search

kunstmusik / blue

Blue - An Integrated Music Environment
https://blue.kunstmusik.com
GNU General Public License v2.0
130 stars 11 forks source link

thoughts on Swing for version 2.8.2 #645

Closed tjingboem closed 2 years ago

tjingboem commented 2 years ago

i will give show some differences on the Roboto version of Blue. Because, as i understand it, reliable working with JavaFX in Blue cannot be trusted upon in the future, JavaFX will make room for Swing.

  1. much faster, feel lighter in use, responds quicker
  2. reliable for years to come

Converting existing instruments to Swing and Roboto:

  1. here a comparison of the same instrument, designed with JavaFX JavaFX this is the Swing version: Swing

Font and knobs are smaller. Advantage IMO is that now there is more room for displaying more value numbers. That is useful JavaFX: JavaFXknobs Swing: Swingknobs

Advantage IMO of Roboto is the smaller and less bold type of font. This allows instruments and effects to become smaller. And personally i don't mind redoing all my instrument and effects, now that i know that they will like that in 10 years from now...

A problem is that all sliders do not get the values like they were saved. I loose all presets and saved values in the blue files. Another thing is that the sliders are aesthetically not pleasing. Of course, IMO.

Then about the Editing response: it feels sluggish

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6670911/152651095-ef32d998-1104-4aaa-90cd-2d0189bd93e6.mp4

the sliders respond VERY fast, the knobs also. Nice also, that it is possible to be able to make fine adjustments with the knobs.

tjingboem commented 2 years ago

here an example of the sluggish way of editing:

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6670911/152651789-461b4a32-7434-483d-9379-108fadd3fa25.mp4

kunstmusik commented 2 years ago

@tjingboem I found the issue and fixed up the initial loading of values for horizontal and vertical sliders. I will look at visual rendering of the slider next. Let me know if you encounter any further issues with the slider value loading.

tjingboem commented 2 years ago

i confirm that the slider value loading works like it should now. Great!

This means that from now on i can use the 2.8.2 beta as my default Blue version; this will surely help in verifying that all works technically as it did with JavaFX as the reference .

If i may something about the present visual presentation of the sliders: IMO they are too big... too heavy and they take up a lot of space. They are not in balance with the more subtle Roboto font and the knobs. What i do like, apart from the speed at which they glide, is that they actually point at something. The JavaFX sliders did not have this. By creating a '-' somewhere the the right of the arrow, i can make clear that for example on that spot there is a neutral value for that parameter.

tjingboem commented 2 years ago

here is a list of things that must be looked at because they make the Swing implementation not backwards compatible with JavaFX:

In JavaFx it was like this: Screenshot from 2022-03-15 09-02-12 where it got the same background color as the slider values or File Selector

My personal preference is that it looks better now- but i report it here because it is a difference with JavaFX

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6670911/158334008-b47ad80a-e118-4623-a46d-31d74fcab7a7.mp4

tjingboem commented 2 years ago

closing this as remaining SWING <--> JavaFX issues are split up to different issues. These all got the Milestone 2.8.2 as well.