Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] ANNOUNCE: Rosegarden-4 v0.1.5 released
From: Dave Phillips (dlphilp_AT_bright.net)
Date: Sun May 05 2002 - 20:10:42 EEST
Richard Bown wrote:
> Whether or not this has anything to do with desktop environments I
> couldn't really tell you - perhaps it's more about a unified future
> for Linux desktop than anything else. It's a big question. What I
> do know is that there's a lot of Qt in KDE - basically it's up to the
> coder to decide if they want to use the quick-and-neat-and-integrated
> KDE features that are on offer or recode them themselves at a slightly
> lower level in Qt. Sometimes it's obvious to go the KDE way and sometimes
> we have to specialise our own widgets from Qt. Either way we have the
> choice and where it makes sense to do so we'll use the short cut.
Hi, Richard:
I'm afraid I side with Paul on this issue. Yes, most distros ship with
KDE and/or GNOME as standard packages; however, in the three years I've
been using Red Hat I've not once opened either environment. The *only*
reason I keep KDE on my system is for the few apps that require its
libraries. I've nothing against KDE or GNOME, other than that *for me*
they represent a move towards something I've devoted considerable energy
getting away from, i.e., the Windows/Mac "desktop" metaphor. For me they
offer nothing I haven't already supplied for myself in my Blackbox
window manager. Of course, that's one of the current beauties of Linux:
I can have truly it my way, I'm not confined to a single desktop or wm,
and I can make my system lean or fat as I desire.
What I really fear is that an app may be so KDE/GNOME specific that it
won't run outside of those environments. AFAIC, this is a loss, and it
forces users into using an entire environment for a single application.
For users running machines with restricted resources the choice may not
be feasible at all. Will Rosegarden-4 require that KDE itself be running
or will it simply be able to use the KDE libs and be happy with them
(and not the whole shebang) ?
<rant>
I still use an MS-DOS sequencer for my MIDI work, happily it runs
under dosemu. Why do I continue using it ? Because it's a <explitive
deleted> great sequencer, and that's *all* it is. It doesn't have a
notation editor and it doesn't do softsynths or audio, but it does have
extensive menus of useful MIDI edits and transformations of far greater
value to me than any notation output. Its timing is also rock-solid:
even under dosemu it blows away the native Linux MIDI sequencers. So,
why haven't any of the Linux MIDI sequencer developers created just such
a simple powerful MIDI sequencer ? IMO, the notation and audio aspects
have nothing to do with MIDI, and as such they should stay on the back
burner until the sequencer itself reaches the point of maturity of
something like Sequencer Plus Gold or even the old DOS Cakewalk.
Otherwise development proceeds in up to three or four significant
directions at once, which in the open-source world spells out "crawl
time", i.e., it's going to take a *long* time to reach a stable 1.0
release. Okay, *I* know that this is typical of open-source audio
projects, but those new users looking for a MIDI sequencer do not, and
it doesn't suffice as a response to their query when they ask "Where's
the good solid MIDI sequencer for Linux ?". In fine, I would just like
to see a Linux MIDI sequencer as powerful as Sequencer Plus, without a
notation editor, without audio/MIDI integration, and without support for
softsynths, and I think I would be happiest if I knew that the authors
planned to *never* add those features. ;)
</rant>
Okay, whew, sorry about all that... Bad coffee, I guess... Best of
luck with Rosegarden development, and I'll still be trying to get it
running here... :)
Best regards,
== Dave Phillips
The Book Of Linux Music & Sound at http://www.nostarch.com/lms.htm
The Linux Soundapps Site at http://linux-sound.org
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