Ctrlr Manual Notes and Requests

[human fly]

Hi Goodweather !! hoping you will be interested in this topic,
which i’m starting as a place to make suggestions for future
entries in the next Ctrlr manual …

i’m going to kick off with the suggestion that ‘we'(Ctrlr users
and newbies) deal with ALL entries in the right Properties Pane.
there is a lot there, and quite a few are mystifying for the
new user – and still for me.

i know you’ve dealt with quite a few of them, but i think there
needs to be a section that goes through all, as a reference.

i’m going to drop a few on here anyway, as i come across things
that weren’t obvious to me – and in no particular order. i think
it will be a useful reference for whoever is brave enough to try
to present a readable document eventually (not me ! but if i can
contribute something, this is it)

[human fly]

first off, this morning’s issue was defining the size of the panel
background: initially, i couldn’t work out if i should use

(Panel)Editor/UIPanelCanvasRectangle

or, lower down:

uiPanelWdith/uiPanelHeight

>these don’t have the same values, in my project file.

and could not see an change in realtime until i had saved and re-opened
the panel, and then put it in Panel Mode. i have now been able to resize

>so it is the first one – you can see it changing in realtime, in fact, doh.
>but i don’t know what the other 2 entries are for.

nb: i don’t see the use of:
UIPanelViewPortSize, or:
UIPanelPropertiesSize,

as these have no purpose, and only make the Properties list longer,
requiring more scrolling, and adding yet another item (could be in
an auxiliary pane, not critical to work methods)
the workspace background – which i hope will be the default opening size
of the Panel.

[human fly]

separately, some reminder to CLEAR Parent ‘ownership’
of Modulators and Groups (and anything else), when these
are moved out of their original UIGroups or UITabs.

Or else, they will jump back to those locations on next
load of the file.
(this is the method i’m using to prevent this behaviour,
since this parameter does not automatically update, stops
this problem, until it is fixed, or not)

[human fly]

a subsection on label and value heights, vs. modulator size
and text size, and positioning and justification ! this all
gets quite crazy 🙂

and you quite often don’t see the true result until you ‘update’,
by switching, for example ‘justification’ type OFF what you want
and back again – ie: with an image strip Label.

Image/component rectangle relates to image size quite strangely
depending on label size and justification/position.

had a bit of headscratching with this, and it took some trial and
error until i chanced on the solution.

[human fly]

moving locked modulators:
if you drag a LOCKED modulator, Ctrlr can/will crash.

you can do it without crashing Ctrlr by altering the
size/position values.

[goodweather]

Thx for the suggestion, I’ll take this in consideration.
The big issue is that I’m just a user and guessing / experimenting as you.
Only Atom knows the real meaning and behaviour of each property.
Therefore, I’m writing the guide as a guide and not as a reference manual.
Didn’t have time to work on it but I made the new structure for the 2.0 guide.

Will restart working on it…

[human fly]

well: … no rush, man, we all have to eat 😉 i just hope
you and others will be indulgent with this initiative, as
it is intended for the common good. and at least you know
it is here for reference when you, or the ‘manual writing
team’ 😉 get round to another fine production.

there is so much to deal with…and maybe i will at some
point sit down and go through it and knock out a notepad
file as a starter. your publishing skills are evidently
far better than mine. it is really just a matter of going
through the parameter list, and annotating each entry.

*funny thing is*… some items suddenly swap positons in
the list order. have you noticed that?

i suggested to atom that maybe a good revision at some
point would be to split the ‘scroll-list'(it is long,
with all the sections) into tabs at the top. it just
occured to me it might be a good idea, to keep every-
thing always in view, no more scrolling down the page.

and…pfff…the view *never* stays the same, if you
close one section, you always find it’s popped back
open, and you’re looking at a different part of the
list.(i think i did a github for this/these)

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by human fly.

[human fly]

( what happened to ‘chat’ ? )

(maybe i’m *banned* from ‘chat’ ! )

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by human fly.

