This one is for all of the OSX Tiger users out there:

Do you think it'd be handy to have a VDL2 Keymap widget?  That way you'd have all the keymaps (we could even include the ones not printed in the manual because they're obvious) handy and you'd just have to press F12 to bring it up and go to town.

I've been looking for a good excuse to develop a dashboard widget, and this seems like a pretty good one.  I just wanted to see if 1.) Jim and the other guys would authorize this since their keymappings are their IP 2.) if anyone would actually use it so I'm not just spending all of this time and effort for my own edification.

Justin - this is a great idea! I know I'd use it from time to time (yes...i do still refer to the keymaps every so often:)
Though I guess I'd have to finally migrate to Tiger. I'm not usually one to jump immediately into a new major OS release as there's inevitably a compatibility issue or few. But most Tiger issues that would have affected my stuff have since been resolved, and those widgets look like a lot of fun...

Something like this could be an outstanding enhancement for VDL2 Mac users, and I'm sure you'd be the hero of many if you were able to create something like this. I say, ";go for it!"; :) Good luck, and let me know if you need anything from the tapspace side of things.

Hi Justin,
I just wanted to let you know that I think a VDL-2 dashboard keymap widget is an outstanding idea.�� I have been using a somewhat ";ghetto-fied"; mounting system for my manual when sequencing using the VDL-2 library (in order to hold the manual sideways).�� I think that having instant access to all of the keymaps would speed up my productivity quite a bit.�� My Tiger upgrade should be arriving next week and I will be looking forward your VDL-2 keymap widget if you decide to go ahead and create it!

Thanks,
Andrew Anderson

I have a few books I'm finishing so I won't have a lot of cycles to devote to it just yet, but I think I'll go for it--it should be a lot of fun.

Also Jim you should seriously think about moving to Tiger.  I seriously know of nothing that I use that hasn't worked just fine (or any many cases better) with Tiger.  The improvements to some of the UI servers have really sped things up in most cocoa apps, and the new bells and whistles are pretty nice too.  Been really stable with me too so far, no crashes yet.

you can let me know if you have any questions making the widget... I went through some of the struggles a couple weeks ago when making one. Good luck, and keep us all posted :)

Sure will, and thanks for the offer.

One question I have is how would people like to see the widget behave?  I know that screen real estate is the big design consideration in widgets, so part of me thinks that the brevist approach would be to just have a keyboard layout on the screen with a drop-down for instruments and when you mouseover keys it tells you what it's mapped to in a separate section, but that could make tracking down specific sounds kind of a pain (maybe augment this with a search feature?).

The alternative would be to lay out the keyboard vertically and have all of the keymaps listed there, but that might end up taking up a lot of screen space.

Which would you guys prefer? 

Keystroke driven interface!

Horizontal would be cool if you could put the text at a 45 degree angle.

Justin, your keymap widget just may be the impetus I need to switch to Tiger!  What a great idea!  Let us know when you finish that...you would be doing a great service to all Tiger Mac users.

Resizable would be nice too.  Maybe with mouse focus.

Speaking of Widgets, the original widget program, Konfabulator, is now free.  It was bought by Yahoo.

www.konfabulator.com

I think it's better than the mac thing, and it's both platforms.

I wonder if anything was ever done with this? ......

I [u]really[/u] hope so, - it would be a most welcome addition to the VDL2 experience for sure!�� :)

I disabled widgets to free system resources and because I simply don't use them that often. They had major eye candy appeal for me whenever I found a new one, but after the 5th time I pressed F12, I just kinda ignored them.

I think Justin's idea is kool non the less, but In the meantime, you can have ";VDLMIDI"; running on screen and when you want to know where something is on the keyboard, you can select the instrument, search for something (OTH shots baby!) and it will list what note corresponds to that sound on the keyboard  (F4, B7 etc.)

I agree - I think that ";VDLMIDI"; is a [u]wonderful[/u] tool for VDL2 users.�� I however would still like to see a VDL2 widget - more options for note identification are always good. :)

[quote author=anande5 link=topic=706.msg5077#msg5077 date=1151128803]
I agree - I think that ";VDLMIDI"; is a [u]wonderful[/u] tool for VDL2 users.  I however would still like to see a VDL2 widget - more options for note identification are always good. :)
[/quote]

I agree as well but I was just reading through old posts and wondered if anything was ever done with the widgets thing...