From the original SynthMaker forum (2004–2014), with its members’ names and dates.
RRSounds ·
Hello Fellow SM'ers,
I have been using the program for about seven months now and I'm really happy with the capabilities offered!
However, as I work on more projects, I'm having a hard time keeping track of the organization of my designs. I have started to realize that I have no decent, easy, clean way to document for my own use the work that I have done, other than to take notes manually by writing my changes to an external text program, or to leave a trail of text blocks in the modules I make (which does me no good if I can't remember where I wrote it).
The more complex the project gets the worse this problem is. There must be a better way! When some modules can be tens of levels deep, finding information is really tough! And coming back to a project months later, I need all the clues I can get, in order to pick up where I left off.
When I make a change, it would be nice to be able to write down, in one central location within that SM project, WHY I made that change and what my motivations were, so that later on I can clue myself into what I was thinking at the time. (Same as how you can write comments in the individual code files, which I try to add religiously when I write code blocks, but with a global scope).
Another thing which I would find REALLY useful, and certainly related to the above, would be a searchable database of all the parts I'm using, down to the primitives level. I'm sure the program already has one, we just can't see it (One idea for the developers would be to have a complete graphical hierarchical tree of all the modules and sub-modules, which, when you click on a module's name, takes you to the module's schematic page).
I generally save a copy of a current project by appending the date to the title. When the project in ongoing, I use that copy to start the next day's work, leaving a trail of revised versions. For my purposes, a database and an automatically-generated revision-to-revision change list would be super. But obviously, the program does not do any such thing at the moment.
So, what are other users doing to keep track of the ongoing changing details of their projects?
Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions,
David
philter5 ·
hey david,
i have thought about this probleM A LOT of times because my old file-organisation-system
was like a big messy-house with a lot of garbage and useless things. i prefer to save OSMs or other things i am working on as often as possible, but after some hours SM my computer/synthmaker folder has grown another 20 files. hard to keep this organized...my current SM folder is 4000 (!) files big, but in fact that are only round about 100 smaller projects (!). 😕 Real chaos...
I often use trial&error method when i build something, that´s why i want to be able to make EVERY change to the SM file undone when it crashes. fortunately disk space isn´t rare in theese days, that´s why i saved that often. but ATM things are getting really complicated . it´s TOO MUCH. i have this organisation-problem not only with OSM files, also with Image files, audio Samples (what is much more complicated )and and and...BUT i have never understood WHY it is not possible for SM/other Programs to automatically save EVERY STEP in a complete UNDO history that can be recalled later? i have thought about writing a small file-management system tool for SM, written with SM. i mean we can copy/delete/move/rename files&folders with SM,save/load/edit/recall textfiles (with usefull info like the date when it was edited last time , who has edited it and what changes have been made. a link to the original post, orig. author, general infos, complete list of fixed bugs...), add and view images (e.g. folder symbolss) and search/manage files&arrays (e.g. to let each file have different categories, find duplicates). i´ll upload the OSM later, perhaps you can modify/finish it... 😀 perhaps we can manage to finish it together
martinvicanek ·
Valid point, David! In my codes I use a lot of inline comments. The other thing that has proved useful for me is a preamble with a history of changes, something like
/*
Version 0.1
- basic proof of concept
- added volume control and clipper
Version 1.0
- nicer GUI
- code optimization
- added another control
- increased tolerance level to 0.5
*/
This has worked very well even in collaboration projects, so I would like to apply this scheme to SM projects as well. Probably the most useful place for such a preamble would be near the root level.
Another thing is documentation of modules, which could be compared to inline comments in coding. I often (though not consistently) place a text box at the top or bottom with an explanation and connect it to the Help tooltip. However, I found that it requires a good deal of discipline to keep this information up to date and synchronized with the "preamble".
+1 for your proposal regarding a tree view, similar to a file browser. I often need to go back and forth between two places on different branches of a project, how painful! If you could just open the tree where you need it and have direct access, that would be cool. You could even incorporate multiple projects in that tree, like you copy files between different partitions or disks.
Dell ·
Hi.
I generally date the OSM when changes occur and have a tendecy to "Save As..." so I can compare the original to the modified version.
I would recomend backing up your work. Every month I save the whole folder on a DVD just in case something occurs to the hard drive.
Cheers!
trogluddite ·
philter5 wrote: Programs to automatically save EVERY STEP in a complete UNDO history that can be recalled later?
Yes, I've often longed for that too - the nearest I've seen is in the Reaper DAW, where it is possible to save your project complete with its current undo history. Worst of all are the programs (very common) that clear the undo history whenever you do a save - that's just so annoying when you're only doing a 'safety backup'.
Like most people have suggested, my main method with Synthmaker is just to manually add lots of notes - even the best 'automatic' systems usually have the flaw that they can only tell you what changed - but that is often of little use without also knowing why you made the change.
However, there are several things that spring to mind for making project management and de-bugging easier in SM - I've just created a new thread on the 'Ideas and Requests' forum, as it is more likely that the developers will see them there.
attic ·
You know its not just Synthmaker its PC's in general, documenting huge projects is a challenge and software to do it with in an easy practical manner is not only hard to find but always has one attribute or another that makes you want to go back to pen and paper. If your not apposed to using another piece of software I have abused this software for note taking.
VUE The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The VUE project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information. It works best with a second monitor, and its free. http://vue.tufts.edu/index.cfm
It also helps to see a visual representation of whats on a drive if it is files your dealing with. You can use this for cleaning up and finding file sizes. It is also free. WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows.
http://windirstat.info/
But as you can see an all in one solution just doesn't seem to exist and you will at times have many programs open at once.
I have also used the free version of TreeDBnotes at times for database stuff. http://www.mytreedb.com/treedbnotes_free.html
If any of you are thinking about adding some note taking or database osm's let me know if i can help.
If other people know of good solutions I'm all ears. If other people know of crappy solutions that still work somewhat I'm still all ears.
@Ludite Yup Reaper is one of the few that get it close to right.
infuzion ·
attic wrote: VUE The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The VUE project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information. It works best with a second monitor, and its free. http://vue.tufts.edu/index.cfm
Nice link! Reminds me of UML / MindMapping
BTW, if you have to use outside documentation, might as well use UML framework that spits out the code for you. But you'll have to switch to Java/C++/etc for that...
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