[Denemo-devel] Bugs, Features and Questions

[Nils]

Here is my latest collection. Mostly its small things with the purpose to 
create a better feeling to work in Denemo.

0)As you all already know the display is strange after copy&paste or "Adjust 
the Barlines". Moving the cursor from the start to end is a workaround, but ...

1)in Notes/Rest there is ParenthizeNote, but the menu label says "No label". 
Same for Chords: ParenthizeChord

2)Empty measures are full rests. Thats good. But if you enter a 
non-note-object, like a rehearsel mark, in a complete empty measure it breaks 
the lilypond output and the measure is removed.

2b) Copy and Paste the empty measure destroys it and leaves a mess of 
incomplete measures and such

2c) "Adjust the Barlines" makes everything worse after that because it just 
deletes all empty measures :)

3)If your screen-resolution is too small, or your Denemo window too small, not 
all menus are shown. Especially the important "Menu of Objects". 

4)Enter measure ("m") creates the the new one right before the current one. 
Even if you are at the end of the current measure or even on the barline 
itself. This is really a minor thing, but I find it confusing if you are on the 
barline with your cursor and the new measure it not entered in between but in  
another place.

5)"Add Voice" adds a label on top of the staff. But adding more and its gets a 
mess because the labels cludge together. Maybe Matthias or someone else could 
replace this with a more scalable solution like putting a small drop-down field 
on top of the staff where you can choose the voice and which shows which voice 
you are in right now if you choose to use your keys to change voices. 

5b)The current voice (and the staffname) could also be shown in the status-bar.

5c)And only the voice on top (latest one) highlights the clef and timesig 
("makes it black"). I think it does not matter then, so all could be pure black

6) This was added as a bug report some time ago, but is there really a reason 
why barlines are grey? I know it was meant that this should show, that the 
barlines are not the real one (compared to lilypond barliens) but making them 
black maybe "feels" better.

7) If you enter a directive without a graphic currently, for example 
(d-InsertLilyDirective), it just a small green line and the text-label is shown 
between the staff-lines.
First it should be the other way around, the label should be under the staff. 

Second the green line could be a bigger item, as tall as the staff itself, like 
a barline, only thicker. 
Maybe this way it feels more like a real "object" that can be grabbed, so its 
easier to spot, select and handle.  

Questions and Requests
========
1) Do you know if its possible to use an image instead of plain text. For 
example a band-logo instead of your name as "Author".

2) What is the current state of selections? What is your opinion how "apply to 
selection" should work. 
In my opinion the user or scripter should not have to care how its done. If you 
write a script for single objects it should work on the selections 
automatically as if you selected each object on its own.

If you want to have a more custom behaviour, complex scripts that work for 
complete staffs in genereal or enter new objects, you can easily place a 
"Destory Selection" command first in your script.

3)Midi signals in Denemos "Manage Command Set":
There are many possibilites with MIDI and many commands besides notes and 
musical instructions. There are midi-controllers, hardware, that have knobs and 
motor-faders and additional buttons, and the sustain pedal and so on.

How do you assign these to Denemo-actions? Do you think it would be possible to 
you midi-signals just the same as keybindings? In "Manage Command Set" you 
choose a command, press "Assign Key" and it doesn't matter if you press [a] or 
[tab] now, or use the Sustain-Pedal like a "shift" key. So Sustain+tab is a 
different command than tab.

And there are many more midi-commands like the mentioned faders and buttons.

It has not to be pretty and written out "sustain pedal". some obscure number 
should be enough. If its auto-detected Denemo has not to know at all what this 
instruction is. It just detects it.

4)I still did not figure out how to move the cursor vertically(!) to the lowest 
note on current horizontal position. 
Example: In a script I move right with (d-NextNote) or even (d-CursorRight) and 
my cursor is currently on the staff-line for g'. There is a note on b' and I 
want to move the cursor automatically to that note. Or there is a chord that 
begins on c' (so below the cursor-position) and I want the cursor to move to 
the lowest note of that chord: c'. 
Could you provide a scheme command for that? 



Nils