View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | View Status | Date Submitted | Last Update |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0008185 | ardour | features | public | 2020-06-01 10:05 | 2020-07-18 08:23 |
| Reporter | sapista | Assigned To | |||
| Priority | normal | Severity | minor | Reproducibility | always |
| Status | closed | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Summary | 0008185: New OSC commands feature request: Modifer key emulation | ||||
| Description | I'm working in the development of a new control surface paradigm exclusively targeted to control Ardour with OSC. One of the main objectives of the controller is to get rid of the keyboard during a recording/mixing/mastering session. Well, the keyboard will be used at session setup to set track names, session names and comments. Then the user can put the keyboard away and continue working using just the control surface and mouse. My motivation to create such surface is because during more than 10 years of audio engineering experience I always felt that the keyboard was "on my way" and disturb me to reach all faders and buttons ergonomically. Since, almost everything in Ardour is controllable trough OSC now I think I can finally throw away my keyboard during mixing. I believe this will allow me and others to work faster. Currently, I'm controlling almost all I need using OSC. But, there are three keyboard keys that I cannot live without: Control, Alt and Shift. I use these key modifiers all the time to zoom with mouse wheel (Ctrl), scroll in time and mixer (Shift), copy regions and plugins (Ctrl), delete plugins (Shift) and move a region without grid (Alt). There are several OSC messages to control all of this but I think that mouse is also a very valuable "controller" for a DAW. As far as I know there is no way to emulate these keyboard keys in Ardour using OSC. I propose to create three new OSC commands to set this key modifiers (Ctrl, Alt and Shift) so them can be mapped in three buttons in the control surface and finally get rid of the keyboard. | ||||
| Tags | osc | ||||
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OSC can not talk to the GUI or control the GUI. In effect the GUI is it's own control surface. OSC can already set/change track names and comments but really, using a glass keyboard does not make sense if a real KB is available. For your use case it is almost like what you really need is a mouse with a small keyboard that just has those three buttons. This is because the mouse is part of one control surface and OSC is another. So adding a mouse to the OSC controller would not help. I think what may be of most help would be to use a gaming mouse with extra buttons then use the OS to assign those buttons as shift, control and alt. This page seems to give some ideas: https://askubuntu.com/questions/6134/how-to-map-ctrl-shift-to-thumb-buttons-of-mouse and this page seems to tell us that some gaming mice already come with ctl, alt shift on them: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/any-way-to-change-mouses-buttons-from-control-alt-and-shift.2439962/ BTW I applaud the idea of getting rid of the keyboard when another controller is available. Normally with OSC, one would just send commands that are already effectively shifted, controlled or alternated. But in this case you are still using the Ardour GUI for it's editor, something I think OSC is not really made for and in Ardour's case is just not possible. |
