Qtractor 0.0.7.752

Rui Capela rncbc at rncbc.org
Wed Oct 31 00:28:02 CET 2007


Name: Qtractor
Version: 0.0.7.752
Type: KDE Sound Application
Depend: Qt 4.x
License: GPL
Homepage: http://qtractor.sourceforge.net
More Info:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=56325

Description:
 Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer
application written in C++ around the Qt4 toolkit
using Qt Designer. The initial target platform
will be Linux, where the Jack Audio Connection Kit
(JACK) for audio, and the Advanced Linux Sound
Architecture (ALSA) for MIDI, are the main
infrastructures to evolve as a fairly-featured
Linux Desktop Audio Workstation GUI, specially
dedicated to the personal home-studio.

Changelog:
 0.0.7  2007-10-31  The Eleventh Tower

- Suspend auto-follow-playhead while dragging or
moving content over the main track and midi editor
views; re-touched follow-playhead and new
continue-past-end tool icons.
- Playback is now forced complete full-stop
whenever play-head goes behind the current session
length and/or loop-end and the newer "continue
past end" option is enabled from transport menu.
- Tool/child windows position and size
preservation fixed.
- MIDI (pass-)through has been finally
implemented, after several kind requests, it
applies as a property of duplex-mode MIDI buses;
this new setting is configurable from the
View/Buses... dialog; also from respective new
input bus mixer-strip button; when enabled,
implies all incoming MIDI events at the input bus
will pass-through unchanged to the corresponding
output bus, as found useful just for direct
monitoring one's performance without the help of
any extra circumvent or kludgy connections.
- Mouse cursor shape changes accordingly while
hovering in header time-scale rulers, both in main
track-view and MIDI editor.
- Track-view clipboard paste action has been
refactored, with the user interface consistent
with the same functionality featured on the MIDI
editor: the clipboard selection being pasted now
floats at the mouse pointer and can be moved
around before placed into its final position,
either with the mouse or keyboard arrow keys.
- A unitialized member variable bug affecting all
MIDI clips has been discovered and squashed; this
one has been lurking for quite some time and was
causing wrong clip editing results, specially when
tempo or meter differs between session and the
MIDI file.
- Keyboard step-moving is now allowed while
pasting in MIDI editor.
- Track-view clip selection can now be drag-moved
into the void (bottom) view area creating brand
new tracks automagically.
- Losing focus resets all current keyboard
step-moves in progress, affecting the main
track-view and all MIDI editor as well.
- As done before on the MIDI editor, the main
track-view current selection may be step-wise
moved using the keyboard arrow keys and the
enter/insert keys for final placement; horizontal
step movement is quantized according to current
snap setting; vertical key-step movement is only
allowed to selected clips belonging to one single
and the same track.
- Immediate session loop settting, accessible from
the main menu.
- Track properties dialog gets fixed again in its
auto-size treat.
- Another audio-buffer thread bug was scrubbed
off, which was causing spurious and audible
garbage on certain loop workloads.


0.0.6  2007-10-09  The Tenth Commencement

- A bit more of precision is achieved over the
metronome regular ticking and both the audio and
MIDI monitor meters.
- A rudimentary MIDI metronome is now in place;
parameters, like MIDI channel, bar and beat accent
note, velocity and duration, are readily
configurable from the main menu,
View/Options.../MIDI/Metronome dialog.
- Track properties dialog now gets tightly
auto-sized, depending whether its an audio or a
MIDI track.
- MIDI clips are now auto-extendable when adding
or moving events beyond the clip length and while
in the MIDI Editor, of course.
- MIDI editor current selection can now be
step-wise moved using the keyboard arrow keys and
the enter/insert keys as for final placement;
horizontal step movement is subordinated to
current snap per beat setting, no less than unity;
vertical step moves are obviously quantized to the
next semitone.
- Get configure to try and detect the correct
qmake location and insert it the search order, so
let the qt4 tools take precedence when --with-qt
option is given and older qt3 ones coexist and are
found located ahead in the PATH.
- Drifting correction on audio and MIDI engines
was seriously infected in some kind of snafu
conception, as evidence lead to even worse
drifting being detected to much of great despair,
specially after recording and/or bouncing audio
tracks from MIDI sequenced material. Credit must
certainly go to Christian Schoenebeck on splatting
this sloppy one on the face.
- MIDI editing actions while playing now get
immediate feedback; this was possible to some
internal interface redesign of all MIDI editor
accessory classes, making the MIDI clip now being
the main editing target object instead of just the
MIDI event sequence as it was previously.
- Simple as it could ever be, the build executive
summary report is now given on configure.
- The internal decoded frame list for MPEG 1Audio
Layer III (mp3) audio files (ie. via libmad) has
been made one-time cached as global shared
objects, benefitting from the fact that the list
is always completely (re)built during the peak
file computation, and thus speeding up all frame
accurate access operations (seek) over this
specific audio file format.
- More eye-candy is sneaking in the MIDI editor:
there's new view options on the View menu: Note
Color and Value Color, affecting note event colors
according to pitch and/or velocity.
- New view option on the MIDI editor: on menu
View/Note Duration switches whether events are
shown proportional to their durations or as simple
vertical candlesticks.
- New snap-per-beat divisors are now available
(Beat/3, 6, 12, 24 and 48), giving support for
triplets for the very first time (after a heads-up
suggested  patch from Marko, thanks).


