Help required for adventurous first build

jorge · 2 Mar 2005

Hi galaa

It's hard to get to actually answer your question when I just feel like playing with your synth 🙂.

I tried editing floats and ints and I had no problem. I never encountered such a problem with SM, if you could be more specific and describe which of the floats/ints in your schematic you're trying to change and what is happening it would be very helpful.

As for moving the background bitmap bmp, you're right! The way the schematic is implemented you cant. I think I understand your problem, for example in the following knob:

now I'll change the name "glide" to a bigger name:

when I try to move the bigger caption to the left it doesnt let me with the mouse ( although I just found out talking with malc that you can do it with the cursor keys ).

I've just re-described what you said to make sure I understood it.

Now for a possible solution:

The bitmap is positioned in a fixed location which is probably not the best way and we'll probably change it in the future to be moveable in the front panel, for now you can change the position of the bitmap in the front panel as follows:

The current position/area of the bitmap is specified as 0,0,6.5,6.5:

meaning x=0, y=0, width=6.5 and height=6.5 if you change it to 2,0,6.5,6.5 the bitmap will move to the right by 2 gridstep:

and now you can move the label and the needle with the following result:

Ideally the bitmap should be moveable which can be done by creating a new module inside the knob just for the bitmap itself similar to the way the label and the needle work. If you want to learn how to do that let us know.

malc · 2 Mar 2005

Just to expand on Jorge's reply about the knob. When dragging gui objects around he's dead right - you can only drag them within the bounds of the client area of the module. However, as he said you can use the cursor keys for more precise 'nudging' and this also allows you to break the general rule and move an item outside the client area (note that by holding CTRL when nudging you can also move by one pixel at a time instead of one grid step).

That all said, I've been working on the graphics performance for the next release and in looking at this realised that it made sense to clip drawing to the module client area. This gives you much more predictable results but it means you can't use the trick described above to solve your problem.

The good news is that I can offer a better solution (the one that Jorge hinted at in his reply in fact). What you need is a resizeable knob module that you can expand to use any size label you like. So here it is 🙂 :

Download the schematic here. (just realised I could have picked a better name for that schematic file 😉 )

Try resizing the module for the knob and you'll see it adjust accordingly.

The knob that we have in the toolbox was left over from earlier days before the new GUI editing was put in place. Hence the fixed position of the bitmap. Now you can use the bitmap module and the fact that the position of GUI objects can be controlled by both direct interaction and by values in the schematic.

I too had problems reproducing your float/int problem.

Your MiniMoog is cool 🙂

Malc.

jorge · 2 Mar 2005

galaa, I'll try to answer your next question 🙂

When you try to change the waveform:

The name of the selected wave doesnt update as you move the knob. To make it update you need to trigger a redraw for the area of the wave name label. That can be done as follows:

galaa · 3 Mar 2005

Thanks for the swift and detailed replies guys!!!!! Malc, thanks for ringing me to discuss SM in an educational context (its Dave by the way)

It's hard to get to actually answer your question when I just feel like playing with your synth 🙂.

Thanks, its nowhere near finished yet, but I'm finding I'm learning all the time while I'm building it

I tried editing floats and ints and I had no problem. I never encountered such a problem with SM, if you could be more specific and describe which of the floats/ints in your schematic you're trying to change and what is happening it would be very helpful.

This seems to be a 'random' fault. Everything was fine this morning but I've just come back to it and it started to happen again. i can't a find a common link (if I do I'll let you know) Restarting SM fixed it.

galaa, I'll try to answer your next question

How did you know!!!!! Cheers for that. Pretty obvious when you think about it, but like I said I'm still learning a lot of the more indepth stuff, plus I've come from a reaktor background where you have little to no GUI control. It works a treat!!!

2 other questions for now (i've got loads, but don't want to push my luck this early in the game) 1. How do I go about changing the 'step' value of a knob. In my schematic I have the range knob, for example, that i want to step through 6 positions but I'm struggling. I've tried changing the start and sweep angles but these don't do what i want. 2. In your example synth you use the Moog filter code. As I'm building a MiniMoog I thought it would make sense to use this filter. However, even with the filter fully open the signal is still being affected. Is this supposed to be the case?

Thanks again guys, you guys are ace!!

malc · 3 Mar 2005

Hi Dave,

I did know it was you. I usually stick to forum names unless I know someone is happy revealing their true identity 🙂

galaa wrote: This seems to be a 'random' fault. Everything was fine this morning but I've just come back to it and it started to happen again. i can't a find a common link (if I do I'll let you know) Restarting SM fixed it.

What actually happens? If you can describe the behaviour it might give us a clue. For example, do the floats and ints behave like they are read only? Do you get the blinking (in the flashing sense) caret?

galaa wrote: 1. How do I go about changing the 'step' value of a knob. In my schematic I have the range knob, for example, that i want to step through 6 positions but I'm struggling. I've tried changing the start and sweep angles but these don't do what i want.

No problem. As you've seen, the start and sweep angles define where the 0 and 1 positions are for the dial. With respect to a clockface, zero is at 3 o'clock and the angles go clockwise from there. The example knobs run from 135 degrees (between 7&8 o'clock) through 270 degrees (to between 4 and 5 o'clock).

So as you say, this isn't what you want. Inside the Knob Dial module you'll see the Knob Control module. Inside the Knob Control is a module called Nearest Step. Go inside that module and you'll see a float labeled 'steps-1' set this to 5 (to get 6 steps). Hey presto!

2. In your example synth you use the Moog filter code. As I'm building a MiniMoog I thought it would make sense to use this filter. However, even with the filter fully open the signal is still being affected. Is this supposed to be the case?

Hmm, not sure. Let me get back to you on that one.

By the way, please ask as many questions as you like. It's good for us because we often discover where we can improve the software or make it easier to learn and understand.

galaa · 3 Mar 2005

malc wrote: What actually happens? If you can describe the behaviour it might give us a clue. For example, do the floats and ints behave like they are read only? Do you get the blinking (in the flashing sense) caret?

when you hover the mouse over a float or int the cursor changes to the edit image. You think you can alter the value so you click into the box but nothing happens. Its like they're read-only

Cheers for the help with setting the number of steps. Spot on!

malc · 3 Mar 2005

Hmm, come to think of it, I may have come across this once but it never happened again so I couldn't look into it. If it happens again can you send me a copy of your schematic and let me know what module you were in and which floats/ints you were trying to edit. Also if you can remember what you did just prior to the problem occuring that would be very helpful indeed.

Thanks

malc · 3 Mar 2005

galaa wrote: when you hover the mouse over a float or int the cursor changes to the edit image

When you say the edit image do you mean the 'I beam' cursor? Looks like a captal letter I.

galaa wrote: 2. In your example synth you use the Moog filter code. As I'm building a MiniMoog I thought it would make sense to use this filter. However, even with the filter fully open the signal is still being affected. Is this supposed to be the case?

It looks like for this example the filter will still affect the signal. If you look at the FFT it certainly appears to be the case (rather conveniently, you can see how to do this here). I'm not a filter expert. we got the code for this from the musicdsp site.

galaa · 5 Mar 2005

malc wrote: When you say the edit image do you mean the 'I beam' cursor? Looks like a captal letter I.

Yeah, thats what happens