On 4/26/19 7:57 AM, Sami Jumppanen wrote:
The problem is how to continue with old songs made for the two-port
studio setup? There are at least these possibilities:
1. Settings: always use default studio when opening songs.
That option came about when I raised these same issues with the original
developers.
Device configuration should be detached from sequencer work, it makes
very little sense anyway. Firstly mixing the terms device and port. One
MIDI port can feed many devices (synthesizers) by daisy chaining (or
other splitters/processors), so it's not rational to think about a MIDI
port as a "device".
I raised such arguments with the original developers. Part of the
solution to understanding what they were thinking with this design is to
understand what "device," "port," and "instrument" mean within
Rosegarden's framework. My attempt to explain this to users was the
foundation that developed into the book I wrote.
Rosegarden was originally trying to pretend there was no such thing as a
"port." It was supposed to be a more friendly model that abstracted
certain concepts and hid them from the user for ease of use, or
something like that. It's fair to say I disagreed with it
philosophically, but by the time I arrived on the scene, it was well
established. In the years since, I pretty much just learned to deal
with it.
I haven't thought about this in so long I'm not in a good position to
explain it now. I'm pretty sure the explanation I wrote back then in
about 2004 is available on the wiki somewhere.
Just to be able to send MIDI out, I need to define a device, but
defining a device requires defining patches as well.
That's a problem I was trying to address with the all-numbers.rgd and
raw-numbers.rgd contained in the collection of devices that ships with
Rosegarden. I'd say their usefulness in the real world has been less
than I would have hoped.
At this point in the game, I definitely have no interest in rearranging
a model that has been in place for 20 years, and I have had similar
problems working on old files with other software.
I mostly work with audio now, and I mostly use REAPER on Windows. At
one point, I doubled the size of my recording rig and rearranged what
microphones were connected to which inputs. If I load files from before
that change, everything is hooked up incorrectly, so if I want to go in
and record new material, I have to spend some time making adjustments
manually.
When I load old files into Rosegarden, everything is hooked up
incorrectly, and I usually just spend some time making adjustments manually.
I think the bottom line is that working with old files in anything comes
with a set of issues you just have to deal with.
With that being said, one of the tools I have used is to go hack the XML
manually. I have occasionally managed to cut XML out of this file and
paste it into that file without breaking things.
I'm curious if other users have come up with better solutions than mine
over the years. If I was an expert once, I'm certainly no longer an
expert. I haven't thought about these problems in years. I definitely
feel your pain here. This is exactly the issue that sucked me into
contributing to this project, and eventually resulted in my becoming a
developer here. A frustrated, burnt-out, retired developer who didn't
achieve most of his goals, I might add. This stuff is hard.
That's why I pay somebody else to write the software now, and even then.
--
D. Michael McIntyre
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