From 45c50ed15b1738e64661d099a56d68330f4f2fd5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ben Niemann Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2019 00:29:41 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Blog post: Development update (June 13) --- website/blog/2019/06-13-development-update.md | 71 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 71 insertions(+) create mode 100644 website/blog/2019/06-13-development-update.md diff --git a/website/blog/2019/06-13-development-update.md b/website/blog/2019/06-13-development-update.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b33e2770 --- /dev/null +++ b/website/blog/2019/06-13-development-update.md @@ -0,0 +1,71 @@ +Title: Development update (June 13) +Date: 2019-06-13 + +Time for the [next +commit](https://github.com/odahoda/noisicaa/commit/8d7c0cc0d44d270e8ba08a6937d2e921f4c6d758). This +was mostly about streamlining the setup process for the application, but I also added some more new +stuff, which felt related. I could have added a lot more features around managing projects, but I +postponed those to another time. + +### What's new + +#### More responsive startup + +When starting the application, the window now opens much earlier, showing a process bar while the +application is initializing. I decided against using the typical "splash window", because by +directly opening the main application window, I can already show the "open project" dialog and let +the user choose which project to open, before the application is fully initialized. This probably +cuts a few seconds from starting the application to the project being opened. Thanks to Python's +[asyncio](https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html) package, which I've been using anyway, +this didn't require any significant changes, nor did I have to bother with background threads and +how to communicate with the UI, etc. Coroutines FTW! + +#### New "open project" dialog + +This "open project" dialog is now a custom widget in the main window (on any new project tab), and +not the standard file dialog. In terms of features and usability it probably needs some more +polishing, but it should be good enough for now. + +#### Project debugger + +And then there's an initial version of a "project debugger". It can only display the list of +mutations, and you can "truncate" the list, i.e. remove the latest mutations. This can be useful, if +some action got the project into some broken state, so it fails to open. Then you can try to repair +the project by removing the offending changes. Hopefully this won't be needed that often by future +end-users, but right now during development, this happens quite frequently. So far I have just +discarded whatever project I had opened, but at some point I should really start and try to make +something proper with noisicaä. Something I wouldn't just toss away because of some silly bug... + +#### "New project" dialog + +There's a silly gimmick in the dialog for entering the name of a new project. The project name is +pre-filled by a "random song title generator". It comes up with some funny names and who knows, +perhaps inspires some awesome noises. The rules for those names come from the [Time of Forbidden +Spells](https://github.com/Sundin/Tome-of-Forbidden-Spells), which just happened to be the most +promising candidate when I searched for ["song title generator" on +GitHub](https://github.com/search?q=song+title+generator&type=Repositories). The titles are a +Metal-style, which might not be everyone's cup of tea, nor the most appropriate for noisicaä, which +is more suited for electronic music (at some future point), but I kinda like the results. "Vomit of +the Song" 🤘 + +### Bug fixes + +* I fixed a crash when you deleted a node, closed the project and the reopened it. + +* When the project fails to open for whatever reason, a dialog just tells you about it and you get +back to the "open project" dialog - instead of completely crashing noisicaä. Again something that +hopefully doesn't happen often for end-users, but is quite frequent during development. + +### Internal changes + +I slightly changed the file structure for projects. Now each project has a single directory, and all +files are stored in that directory. + +And the only significant change I had to make to get the startup process working smoothly was to +reorganize the instrument library. At least on my machine it contains a few thousand entries, and +initializing that list blocked the main thread for a second or so. I reorganized that code such that +the list is now built in smaller chunks. And as a side effect of that reorganization, that work in +only done once instead of every time an instrument library dialog is opened. In QT speak: there's +now a single InstrumentList object, which implements the +[QAbstractItemModel](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qabstractitemmodel.html) API, and all +[QTreeView](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtreeview.html) widgets share that model.