TracknamesWindow V0.42 for Octamed 1.03d! Finished 7.8.99 Made by Kjetil S. Matheussen 1999. THE GOOD THINGS! (sort of important stuff too, I guess) This is a small configurable window that displays the track-names, the keyboardoctave, the current track, on/off status of the visible tracks, volume of the current instrument, midichannel/samplelength of the current instrument, and the name of the current instrument. I personally have now replaced the maincontrol-window with this window in my octamed, and have earned quite some screenspace just on that. You specify the track-names with the included plug-in named "tnwcontrol". Press a shortcut-key, and a menu will be visible. The alternatives should be self-explaining. If you just want to set the new name of the track, simply just write the new name, and press return. The tracknames are saved into the annotation-text, so you don't need two seperate files for each song. THE BAD THINGS: Installation of the window. You should start the window-plug-in by putting the following line into your "rexx:om_startup.omed"-file. If you don't have such a file, just copy the included "om_startup.omed"-file in this package into your rexx: path. Yes, the line is: ADDRESS COMMAND "run >NIL: nsm:tracknameswindow" ...And this may be all you have to do. But the window can look uglier than ugly. So then you can either try a different font for the editor, or try to experiment with the following arguments that can be sent along with the command-line. Here they are: (All argument are optional) -stoptaskprior [n] - n = Is the priority of the task while not playing. Is set to 8 by default. -playtaskprior [n] - n = Is the priority of the task while playing. Is set to -20 by default. -ypos [n] - n = the Y coordinate the window will start at. F. ex: 10. This is actually an argument you most probably want to set. I have hardcoded it to 10, because that fits my look. But it may not fit your look. -editorfontname [n] - n = the name of the editorfont. F.ex: Topaz.font. Should not be necesarry to spesify, since the plug-in peeks into the memory and find the font octamed is using for the editor. But I have had some problems with that routine... Just forget this argument if the track-seperator-lines in the tracknameswindow are placed in the middle between each track in the editor. -editorfontsize [n] - n = size of the editorfont. F. ex: 8. If you specify the editorfontname, you *must* allso spesify its size, und viseversa. -windowheight [n] - n = the height of the tracknameswindow. F. ex: 30. -topmarkcursorpos [n] - n = The top relative Y coordinate of where the top-line marker will be placed. (the cursor) -botmarkcursorpos [n] - n = The bottom relative Y coordinate of where the bop-line marker will be placed. (the cursor) -fontpos [n] - n = The Y coordinate of where the text in the tracknames- window will be placed. -whitelinetop [n] - n = The top Y coordinate of where the white lines will start. "White lines" means the vertical lines that seperate your tracks. -whitelinebot [n] - n = The bottom Y coordinat of where the white lines will end. Ok. If you didn't quite catch what all this arguments did, just try them out one at a time, and you'll see what happens. It's the 6 last ones that are important for the look of your window. (Important to set, so that it doesn't look awful.). CHANGES Changes from 0.41d to 0.42: -Doesn't take a lot of time to load modules not previously saved with the tracknameswindow installed anymore. -Fixed a bug in option 7 and 7a in the tnwcontrol plug-in. Changes from 0.41cR2 to 0.41d: -Added option 7a in the tnwcontrol plug-in. For further info, read at the file tnwcontrol.c. -Updated the manual. Changes from 0.41c to 0.41cR2: -V0.41b and V0.41c contained an outdated plainnames-file, which caused the tracknames-window not to work. This release contains the right version. -0.41c did not contain the om_startup.omed file, now it does. Changes from 0.41b to 0.41c: -Option 6 and 7 in the tnwcontrol plug-in read input in hex-notation, now changed to read as decimal notation. -Possible to copy the tracknames of the current block to all other blocks. -Added the plug-ins copyjusttracknames and pastejusttracknames. Changes from 0.41 to 0.41b: -The "Insert track(s) in current block"-function in the tnwcontrol- program didn't work. Fixed. Changes from 0.40 to 0.41: -Fixed some bugs. -Added a tracknamebuffer. -Some small speed-improvements. -Added the plug-ins copytrack,cuttrack and pastetrack. Changes from 0.30 to 0.40: -Added a lot of new features. F.ex different tracknames for each block. -Fixed a lot of bugs. F.ex that the requester-window opened at the workbench-screen instead of the octamed-screen if you hadn't installed some kind of con-handler that prevents a con-window from doing this. -Doesn't need to use the update plug-in anymore. (its not a part of the package anymore either.) REQURIMENTS 1. Octamed Soundstudio 1.03c, patched with the octapatch-program in the nsm-package. 2. Nsm-port program started. Found in the nsm-package. 3. That you have the file named "plainnames" in a path called "nsm:" before starting the tracknameswindow. If not, octamed will probably crash, or something. (This is hardcoded, you *must* have the file "nsm:plainnames". And if its not of the right type, you can crash octamed.) The plainnames-file is in this package, and should be copied automaticly to nsm: if NSM is installed correct. INSTALLATION 1. Install NSM V0.70 or higher. 2. Unpack the tracknameswindow archive into the plug-in directory of nsm. 3. If your user-startup file doesn't copy all your plug-ins into your nsm: path automaticly, you must do point 3 in the REQUIREMENTS. 