this thread get traction and enthusiasm from all parties. It's definitely needed.

Trevor


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