[human fly]

ok, here is today’s… i may add an image to illustrate later…

i want a label for my imagestrip box, and it’s a helluva job to
figure out…i got it right, saved it, and when i re-open the
panel, the label has mainly disappeared, i’ve just got a couple
of pixels showing. so that’s inconsistent behaviour with Ctrlr,
anyway. but there are a LOT of options here, and not very clear
what they do:

-ResourceImagePaintMode has options from ’tile’..to ‘centred’ (what
i’m using here) – so that all needs to be defined/described,..
then it depends also on:
-resourceImage width/height – these correspond to imagestrip framesize,
(but i’ve tried to resize the image on the UI)
then, there is:
-component Label position and component Label Jusitification
i actually have to set position to ‘none’ to get my label to
appear now, and justification ‘centred’ – but there are several
‘centred’ options, none of which work with this.
and then there’s Label Height.
this is like flying a helicopter, or a drone with multiple
vertices, doing my head in ! and taking a LOT of time to
resolve, i’m about to give up and make some Label modulators
for this. centred bottom chops the top off the label…
anyway: i think this deserves a little paragraph, with some
clarification from atom, whenever, etc.
ok, done 😉
EDIT: and now i’ve finally solved that; it has taken 2 sessions !

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by human fly.

[human fly]

child/parent attributes can be got rid of when moving
modulators out of their original UIGroups or UITabs
by moving them to the workspace before moving them to
their new destination (Group or Tab)
(probably worth checking at this point, and deleting
any remaining Group or Tab ownership – working so far:
i save, close and re-open the panel to check)

i am concluding that it is not worth putting Groups
within Groups – the main Group will only copy&paste
with empty sub-Groups inside it – i think the modulators
remain, but their ownership attributes remain, and they
get sent to positions that are not useful, ie: 0,0..
and re-appear (or remain hidden) on next load, which
messes up the whole panel.

initially, i used sub-Groups for aesthetic/design consid-
erations, in order to have panel lines, as much as to
avoid repeating sizing and attributes/properties work.
in fact, the extra panel lines and spacing take up screen
space, so i’m now discarding that in favour of a single
main Group, and i’ll find another way of separating the
various sections.

[human fly]

ok…as a minute contribution, i just started listing all the entries
on the properties pane 🙂 hey, it’s a start..something to refer to
and start making notes on, for the comprehensive ‘contents’ version.
this is just ‘modulator’/(UISlider) version. i’ll rattle out ‘Panel’
later and upload it as well.

certainly some entries i know nothing about yet, -many more are obvious,
of course. stop me now, if this is dealt with elsewhere. (! lol…)

i find existing documentation partially frustrating: it touches on
something but then more explanation is needed.

see attached txt file.

b*gger; attachments not working here anymore.
so it is here:
https://app.box.com/s/avwhgdznh013mphtmcargjst1yuz4zhs

[human fly]

tips’n’trix ;o)

nice little time-saving trick for entering sysex message format in
a load of modulators all at once: (then you just go through and adjust
the hex numbers you need for each)
-first, make sure all your sysex modulators in your panel all have
‘sysex’ enabled as midi message type: select, and hold ‘ctrl’ and
click-select all the modulators you want to have sysex messages.
(you can do this in batches/rows, it’s easier, in case you mess up;
easier to check through, too). then select ‘midi message type’, and
choose ‘sysex’, and all those modulators will now have ‘sysex’ selected.
*if you don’t change ALL your modulators to sysex now, you can have
a big problem later, as i found out. when you enable sysex for other
modulators later, the messages can get re-attributed to the wrong
modulators, as the order they are entered in seems to remain – bug? –

-ok, so now you want to give a batch of modulators the same sysex
message format. same technique: first, paste into the ‘formula’
box of one modulator your specimen sysex message, with ‘xx’ for
the variable value position – and ‘z(n)’ for the checksum, ‘n’
being the number of bytes to checksum – and check it looks ok.
-now multi-select the batch of modulators you want to insert the
message to, using ‘ctrl’+clicking on all of them, and then paste
into the ‘formula’ box. now all your modulators have the same
sysex message, and you just have to go through and adjust the
parameter address byte for each one. this will save copying
and pasting into each one.

i’m liking the multiselect, now that i’ve realised i can do it.
very useful when doing a big multi-timbral device. no good for
moving things, unless you cut+paste, but good for un/locking a
load of things at once (you have to use the button on the properties
pane for this, doesn’t appear as right-click reliably), or changing
any property.

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