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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: [KDE Usability] [ANN] KMid2 0.1.1 released
From:       Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas <pedro.lopez.cabanillas () gmail ! com>
Date:       2010-01-01 22:29:51
Message-ID: 201001012329.51263.pedro.lopez.cabanillas () gmail ! com
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BTW: Happy new year to everybody! ;-)

On Friday, January 1, 2010, Celeste Lyn Paul wrote:
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/Reports

Many thanks to the usability team for taking care of KMid2 and all our free 
software projects!

I've summarized some tasks and design changes from Diego Moya's report. Please 
comment if there is something missing, missunderstood, or requiring 
clarification.

1. At the initial connections dialog, when asking for a MIDI port, explain 
that the connections can be changed later in the configure dialog. Include 
the "configuration" action in the default toolbar for better access.

2. If there are no MIDI ports available, show a message box dialog explaining 
the basic steps to add one. Add a link to improved online help. For Linux: 
check if the software is installed, asking for the soft-synths 
FluidSynth/QSynth, TiMidity, and soundfonts. Automatic startup of soft-synths 
is desirable, but requires a detailed design.

3. Rhythm box: add a  label "bar:beat", or "metronome" before the widgets. 
Revise the already existing whatsthis text and online help.

4. MIDI channels dialog: the labels "Channel", "Mute" and "Solo" look a bit 
cramped, they would benefit from some more space around them.

5. New feature: each channel may be labeled with a text field besides each 
channel number. This would allow the user to "name" each track (in the 
example, to identify which channel corresponds to each chorus' voice). Save 
the names and other settings for each song (optionally).

6.- Add an "advanced connections" checkbox to the configuration dialog. Filter 
the available MIDI connections in two classes: basic and advanced. Show 
always the basic class. Show only the advanced connections if the user 
selects the "advanced" checkbox. Advanced connections are: MIDI Thru, OSS 
Sequencer and VirMIDI (maybe more).

7.- Add the data directory to the open dialog, to make it easier to find the  
six provided kar/mid example files.

8. If there are no lyrics in a song, disable the "text encoding" function 
and "save lyrics" action.

These eight points will have the highest priority for the next release. There 
were three already planned/pending tasks, with lower priority or much longer  
development time.

* Multiplatform backend based on the FluidSynth library. This will require 
several new features from FluidSynth, to be included in a new release. No 
problem: FluidSynth is actively maintained and I am already involved in the 
project.

* Windows and Mac OSX native backends (for hardware and external synths 
support)

* Action icons. Review of all icons, call for help to kde-artists.

Lowest priority:

* Multiple MIDI output ports. Currently plays to a single output port. This is 
needed by a few MIDI songs requiring more than 16 channels.

* KPart, for Konqueror integration. Maybe this is not very good idea, but the 
old kmid had a kpart.

Regards,
Pedro
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