[Feature suggestion] Command line arguments

[jonulrich]

Would be cool to have some basic command line options for the standalone versions.

If anything just the ability to open files with Cardinal <file> would be great. Maybe the ability to set the window geometry.

[GBaige]

Doesn't Cardinal Standalone share the same command line arguments as VCV Rack Free already?

And if it doesn't, I'd rather they fix more important issues than implementing such feature that not a lot of people are going to use. I mean, if you're only going to use Cardinal as standalone with cl arguments, then you might as well be using VCV Rack Free instead.

[falkTX]

It doesnt, the standalone has mostly been a testing thing rather than the "product" to use.

The request is still valid though, there are many reasons for preferring Cardinal over VCV Rack. For one VCV Rack does not run on my main system at the moment (AsahiLinux running on a mac M1). It is possible to build things myself sure, but then I would have to build all the plugins too, might as well just stay with Cardinal.

[jonulrich]

I actually hadn't even considered trying vcvrack again. It was extremely broken for a while when I moved to pipewire a while back, long enough at least for me to abandon it until I found out about cardinal. Seems to work fine now, hopefully that will last.

My original reasoning was that I prefer to do my sound design sessions outside of the daw. Which the cardinal standalone works well for, but saving and resuming sessions through the native file chooser is more cumbersome than I would like. I could write a short novel about how much I hate file choosers in linux music software (the fact that so many of them default to starting at the home directory instead of allowing me to permanently set them to the folder where I have my presets or samples on an app specific basis, or at least allowing custom bookmarks on a per app basis, its maddening). My life is short and I'd rather not spend it fiddling through my files, (maybe this is just a gnome thing).

Rant aside, I don't think I mind using vcv rack for sound design and performance again, Cardinal seems to do well enough replacing vcv builtins with its own in . But I do foresee one problem with this. And maybe this should be its own issue:

Cardinal allows using Ctrl+s to save as a plugin (something that I often hit without thinking while working in a daw). And opening a vcvrack patch in Cardinal, saving, and reopening in vcvrack results in a patch thats missing the midi and audio modules. (Could be worse but it could get annoying, and mild annoyances are bad for my creative process)

[GBaige]

I see your annoyances, and they're valid. I guess for your use case (since having to browse for your preset directory every single time you save or open a patch can slow you down, especially when you work on a lot of patches at once) a command line argument could be added to quickly open a file or set a working/preset directory.

But hey! At least all modules seem to work on Linux and macOS. The Windows release builds still have broken modules to this day, and us Windows users have to resort to nightly builds where said modules work, but which have their own set of problems...

I'm just an end user after all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ungrateful. I just can't contribute jack to this project except report some bugs.

[falkTX]

But hey! At least all modules seem to work on Linux and macOS. The Windows release builds still have broken modules to this day, and us Windows users have to resort to nightly builds where said modules work, but which have their own set of problems. What gives?

As usual, life keeps us busy and time is lacking for extra things. Also a matter of priorities. But the real issue is a bug in the latest version that I havent been able to fix yet, related to saving the loading factory patch afterwards. There are no other blockers for release.