From the original SynthMaker forum (2004–2014), with its members’ names and dates.
bManic ·
A couple of usability things:
The navigator's zoom doens't center where the mouse is, it zooms into the upper right corner. It'd be better if it worked just like in the main schematic view.
Also, the navigators left and right arrows that let you scroll trough the 'pages' of views would benefit from a CTRL+click or SHFT+click modifier key that would make the view scroll quickly to the first/last open page in the navigator.
Keep up the amazing work!
Cheers! bManic
malc ·
Hi bManic,
Good points. We'll get something sorted for the navigator scrolling. I think cbit has mentioned this in the past too.
The mouse wheel zooming isn't intentional. By that I mean mouse wheel zoom in the navigator was not explicitly implemented. I think it just happens to work.
If it's useful we'll keep it in and make it zoom to the point.
bManic ·
Personally I'd like to see separate zooming in the navigator. This would enable me to zoom into the frontpanel of a synth GUI while tweaking the controls colors/alignment/bitmaps in realtime without having to switch pages too much. Also, how about user definable 'shortcut keys' for the navigator? Go to navigator tab you want, press SHIFT+'number key from 0 to 9'. Then by just quickly pressing any of the numbers that you've "stored" the schematic would quickly jump to this location.
You could also just add the number keys 1 to 0 as presets for the first 10 navigator windows and then one key for first page and one for last.
Cheers! bManic
malc ·
Some great ideas there bManic.
The use of the Navigator to get feedback when doing GUI editing is very interesting. I've used it for exactly this purpose myself. Thing is, whilst it works it's not really ideal. As you say, you really need to be able to zoom in as resizing the Navigator leaves you little space to work in. You also end up flicking up and down the Navigator between the part that you're changing and the part it affects.
To me this is all pointing towards some other solution. I'd keep the Navigator for navigating (and incorporate some of the ideas you've mentioned above). But for GUI editing provide something else - a separate area that you can zoom and pan that stays visible no matter where you go in the schematic hierarchy. You could pick any part of your schematic and 'pin' it so that any changes you make that affect it would be instantly visible.
Do you think this would be useful?
bManic ·
Yes, I think your idea is much better. You're right, lets use the navigator for navigating and a separate solution for VST/VSTi GUI editing. Maybe a separate window that can have the "stay on top" windows option?
Cheers! bManic
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