Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] what's wrong with glame
From: Richard Dobson (RWD_AT_cableinet.co.uk)
Date: Thu Jul 26 2001 - 19:42:11 EEST
(bearing in mind I haven't installed, much less used, GLAME, or
anything, yet...)
Alexander Ehlert wrote:
>
> Yeah, hmm, that's just naming. We could add something called open in the
> menu which creates a group with the wavfile in it. But, importing it makes
> sense because we convert everything to float internally to allow for high
> quality dsp. So you have to import and export it. But that's not really
> an issue compared to open/close, it's just getting used to it. Ok, I have
> to admit that the file importing(opening) gui is rather bad. But I wasn't
> motivated yet to change that.
I think this is a semantic misunderstanding.
All the ~multi-track~ programs I have had experience of (Cubase, Cool
Edit Pro, and most recently, cakewalk SONAR) use the semantic 'Import',
for a simple reason - in a multi-track project, you have N tracks, and
any soundfile must be 'imported' to one of these (You may indeed need to
select a track before 'Import' becomes active). Cool Edit Pro has a nice
feature in that if you right-click in a track, the File menu appears
with Import, and the file is inserted at the cursor point. In a plain
stereo wave-editor, there is by definition only one track, so 'Import'
is unnecessary, and 'Open' is more idiomatic.
At least in Windows and the Mac, the File->Open command is always
understood to relate to the main file associated with the project (the
file you might double-click on from Windows Explorer); this would for
most users be a Session, Project, name-it-what-you-will. Double-clicking
on a soundfile name would be expected to play it using the default
player. However, at least under Windows, you can change a file
association so that selecting a soundfile opens it in your preferred
application (assuming it can accept the file in that way). This merely
requires a 'multi-document' capability where the command-line passed to
the program can contain the name of either a Project or a SoundFile (or
a MIDI file, or...), and either can be opened.
SONAR cannot do this (for the above reason - where would it go?), but
Cool Edit Pro can, possibly uniquely, because it implements two parallel
modes - multi-track project, and single-track editor mode.
Interpreting 'Import' as format conversion is, IMO, a typical
programmer's tinted spin on how the user thinks, or, rather, doesn't
want to have to think. After all, you don't 'Import' a Word document
into a word processor because it happens to be converted to Unicode,say,
internally. The user, generally, couldn't care less about internal
representation. They will only want to know that the highest audio
quality is maintained internally (however that's done - 32bit ints?
doubles? quads?), and they will sometimes want to 'Save As' a different
format, or explicitly do a Format Conversion as some programs require
you to do - which even I find a complete pain in the A.
Designing User Interfaces is a real challenge, not merely from an
implementation point of view (all those debates about libraries!), but
literally from a design, i.e. HCI, point of view. Certain procedures
become de-facto standard, and a developer takes a great risk in changing
this; on the other hand if the change very clearly leads to an increase
in intuitiveness and efficiency for the user, they will generally accept
it after a moment to re-orient. Nevertheless, there is a simple HCI
measure of efficiency for the user, which is to find the number of
discrete steps the user must perform to achive any specific operation,
and, wherever possible, ensure that the most frequently performed tasks
(which may be the most argued-over parameter, of course) require the
least number of steps. A sub-menu requires at least four, possibly five
steps:
Menu-->scroll-to-Item-->(Click-item-->)scroll down submenu-->click
sub-item.
Of course a keyboard shortcut can be used, but you have to know what it
is first, and preferably not requring three or four keypresses; so this
can conflict with the goal of a shallow learning curve (emacs being the
prime culprit/hero here, as was, in days of yore, WordStar). Given the
WIMP paradigm, it follows that a design that allows both projects, and
soundfiles, to be opened with one mouse-click (!), is the Holy Grail.
Good Luck!
Richard Dobson
-- Test your DAW with my Soundcard Attrition Page! http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masrwd (LU: 3rd July 2000) CDP: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/CDP/CDP.htm (LU: 23rd February 2000)
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