Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
From: Steve Harris (S.W.Harris_AT_ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jun 08 2004 - 19:31:40 EEST


On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 05:50:42 +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> But I intended to point out two other things:
>
> * First is, that usability has nothing to do with nice looks. I
> truely believe - and given some research time, I'm sure I could prove
> it as well - that photorealistic graphical user interfaces modelled
> after hardware when shown on a screen are far from usability. Other
> people will probably want just that: photo-GUIs. I fear, looking at
> the commercial audio market, that exactly these might happen in the
> Linux Sound world: eye candy, but bad usability.

Theres two seperate points there:

"...that usability has nothing to do with nice looks"

Hmm, maybe, depends how you define 'nice'. nice != photorealsitic in my
book. I think ableton live is 'nice', and it has a very useable UI - an
equivlanet built with stock GTK/Qt slider widgets would be nowhere near as
usable, IMHO.

and "...I truely believe - and given some research time, I'm sure I could
prove it as well - that photorealistic graphical user interfaces modelled
after hardware when shown on a screen are far from usability..."

That I agree with, with a very small number of exceptions.
 
> LADSPA combined with Jack is of course a good example of this
> philosophy. Look e.g. at Jackrack: it does provide a consistent GUI
> for LADSPA plugins, that you could use just fine with every other
> jack-enabled application, and one will get a very usable and
> consistent interface. And that even without Steve wasting his precious
> time writing GUI code. ;)

Thats true (and I have no intention of wasting my time writing GUI code
:). But, there are plugins that could be better with *appropriate* UIs, it
doesnt take much, but I think it can make a huge difference - e.g.
superlooper. There are also plugins that aren't being written, becuase
they would just be unusable.

- Steve


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