0.0.5  2007-09-08  The Ninth Hitch Nail

- MIDI edit tools (quantize, transpose, normalize,
randomize, resize) are all functional and ready
for experimentalism; gets in its own top-level
menu and form with named preset store and recall
functionality (EXPERIMENTAL).
- Main form backward and rewind transport actions
are now being immediately enabled when playing
from the session (zero-time) start position.
- Audio and MIDI export sneaks in and in form and
accessible from the main Track menu
(EXPERIMENTAL).
- MIDI track channel is now properly set on
session (re)load; track background color changes
was missing the alpha setting.
- The mix-down buffering was fixed again, now
taking multi-track overlapping clips into
consideration (was a lot more broken since the
recent glitch-looping fix).
- Dirty MIDI clip editing control has been fixed
but still somewhat hacky nevertheless.
- First attempt on solving a nasty MIDI editor
bug, which was quietly and severely crippling MIDI
files while saving offset edited clips.
- Session loop (re)setting is finally now an
undoable command.
- Yet another insidious bug has been swept away
from under the  carpet: once again on audio
looping, some astonishing old and crappy session
cursor seek-backward statement was lurking to be
laid off. Gone now, simply as it is, growing old
on this :)
- A tremendous bug has been fixed: audio looping
is now a little more glitch-free as the mix-down
buffering was badly broken even since its
primordial implementation. Rejoice.
- Minor improvements on track-view cursor updates
and visual tracking while recording.
- MIDI editor windows get their keyboard
accelerator/shortcuts back in business, whether
opted as tools always on top or not.
- The infamous "Keep tool windows always on top"
global option is now infecting the Connections,
Mixer, Plugin and MIDI Editor window instances
with no probable regrets. To be used with
discretion, of course.
- Session update/initialization gets it clean on
startup.
- Range selection action (Ctrl+R) is now back in
business with the added bonus of being accessible
from all MIDI editor instances too.
- Common edit-head and tail cursor positions are
now under common control and display from all MIDI
editor instances; the session loop-start/end
points are now also shown on every time-line and
share the same control behavior across all MIDI
editor instances.


0.0.4  2007-07-19  The Eight Wanderer

- Main toolbar tempo spin-box gets loose from
keyboard change tracking (Qt >= 4.3); custom
spin-box compilation fix for Qt 4.1.
- Illusive but nasty Connections/Patchbay item
tooltip crash bug has been hopefully fixed (Qt >=
4.3); QComboBox::editTextChanged() signal replaces
old QComboBox::textChanged().
- Combo-box setup history has been corrected on
restore, which was discarding the very initial
default (factory) contents.
- Make debian package build depend on libqt4-dev;
win32 console flag is back to qmake project file.
- MIDI instrument selection (e.g. on track form)
gets fixed and improved.
- Sorting method for the connections port list has
been refactored; potential crash bug fix on
connections sorting method.
- Messages class accessor methods constness fix.
- Got rid of some autoconf redundand thingies on
configure; late debian changelog update.
- Desktop categories update: AudioVideo.
- README correction.


