[Denemo-devel] The Denemo UI

[Till Hartmann]

Hi folks,

I have not been using denemo regularly but rather sporadically. When I ran denemo today I was first of all stunned that fluidsynth and midi and jack and all that stuff worked quite well. But what stunned me even more so was (and is) the amount of options available. Which is good, because it shows how much denemo is capable of.
BUT:
There are so many labels and menu items (some might call it "a sheer amount") that it is - for someone who has not yet worked with denemo - quite difficult to understand denemo's structure and it is even harder to find what one is looking for.
So, what I'd like to propose is:

• find redundant menu items, if any
• filter out (the) more important items and "promote" them
• replace text with icons / add icons to existing labels
• use system colors (e.g. the key-binding-blue does not work well with a dark gtk-theme)
• improve readability (e.g. [dark] grey staves instead of black)

I have created a little mockup of how this *could* be achieved, see attachment.
This is (of course) a difficult and probably tedious task. This is also to be considered somewhat low priority, as it is more important to actually get denemo to work. And again:
BUT:
If you want to attract users (and with that, at least in linux-world, developers), you will have to offer a clean and "intuitive" UI, make denemo more attractive to use.

Don't regard this as an attack on you developers, but rather an offer for help; that I would really like to - help. But I am neither good at C, nor a GTK-adept. I am going to have a look at GTK, but that will have to wait until I have got my "Abitur".

Happy discussing,

Till

denemo_mockup1.jpg
Description: JPEG image