The explode editor allow the visualization of events under a "piano-roll"
representation.
The toolbar
It contains the tools selectable by the user: every tool as an associated
icon and name, and once selected, it is active until next tool's selection.
The toolbar has a floating behaviour: it can be dragged away from the
status bar, so that it can stand into an independent window. When floating,
the toolbar can be dragged again in the place from where it was extracted.
The toolbar in explode is unique, i.e. there is just one explode toolbar
active in every moment; if a second explode window is opened while the
toolbar is anchored into a window, the toolbar will be moved in the second
window. This (sort of non-standard) UI behaviour is under testing, and
will be eventually fine-tuned in the next releases.
Selecting a new tool in the toolbar results in selecting the same tool
for all the currently opened explode windows. The new icon's tool is also
shown in the status bar of every window.
See later for a description of the tool's behaviour.
This component, placed in the top of the window, show the following
informations:
The value fields indicate the parameters of the curently selected event,
if one (and just one) is selected. In the other cases, the fields are empty.
Entrering a value in a field (i.e. typing a value and hit the return/enter
key) changes the value of the specified parameter for all the current selected
events.
The score panel
The central area of the window contains the piano roll representation
of the events in the data base. The vertical grid indicates time values
along the x-axis, while the horizontal grid indicates parameter values
(for the 0-127 parameters). As we will see later in the settings
panel paragraph, the parameter associated to the y axis can be choosen
by the user, as well as almost every other graphic parameter of the events.
In the left side of the window, a vertical keyboard shows the pitch
associated to an event, during moving, resizing and adding operations.
This is true even when the y axis does not represent the pitch; moving
an event along the y axis when this axis is associated with the velocity,
will show in the keybord the pitch of the moving note (that of course
will not move)...
Every event is represented as a line with the following graphic parameters:
- An x position, always associated to the initial time of the
event. This value takes into account the current zooming factor.
- An y position, that can be associated to the pitch, duration, velocity,
channel parameters via the setting panel.
The default setting associates y to pitch.
- A length, that can be associated in the usual way to pitch, duration,
velocity, channel. The default setting associates the length to the duration.
- A label, that can be associated in the usual way to pitch, duration,
velocity, channel. The default setting associate the label to the pitch.
- A color, that always represent the selected (red) or unselected (black)
state of the event.
The initial, default tool for the explode editor is the selecter (the
arrow).
Adder tool
This tool, whose icon is a little note, allows entering new notes in
the explode data base. The status bar reports the current position of the
mouse in terms of starting time and y parameter, after having made all
the necessary coordinate conversions and zooms.
Clicking in the score with the adder tool adds a note of the specified
time, y-parameter values.
Since just two parameters can be specified in a mouse click (x, y positions),
the newly added note will have just two parameters specified: the remaining
will be assigned use the following default values
- Pitch = 64
- Velocity = 64
- Duration = 100 msec
- channel = 0
Example:
In the default configuration where x parameter = time, y parameter =
pitch, length parameter = duration and label parameter = pitch, adding
a new note will produce an event in the score with
- time = <x of the click>
- pitch = <y of the click>
- duration = 100
- velocity = 64
- channel = 0
Resizer tool
This tool allows the resizing (changing the length) of a selection of
object. Its icon is a thick horizontal black line with two red arrows at
both ends.
The resizer, as well as the arrow, is a selection based tool;
it allows the user to specify a selection of objects (as explained in the
Arrow tool paragraph) on which to perform the
resize operation.
Clicking on a selected event dynamically resizes the lenght of every
event in the selection. Please note that since the lenght parameter can
be assigned to a parameter other then the duration, changing the length
of an event can be used to modify every parameter of an event (except the
starting time). Resizing cannot produce negative values for the length.
Note also that, since the length and the y can be assigned to the same
parameter (example, the velocity), resizing an event could result in changing
also its y position, and vice-versa...
The settings panel
This panel is composed by a set of rows of radio buttons, where each
row represents a graphic parameter, and each column an event's (score)
parameter. The aim of this panel is to specify wich parameters will be
represented with which graphic appearence. Only one "score" parameter
(pitch, duration, velocity, channel) can be represented by a given graphic
parameter (y, lenght, label) . On the other side, the same score parameter
can be represented by more then one graphic parameter.
In this version, only the "Cancel" button in the panel is
active, because the modifications are reported immediately in the score
and there's no need to explicitly "apply" them.