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07-18-2017, 04:31 AM
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#1
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 102
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A 'Drag & Drop' Walter theme builder: what do you think?
Dear Reaper theme builders & development team,
The last few years we have seen lots of theme builders released for the biggest website platform in the world: Wordpress.
As being a designer and website developer myself, my favourite Drag And Drop Builder is Elementor.
Elementor makes it possible by simply drag and drop website elements, (like images, text, sliders, counters etc) on the page canvas on top of a basic Wordpress theme (like GeneratePress, for example).
www.elementor.com
www.generatepress.com
So this made me think...what if the next version of Walter would have a Drag and Drop Theme Builder, so we could easily build our Graphical User Interfaces on top of a basic clean theme.
This would make it so much easier for non developers to make great looking themes for Reaper, without time consuming scripting and scrolling through endless chunks of code.
What are your thoughts on this idea?
Let's discuss this :-)
https://youtu.be/kB4U67tiQLA
Last edited by marsmellow; 07-18-2017 at 04:48 AM.
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07-18-2017, 04:54 AM
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#2
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 11,044
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I think that is a great idea!
However, I wouldn't like to see precious development time taken away from REAPER's raison d'être: recording and processing audio.
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07-18-2017, 09:37 AM
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#3
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Mar 2015
Location: Paris, France
Posts: 321
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Yeah, great idea but who'll do it? That would be quite a big job to put together and debug etc. because the end result has to work well. I can only imagine it would be a whole big other thing and Cockos have enough on their plate as it is.
Reaper is big complicated thing. Walter is also a big complicated thing and in large part necessarily so. I understand how we all (myself included) would like to have quick easy shortcuts to impressive themeing but the reality is it's not a simple task because reaper is not simple either.
__________________
Musician / Guitar Teacher/ Guitar Tech / ex-Physicist (hence the Dr in DrKev)
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07-18-2017, 03:45 PM
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#4
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Nov 2015
Posts: 604
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This simply won't happen.
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07-18-2017, 03:50 PM
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#5
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 29,260
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I began and even created a very simple prototype that did this when Walter first came out in pre-release, then someone else did the same thing a couple years later. I don't think it is possible/worth the trouble (within reason) but I'm happy if you prove me wrong.
__________________
Music is what feelings sound like.
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07-19-2017, 12:12 AM
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#6
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Berlin
Posts: 11,817
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Yeah, we had this discussion several times in the past years. The project would require a lot of free time.
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07-19-2017, 12:17 AM
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#7
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Germany
Posts: 212
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I would love to see that, but I'm almost 100% sure that is not possible. Reapers interface is more than just a bunch of graphics. You have different states of images (ok, that would work) but you have all that WALTER stuff, e.g. when resizing track heights etc. That needs to be programmed. I don't think you can make that really work in a D&D editor.
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07-22-2017, 09:47 AM
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#8
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Dec 2016
Posts: 373
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Yes, we've discussed this a while ago.
It is possible to some degree. But it would still require graphic editor skills, like photoshop etc, to create the actual images.
For positioning the graphics it is possible to generate WALTER code fairly easily with some JQuery libs, and some custom JavaScript.
I have been thinking about this for a while, but never got around to building it. Maybe we can join together and make a start?
There are JQuery drag and drop libs ready for grabs, so that's easy. Then it's a matter of getting the pixel position from each element we drag and drop, relative to the constraints of the layout parts of Reaper.
We could, possibly, emulate the resize behavior from the TCP, MCP, by making a couple of DIV's and a drag handle, but that is another layer of added complexity.
Best to start somewhere, and then build on it. But we have to set up a test environment where anyone that wants to join can fiddle with it.
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07-22-2017, 09:55 AM
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#9
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Dec 2016
Posts: 373
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This is a good lib: http://interactjs.io/
For making a browser based WALTER editor.
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07-22-2017, 10:09 AM
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#10
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 29,260
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Flaneurette
Yes, we've discussed this a while ago.
