Plugin parameter display could be improved

[grammoboy2]

Fiddling a bit with Renoise and Radium, to see how a tracker works. Sure, plugins will have it's advantages, but having the GUI of the plugin open in a special window, above the canvas of the DAW is not really pleasant to work with for me yet (Renoise).

In a standalone synth in NSM (or as plugin in Carla), you've a dedicated window/workspace for your synth. Put all the attention to the synth and turn some knobs instead of picking the preset.

Radium seems to have a pleasant alternative / middle-way, its displays the plugin parameters on a GUI-less but workable overview.

[falkTX]

carla generic plugin UI is supposed to be a dialog, not a full-screen window. it looks awful when you make it full screen, because that is not the intention of it. note that carla needs a little bit more space to show all possible values of enumeration/list type (notice how radium does not support those) plus the MIDI-CC/CV controlled status.

in the future, that parameter page is going to have a search bar. UI-wise, not much is going to change there, only fixing what is already in there and maybe support files / strings. the "edit" tab is something I do not like at the moment, but your ticket is not related to that.

I appreciate the feedback, but to be honest I am not really sure what to do with it and how to go about "fixing" it. When would the ticket be considered done? It seems all subjective and a matter of taste and opinion.

I am at a point where I want to more or less finalize Carla, as it has already many features and time is better spent fixing/polishing rather than change it or add more stuff. I am happy with the current plugin generic UI as it is, as I want to have more than 1 of them open side of side or then a small search bar at the top, so the current design fits well.

[grammoboy2]

Sure, see it as feedback.

[falkTX]

The feedback is appreciated for sure. One possible solution too is to have the parameters in the sidebar, following the currently selected plugin. I think having the plugin info in a separate dialog would be useful.

[moonshaadow]

Hi there ! Let me add my feelings... There are some good ideas here, and I am agree to say that parameters view could be improved. But there is maybe no need to do big changes to the things that are already here.

Maybe it could be possible to add a 'Parameters' tab to main panel, without change the rack view :

• If you need to maximize space, just hide side-panel. To make it faster maybe we could have a shortcut to show/hide this side-panel, like a little arrow/icon in the top left corner.
• With a whole tab as a Parameters view, there so much scenarios to organize things. Here are thoughts :

1. Sub-tabs for plugins, 1 per plugin. Benefits : a max of place for parameters (and maybe other stuff, like a meter which could be useful if you intend to play with parameters.) Drawback : only one plugin at a time.
2. A short list of plugins on a side, like @grammoboy2 suggests, but inside the view, not on the side-panel. As I said, if the side-panel is not needed, just hide it. Select a plugin in the list to view its parameters. Or select several plugins to compare/work on many. Vertical scrolling could be needed if many plugins. Horizontal scrolling if plugin has too much parameters.

In such a view, we of course need to keep those feature : on/off, dry/wet, volume.

Question are:

• Knobs ? Sliders? Other things? Anyway it should be: not to big in case of many parameters, not to small for fine control.
• Do we really need a |...| button for automation of each parameter ? It takes so much place, a right click on parameter is enough to show a context menu (see #1336 about the improvement of this menu)