Stefan Westerfeld
writes:
Introduction
Arts is a virtual analog
synthesizer. But it is not one of the synthesizers that come with
one method of creating sounds that is hard wired. Rather, aRts
allows you to build your own synthesizer out of little
components.
So aRts is more a set of building blocks, where everybody can
use to build his private house from. Just that you are building
virtual studios and other audio technology, not houses. Still,
something is mostly missing: while aRts is doing a good job when
building the interior of the devices (such as which signals are
routed what way, and which effects are processed when and how), it
is somewhat primitive in surface/user interface design.
User interfaces are of course all that turning buttons, sliders,
push buttons, etc. you find for instance on the front panel of a
mixer. But they are also flashing leds, equalizers, scopes and LCD
displays.
And of course they should allow putting labels on that boxes, so
that they are not only nice to look at, but also easy to
understand.
So the GUI challenge for aRts is: Which components do we need
for building intiutive and pretty interfaces to any of the devices
that can be modelled with aRts.
Let me try to explain what I mean in an example. You might say:
well, thats easy, just let the user load an image, and put it as
skin above aRts, and it will look really great, allow every idea of
visual design, and be as good as the artist that does the picture
is. And skins are easy to implement, look at x11amp…
Well, what I would answer is: put a skin over what? Arts itself
doesn’t ship with buttons that are required for standard operation.
A device you build with aRts (while a device may be an instrument,
a mixer or an effect or whatever else) has no play, eject, rewind,
etc. buttons. Arts itself has not even one button I talk about when
I talk about the gui challenge.
Rather, the task is to have components, with which a user can
build the frontpanel to his favourite device.
There is another argument against skin technology: Most of these
users are not artists. Perhaps they are not even capable of
painting a skin that looks nice. Still, why shouldn’t they have
nice GUIs? Arts should allow them to build their GUI out of
predefined elements, but still, with these predefined elements they
should be able to express any kind of interaction they require.
So basically, aRts should even make people who are blind for
artistic expression able to construct frontpanels which look good,
are intuitive and easy to use. And that process should require as
few action from the user as possible. While still being able to add
personal touch (such as using a rather blackish style of front
panel, with hard lines, or a rather soft orange style with many
flashing lights).
But how to proceed now?
I. Design studies/”I want it to look like that”-Screenshots
The idea I had was, that you first of all should install aRts
and get familiar a little with it. At least you should have seen
the examples. Then, try to create screenshots of the next major
aRts release. Just how could it look. Try to take a nice device you
could imagine in a studio. And try to paint a screenshot of how a
possible frontpanel to it should be able to look when designed in
aRts.
But remember, that the design elements you use should be
reusable. You should be able to model more than one frontpanel of
your screenshot, if you take the scissors, cut it, and reuse the
components.
Also think of one important feature aRts has: You can build
things that are to be used in other devices. For instance I could
build a control panel for adjusting an ADSR envelope, and reuse it
in some instruments that are using ADSR envelopes. So you don’t
only build front panels for complete structures, but also parts of
front panels that are reusable.
Well, when you have something, submit it, perhaps with a
description of how it should work and what components you think
make sense. If you like, have a look at how aRts reuses existing
components. If your components are to be composed of simpler
elements, you can also submit them directly. It might be like the
aRts slider, which contains of one background pixmap, and one for
the moving part.
II. Components
Of course, if you have an idea how a “LCD-Display” component or
a “Foo-Slider” component should work & look, directly send it.
The idea of the screenshot approach is to get a) ideas and b)
consistent look and feel. But if you think you just want to do one
or two components, do it.
Submitting stuff
Everything you submit will appear on the aRts webpage, that’s
sure. That means the URL you need to know is http://linux.twc.de/arts.
Join the mailinglist as well, we’ll try to discuss the different
approaches there and try to get such components in aRts. And,
perhaps, with the next major release, some aRts screenshot could
look like yours.
Cu… Stefan
You can submit your screenshots/descriptions to our webpage
maintainer Harald Lapp . Also feel free to discuss everything you
like on the mailing list or with me.