Ardour 8.4 Digital Audio Workstation: Still Relying On GTK2, Adds AAF Import

[Azpegath]

from the first quote

Sorry, I didn't catch that one. My overall impression is that GTK doesn't matter that much for them as they only use it for very little functionality. But I did confuse it with their gdk2 use "we will keep depending on gdk2 for window and event system abstraction."

It would be interesting to see how much GTK that is actually used, and for what. But I don't have time to check through their codebase...

[alphabitserial]

Really glad to see Ardour still making progress, although I use REAPER instead for the time being as I prefer its user interface. For any music producers or audio geeks here, I'd also like to mention Airwindows who has developed (and continues to develop) hundreds of high-quality and very creative open source DAW plugins for which Linux versions are also available. His series of console plugins are particularly great.

[Weasel]

Depends on the requirements. If a different toolkit had features that:
1. you require or
2. basically do things you're already doing, and thus would make your development faster and cleaner or
3. you rely heavily on the toolkit, and it's newest version is just simply better in every way
Then porting is progress.

Similarly, if a UI redesign is done infrequently, and with the pure intention to make the user experience better and/or add additional features, then it is progress. If, however, it is done every 2 years with the express intention of removing features and copying a competitor (*cough*Firefox*cough*) then it's wasted development effort.

If the original UI sucked, sure.

Most of the time it's the opposite and they just want to justify keeping their jobs you know. Cause they can't code anything proper so they're "UI specialists". Such "specialists" create such great UIs that they have to change them every half a year. Always using bullshit reasons like "it's more natural for humans" blabla. Because, you know, human natural preferences shift every 6 months, didn't you know? Nature evolves fast, man.

Clearly it's not because their UI sucks and they have no freaking clue what they're doing and just trying to appear like they're doing something.

[Weasel]

Really glad to see Ardour still making progress, although I use REAPER instead for the time being as I prefer its user interface. For any music producers or audio geeks here, I'd also like to mention Airwindows who has developed (and continues to develop) hundreds of high-quality and very creative open source DAW plugins for which Linux versions are also available. His series of console plugins are particularly great.

Yeah, I second this. Those plugins are also truly lightweight and fast (not the 10 MB "lightweight" bullshit these days, but in kilobytes).

[alphabitserial]

Yeah, I second this. Those plugins are also truly lightweight and fast (not the 10 MB "lightweight" bullshit these days, but in kilobytes).

The generic plugin interface is so great, not only for binary size and for dead-easy MIDI control of parameters, but also for removing a massive source of potential bugs and allowing for him to spend as much time as possible on the actual DSP code. "In mix, nobody can hear your screen."