It is possible to some degree. But it would still require graphic editor skills, like photoshop etc, to create the actual images.
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Another problem is you have to point the editor to an existing theme in order to have the correct elements to drag around etc, inventory what is there so to speak and use those which means you have to sort of expose all of them in the GUI and/or essentially build a working mock up of Reaper using those behaviors which would be different code than Reapers actual code. Between that and all the behaviors AND positioning, seems like it would be a super PIA. Otherwise, you are moving an element or two and constantly launching Reaper to confirm the result which I could do faster minus the visual feedback in a text editor.
__________________
Music is what feelings sound like.
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07-22-2017, 02:09 PM
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#11
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Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: United Kingdom, T. Wells
Posts: 2,454
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Things in GUI will go (hopefully) to SVG at some point, hence in vector scalable graphics. As for Drag'n'drop functionality - I am not sure how it can work.
I would prefer layer type GUI where with right click I could 'Hide this element' (Volume slider for example) but all this is just over-complicating things.
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07-23-2017, 07:08 AM
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#12
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Dec 2016
Posts: 373
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic
Another problem is you have to point the editor to an existing theme in order to have the correct elements to drag around etc, inventory what is there so to speak and use those which means you have to sort of expose all of them in the GUI and/or essentially build a working mock up of Reaper using those behaviors which would be different code than Reapers actual code. Between that and all the behaviors AND positioning, seems like it would be a super PIA. Otherwise, you are moving an element or two and constantly launching Reaper to confirm the result which I could do faster minus the visual feedback in a text editor.
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Yes, exactly.
But we could create different templates to cater to different layouts 4,5 etc. Once establishing a baseline grid that would be fairly easy. Then we could launch sets up default items: knobs, sliders etc which we then can replace with the users own images. They could create their own sets, or replace each item with their own.
Most of my work in theming, goes into positioning these darn things. Pixel per pixel, it's a real pain. Then, if I don't like it, I have to re-position everything again. Currently I do this in photoshop, where I recreate the TCP box drag/adjust all items to my liking, and then get the pixel position and manually enter into WALTER code, and then refresh the theme and see if everything is okay, then px by px make adjustment for different layouts. A theme builder would take away this time consuming step.
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08-01-2017, 06:04 PM
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#13
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 3,826
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Quote:
Originally Posted by adXok
Things in GUI will go (hopefully) to SVG at some point, hence in vector scalable graphics. As for Drag'n'drop functionality - I am not sure how it can work.
I would prefer layer type GUI where with right click I could 'Hide this element' (Volume slider for example) but all this is just over-complicating things.
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Pretty sure they said it wont ever be worth the amount of effort it would need to convert Reaper to vector, it is staying bitmap forever.
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Stop posting huge images, smaller images or thumbnail, it's not rocket science!
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08-02-2017, 03:45 AM
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#14
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Pixel Pusher
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Blighty
Posts: 4,950
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gpunk_w
Pretty sure they said it wont ever be worth the amount of effort it would need to convert Reaper to vector, it is staying bitmap forever.
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https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...4&postcount=68
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08-02-2017, 04:02 AM
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#15
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Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: United Kingdom, T. Wells
Posts: 2,454
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Quote:
Originally Posted by White Tie
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SVG support is a glimpse of hope, I suppose.
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08-02-2017, 06:35 AM
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#16
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
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and in the meantime there is always Smajjers!
I love the way the Reaper community eventually finds a way round stuff, pending the devs getting the time and inclination to work on things "officially".
__________________
Ici on parles Franglais
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08-04-2017, 06:02 PM
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#17
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Dec 2016
Posts: 373
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If anyone wants to take a shot at it, be my guest. I don't have the time. As of yet, I am working from my PSD template, and it is actually much faster than any GUI builder could possibly be. It works somewhat similar.
In any case, creating themes still requires graphic/design skills regardless of the method we create themes. Whether that be a theme builder or working directly inside a graphical editor. Sure, one could create a theme builder with thousands of presets, but I am guessing that is way beyond the current scope and usefulness.
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