0.0.3  2007-06-23  The Seventh Draught

- Crash fix on the connections widget, was a
matter of refactoring the refresh/clear slots.
- Help menu added to MIDI editor form (redirected
and same to main form anyway).
- Clip properties form gets its proper sanity
check, querying any existing clip editor whether
its safe  to apply the new settings.
- Mixer sliders get their long due valued
correction, hopefully.
- Transport backward and play/stop are now made
accessible from the MIDI editor widget, through
their keyboard accelerator shortcuts (backspace
and space, respectively).
- Transport actions (play, rec, rew and ffwd) are
now kept stable on a single point, instead of
being scattered all over the main form code;
transport visual feedback might get affected,
specially regarding the MMC processing.
- Application icon is now officially installed
into ${prefix}/share/pixmaps.
- Spec file is now a bit more openSUSE compliant;
just made RPM requirements as exigent as the new
debian ones.
- Paste cursor is now properly preserved after
leaving MIDI editor views.
- Amazingly why this was not spotted before, the
main application logo-icon has been downscaled to
the 32x32 pixel standard icon size.
- MIDI clip editor clipboard gets singleton status
and is now shared on all MIDI editor instances.
Similarly to the main track-view,
shift/ctrl-left-clicking on the MIDI editor views
sets the current session play-head position.
- A desktop entry file has been included on
install, at last.
- Clips in main track-view get more info in the
form of tooltips.
- Major rounding fix to time-scaling and most
specially on all those internal MIDI I/O methods.
- Extended range selection from the time-ruler and
key-list headers is now possible by click-and-drag
the mouse pointer.
- Play-head cursor is now also displayed and/or
set position on all open MIDI clip editors time
line view. As in the main application form, a new
local follow play-head option is also featured on
the MIDI editor view menu and toolbar.
- All MIDI file save operations are now logged to
main messages and files are added to the main
files list view.
- Initial debianization.
- MIDI capture/record file format (SMF Format 0 or
1) is now an user option, introducing the new MIDI
tab on the global View/Options dialog.
- A bad old-time session cursor glitch has been
apparently fixed.
- Make sure the generic clip properties form is
modal.
- Major rewrite and adaptation to the session
time-scale properties, making its way for a brand
new command instance: the session-tempo command.
- Changing the snap-per-beat combobox value on the
main window toolbar does not make it as an
undoable command anymore.
- Long due MIDI clip editor integration has come
to reality.
- Major rewrite on the MIDI sequence file
read/write methods, in preparation to the coming
MIDI clip editor.
- Status-bar session length label now gets rightly
updated, while extended recording, of course.
- Clip properties fade-in/out lengths, gets their
old due constraints.
- Main transport time display is now an editable
custom spin-box; the Tempo (BPM) spin-box has seen
new colors (green on black).
- Transport time display format option adds the
new choice of absolute frame number, alternative
to previous time and BBT.
- The frame-time based spin-boxes, on the clip
properties form, were replaced with a new custom
one, allowing for alternate frame, time and bbt
input/display formats.
- Time-scale helper class has been introduced.


0.0.2  2007-05-26  The Sixth Lord

- Audio/MIDI connections gets slightly refactored,
contributing for whole robustness, specially in
case of incidental engine shutdown.
- Mixer window gets a minimum default height bump.
- Clip fade-in/out type changes have been properly
fixed.
- Complete refactoring of the command class
pattern, making it now derived from QObject and
not having a reference to the main form anymore.
- Inoperative context menu event handler has been
removed from the track-view.
- MIDI sequence note-on event tracking now uses
faster QHash class, instead of original QMap.
- Off-by-one bug fix on MIDI track write method,
while parsing co-incident note-on/off events in
the wrong order and thus leaving note events with
an invalid (zero) duration; obviously affecting
MIDI recording in very special circumstances.
- Minor and rather innocuous drop at this time in
the MIDI event class structure: the flags member
field.
- Port connections now get their lines correctly
drawn; strangely enough, the connection lines were
being painted only for the parent client items,
probably since the Qt4 migration (aka. Halloween
files).
- Early clip editing is in place (clip name,
start, offset and length parameters, fade in/out
length and type).
- Some menu item text capitalizations.


0.0.1  2007-05-07  The Filthy Fifth

- Newer JACK 0.105.0 seems to bitch, probably
correctly, about the return value of the process
callback. Make it to bitch no more by ensuring the
JACK client is always issuing the innocuous 0
(zero) return value.
- Important fixes have been issued, affecting MIDI
recording: MIDI sequence zero-time event
insertion; MIDI file pending note-off processing
on write-track method.


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