4. Put the following line into your "rexx:om_startup.omed"-file: ADDRESS COMMAND "run >NIL: nsm:tracknameswindow" (plus various arguments) If you don't have an om_startup.omed-file in your rexx-path, just copy the one in this archive into your rexx-path. "rexx:om_startup.omed" are an arexx-script that is executed automaticly by octamed on every startup. 5. Set the argument "ypos " to an apropriate value. This is the Y-position of your window on the screen. 0 is in the top of your screen. 6. If window look ugly, read "THE BAD THINGS". 7. Well, I think that was all. USAGE 1. Use the plug-in named "tnwcontrol" to set the name of the tracks, and other things. Tnwcontrol has a lot of functions built in. 2. Use the plug-in named "quittracknameswindow" to quit the window. Beware that you'll have to quit the window before you can exit octamed. If you try to exit octamed before you run the "quittracknameswindow"-plug in, you may run into some trouble, yes. Read source-file for more info. 3. Use the plug-ins copytrack, pasttrack and cuttrack to copy past and cut tracks and trackname. 4. For more info on the usage of the various plug-ins, read in the sources. There are more info in the commented sections of each plug-in source-file. BUGS Yes, probably a lot! But this to are the only one I know of: 1. When you have 64 tracks in a block, and try to move the cursor to track no 63. What a race! I have no idea why this happens. I have disassembled and gone thru the code quite many times, but just can't find out why this happens. (It only happens if you use 64 tracks). 2. The isplaying-function doesn't allways work, so the tracknameswindow does sometimes have the nonplaying-priority when playing, and sometimes playing-priority when not playing. This is a quite serious bug, but I will fix it in the beginning of 99. Should be quite easy to fix. FAQ 1. There are no text in the tracknames-window. -Change the editor-font. Your font does probably not excist, so just set it to a spesific font. (topaz8 is probably what you are using then.) 2. Nothing work! -Have you read the USAGE and INSTALLATION chapters? If you have problems, mail me your configuration, and I will answer you. 3. The tracknameswindow doesn't show right midi-channel/samplelength. -Open the maincontrol-window. If it is allready open, close it and open it again. -Hmm. Seems like you have to have this window open. If you don't need it, just hide it behind some other windows. 4. The keyboard-octave doesn't cycle when pressing F1-F5. -Open the maincontrol-window. 5. This is version is V0.4xx. Does that mean it is a beta release? -No. It just means that it isn't perfect yet. The program uses Unix version numbering, and if there ever comes a 1.0 version, that means it will be perfect (or at least as good as). If there ever comes a beta-version, it will be clearly stated that it is a beta. There aren't any serious well known bugs, and the program is pretty well tested. It has been running everyday on my machine now for about 8 months, and have never crashed or behaved strange. Same goes for the NSM package, which is at V0.74 right now. 6. The tracknameswindow plug-in run as its own task all the time. Doesn't it set down the performance of Octamed? -Yes. But not much. On my 030 40 Mzh, it only uses between 1.1-1.6% of the the cpu-time whether octamed is playing or not, using the default settings for priority (Using Top 2.00). But if you have a slower machine, and notice lack of performance, try setting down the "playtaskprior" option, allthough I doubt that should be necesarry. Amigas Exec handles task priorities very well, so one can do such things on amigas without running into trouble, even though the cpu's (680x0) are not very fast compaired to what is present in other and newer computers. 7. Inside the tracknameswindow.c, it says that the source is a lover version than the version of the package. Is it the wrong file? -Probably not. It just means that the tracknameswindow hasn't been changed since that version. Something else has been updated instead. Just read the CHANGES section of this file to find out what has been changed. For the release of the tracknameswindow package V0.41d, the tracknameswindow plug-in hadn't been updated since the release of V0.41b, while the tnwcontrol plug-in had been updated all the times. 8. I can't quit Octamed because the tracknameswindow isn't closed! -You have to use the quittracknameswindow plug-in first. I haven't come up with a smart solution on this problem, so you just have to live with it. (good ideas on how this can be solved are welcomed!). To fix this without resetting your amiga, try using one of those window-closing programs found on Aminet. I haven't tried them, but it should work. 9. Will the tracknameswindow work on the forthcoming release of Octamed V2? -No. The NSM system will only work with Octamed 1.03c. But it might be that I will update the system, if V2 turns out to be a good program. (at present, V2 infact seems to be worse program, but that might change, as it is still only a beta). And, read the BUGS-section. TODO 1. A cople of more arguments to improve the graphical display. 2. Fix the program so that the graphical display is perfect at startup whatever font you are using. (_lot_ of work. Seems like the intuition and graphics library aren't very easy to use when it comes to this.) 3. Write a better manual. (amigaguide) 4. Make a handshakefunction. (or something.) And again, feel free to do this things if you wants to. Just contact me to know if there are someone else who is allready working on it. THANKS! Teijo Kinnunen for making such a wonderful program that can be built out to do everything! (If you had released the source too, everyting would be perfect. :) CONTACT Kjetil S. Matheussen 5423 Sogn Studentby 0858 Oslo Norway e-mail: kjetilma@ifi.uio.no nsm-homepage: http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~kjetilma/nsm/ octamed-homepage: http://www.octamed.co.uk/