.6 A few ideas

Heya!! I’ve been Mia for bit and finally had a chance to drop in .6 on my portable rig.

I have some random ideas :nerd_face:

The package browser:
If the card is mounted on a Mac it adds these junker files with a “._” prefix. Would be good to automatically hide these.


Possible bug?
I also notice if you delete a file, after the pop up saying it was deleted, the selected file jumps all the way down to the last item in the folder.

Install package for lazy newbs like me
Another idea for the package manager is having an “install package” in the empty area where S2 is, so you could dump packages to the card without worrying about the packages folder (which would be the root folder on a direct drag and drop from desktop), press s2 to open a file browser to point to it… hit enter and the manager would move it to the proper folder and install it. This or perhaps an automatic search of the entire card and just populate the menu with what’s available?

Suggestion for the insert unit area (global pref).
If there was as option so only O|D units show up in the categories and then Each installed package shows up as it’s own category, with all units within. It gets a visually cluttered with a ton of units ie: ‘accents’ as each unit says that before the function.

Idea for the unit browser:
when skimming the unit browser, if you could ie: highlight a category, and press enter to collapse or expand the units within

GUI for Small screen when over a unit’s header
I think I may have brought this up a few years ago in .4 OS, but just wondering there’s any consideration for tweaking this a bit for more consistency (and clarity) by having the active row contain a shaded bg and bold text … like ie: the variable samples player’s header menu:


Anyway - totally digging all the tweaks regardless!

Hope all is great out there!

Googy didn’t seem to care about my 301 fiddles …

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Great ideas here! I agree especially that the unit browser gets cluttered when you have a lot of stuff installed, could definitely use some improvements there.

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I just remembered that the lower screen pixels are on or off… so even a 2 pixel thick line above and below the currently active menu items would add some clarity.

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Good ideas there Neil. I think Accents is really the menu clutter culprit. I guess I could have a think about making adjustments there rather than having to redesign the menu system. I never thought I’d make so many units…

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good post.
good googie.

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Had an idea for the insert screen, maybe we just need a filter by author / package to help narrow things down. I think this could be a simple solution to having too many units in the main view.

Maybe then standardize on adding new units only to existing categories?

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I think that would be really handy, as I often know who made what unit I want to use but sometimes I forget the name.

This is something that is already supported but is left up to the package designer. For example, if the package designer decides to not categorize a unit then that unit will be placed under a category with the same name as the package.

However, I can see the benefit of just forcing the issue for a more consistent presentation across packages.

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The couple of packages I’ve made I’m always unsure which is preferred or most useful.

One reason against is if you have a lot packages with one or two units it might lead to excessive vertical scrolling.

that shouldn’t be a reason for not sharing your ideas here! :wink:

though i find that true in general, at the end of the day, it’s always up to the user to decide whether to maintain a mess of packages (like me) or rather cherry-pick the most useful ones. after all @odevices made it fairly easy to uninstall unuseful or unwanted packages!
(also, i like the fact that uninstalled packages remain on the card.)

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I made a category of my private units, I hope there will still be a way for me to group them together and not be spread out within existing categories…

I personally like the stock categories to be left untouched and the additional ones each in their own categories (by creator name, at the bottom). When mixed with the existing categories, the layout (or places or organization) changes and my whole memory of where the units are becomes useless. When installing something that mixes in the stock categories, I go in the package and edit it instead. I’m not too much of a fan of an extra filter step either. For me it would be slower or more cumbersome to actually find the units I’m after. Just scrolling, if you know where the unit is, is way fast. But I guess it depends on how many extra you have installed I guess.

Just to say, maybe a choice on how the chooser is organized would be great.

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