User feedback. I always try and provide feedback and suggestions for whatever I use, and I enjoy doing it too. I think alot of users would like to do this too, but two general things is kind of lacking in this sense. These are all general thoughts and nothing to you personally. I remember us talking about synthclone and I appreciated that very much, so any negatives shouldn't be taken personally by you ;) :
1. An easy way to provide this feedback, and encouragement to do so. There's IRC, mailinglists and forums for this, but most apps actually lack encouragement for feedback. Something as simple as writing "If you like this software and have ideas/suggestions, please use [insert_method_here] to contact us, all suggestions are appreciated!". The worst thing that could happen is that the suggestion isn't used, but I think tons can be gained by making the user feel more involved.
2. Appreciation for the feedback. Some devs are better then others on this, but I sadly think it's fairly common that users who try and provide feedback either get treated as complete idiots, or that the dev takes it as some form of personal insult.
On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 6:09 PM, Devin Anderson <surfacepatterns@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Dave,
> Not enough native plugins, esp. instruments.I think this is one of the key problems with Linux audio. Part of the
problem is that there is no clear mechanism for (non-developer) users
to create their own instruments. Many VSTs are constructed with
modular DSP programs like synthedit and flowstone (formerly
synthmaker). There's probably an opportunity here for Ingen or a new
graphical DSP program based on Faust to fill this hole.
In general, I think that Linux audio has a lot of tools that help
users to create music, but not a lot of tools that help users create
their own tools (e.g. instruments, plugins, sample libraries, etc.) to
help others to create music.
On the development side, I think Aurélien and others like him have the
right idea in taking instruments/plugins that are specific to a Linux
audio application and porting them to LV2. There's a lot of awesome
instruments that are specific to applications (e.g. ALSA Modular
Synth, LMMS, etc.) that would generally be more useful if they were
LV2 plugins.
> Poor external/internal session management.
Interacting with external hardware can be frustrating. Commercial
programs like Renoise account for external hardware in their workflows
(e.g. latency management, MIDI clock, MMC, etc.). Most Linux Audio
apps don't do this.
I've been trying to write something about conflict and fragmentation
> Too much conflict/fragmentation within the development community.
for the past 10 minutes. I think this is a complex issue. I'm not
able to find the words to communicate about it right now.
As a developer, I'm missing a couple things:
> So, in your honest and bold opinion as user and/or developer, what do we
> lack most and what can we do without that we already have ?
1.) User feedback.
I can't stress this enough. I watch the download counts increase on
the applications I create, but I hardly ever get feedback. I'm
discouraged and frustrated by the lack of feedback.
2.) Non-code developers
We have a lot of dedicated open source developers writing Linux audio
apps, plugins, etc., but I have yet to meet an open source UI
designer, or an open source graphic artist. I think a lot of the apps
we create could benefit from the feedback of a user interface
experience expert.
There's probably more, but these are the two things that occur to me now.
Dave, this is an important topic. Thanks for taking it on.
--
Devin Anderson
surfacepatterns (at) gmail (dot) com
blog - http://surfacepatterns.blogspot.com/
midisnoop - http://midisnoop.googlecode.com/
psinsights - http://psinsights.googlecode.com/
synthclone - http://synthclone.googlecode.com/
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