[Kde-announce-apps] Qsynth 0.2.5

[Rui Capela]

Name: Qsynth
Version: 0.2.5
Type: Sound Application
Depend: Qt 3.x
License: GPL
Homepage: http://qsynth.sourceforge.net
More Info:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=14131

Description:
 QSynth is a fluidsynth GUI front-end application
written in C++ around the Qt3 toolkit using Qt
Designer. Eventually it may evolve into a
softsynth management application allowing the user
to control and manage a variety of command line
softsynth but for the moment it wraps the
excellent FluidSynth. FluidSynth is a command line
software synthesiser based on the Soundfont
specification.

Changelog:
 0.2.5   2006-03-05  Fancy dial knobs and
effective bank-offsets.

- New dial-knob behavior now follows mouse pointer
angular position, almost similar to old QDial, but
this time avoiding that nasty and rather abrupt
change on first mouse click.

- By simple use of widget subclassing, the
value/position of any dial knob can now be reset
to its default or original position at any time,
by simply pressing the mouse mid-button. These
default value positions are just committed to
current dial values when switching engines and/or
closing the application.

- Optional specification of alternate fluidsynth
installation path has been added to configure
command arguments (--with-fluidsynth).

- After some source code tweaks, a win32 build is
now possible (instructions will be provided on
demand :)

- Bank offset finally gets its due effect, while
on the channels and channel preset selection
dialogs. Regretfully, the soundfont bank offset
feature has been lurking ever since its inception,
but now its live and hopefully effective.

- A new fancy widget has arrived, qsynthKnob, with
some modifications to replace the actual *ugly*
QDial widgets in the main window. This widget is
based on a design by Thorsten Wilms, formerly
implemented by Chris Cannam in Rosegarden, and
finally adapted and brought to Qsynth by Pedro
Lopez-Cabanillas. Thankyou all.


0.2.4   2005-10-02  Bug and some other usability
fixes.

- All widget captions changed to include proper
application title prefix.

- Attempt to bring those aging autoconf templates
to date; sample SPEC file for RPM build is now
being included and generated at configure time.

- Missing icons on channel and soundfont setup
context menus are now up; bank/program splitter
widget added to channel preset dialog.

- An abrupt segfault on engine restart have been
finally fixed; this issue has been quite an
annoyance which has been around for ages and was a
highly probable showstopper just when restarting
an engine due to changes on the setup settings.
Not anymore, hopefully.

- New tool buttons were added to the main widget,
for adding a new engine and removing the current
one, while trying to increase the visibility of
multiple fluidsynth engine capability (for new
users, at least :)

- Set to use QApplication::setMainWidget() instead
of registering the traditional lastWindowClosed()
signal to quit() /slot, just to let the -geometry
command line argument have some optional effect on
X11.

- Minor configure and Makefile install fixes, as
Debian and Mac OS X specialties. Also, install
does the right thing with target file modes
(thanks to Matt Flax and Ebrahim Mayat, for
pointing these out).

- Fixed output disability when messages limit
option is turned off (thanks to Wolfgang Woehl for
spotting this one, while on qjackctl).


0.2.3   2005-05-24  System tray icon and menu
option.

- New option for system tray icon and menu, which
is known to be effective on KDE enabled desktops;
support for freedesktop.org's system tray protocol
specification has been included so this maybe also
effective on Gnome2.

- Setup options for alternate MIDI and Audio
devices were introduced.

- Output level meters get smoother and slightly
layout optimized.

- Set to ignore the SIGPIPE ("Broken pipe")
signal, where available, as the default handler is
usually fatal when a JACK client is zombified
abruptly.

- Messages window limit is now enforced only when
the line count exceeds in one third the user
configured line count maximum; if Qt 3.2.0+ is in
use, the QTextView widget is otherwise set to the
optimized Qt::LogText format.

- Updated Mac OS X build instructions (README-OSX,
by Ebrahim Mayat).