mruby-zest / mruby-zest-build

Root repo for mruby-zest containing links to all submodules
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Improve bank ops #75

Closed polluxsynth closed 2 years ago

polluxsynth commented 2 years ago

This is a series of patches attempting to improve bank read and write operations. I've split them into a several patches as they involve some design decisions which possibly need further discussion.

One thing is the handling of /alert messages. They are displayed, using the (new) :warning type on second line of the console log window, in red, to catch the user's attention. Tooltips (:tooltip) are displayed on the top line as usual. I've introduced a new type :success, which is also displayed on the top line, in green text, in order to indicate success.

The idea is that write operations elicit a green (:success) message on the top line, but if the write operation fails, a subsequent /alert message from Zyn will result in the top line being displayed in the usual subdued blue, and the alert message (:warning) on the bottom line, so that it's possible for the user to see what operation the warning is referring to.

I'm a bit apprehensive about bringing in somewhat gaudy colors to the lovely Fusion interface, but I feel that displaying /alert messages in red is consistent with conveying a sense of urgency being error messages. Furthermore, displaying success messages in green gives positive confirmation that a write operation has succeeded, which I think is important, as contrary to other operations in the UI (i.e., adjusting a parameter), it's not possible for the user to immediately verify that the operation actually took place successfully, so emphasising that all went well bolsters the user's confidence.

EDIT: Putting it another way: there's a lot of information (read tooltips) that passes by the console log window, most of which while certainly useful, is not important, and so users will quickly learn to disregard what comes up there unless they are specifically looking for the information provided. So using colors to alert users of things that are out of the ordinary would seem prudent.

I've tried to tone the red and green colors down somewhat (hence the somewhat odd color codes) to not stand out too much from the rest of the UI.

Another detail: I think we discussed adding the slot number to the patch name, but what I've done is augment the tooltip with information on what is actually displayed there (slot number for write mode, and file name for read mode; the latter makes sense to me as the patch files do not necessarily have bank slot numbers in them).

fundamental commented 2 years ago

Merging, Thanks for the enhancement :+1:

polluxsynth commented 2 years ago

:+1: