I wish there was a some sort of a Open Source UI squad that would just work towards making awesome UIs for projects like Audacity, GIMP etc. There are so many low hanging fruits here like - iconography, spacing, using the right widget controls etc. that would make a lot more people want to use (and hopefully support) such software.
Audacity 2.2.0 Released
81–90 of 157 posts
Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released
#82I love seeing software that still has a "Screenshots" section of their website. It's looked the same for as long as I've been using computers to record audio, starting with my high school band's demo over 15 years ago. I could probably make fun of Audacity for not keeping up with the times, but if you look at other DAWs you'll see none are exactly bastions of good interface design. I got a little more serious about m…
For what I do (mostly, stereo recordings of a choral group in which I sing), Audacity does everything that I need.
While my digital recorder came with a copy of Cubase LE, I took one look at the EULA and the bullshit DRM, promptly installed Audacity, and never looked back.
Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released
#83I wish there was a some sort of a Open Source UI squad that would just work towards making awesome UIs for projects like Audacity, GIMP etc. There are so many low hanging fruits here like - iconography, spacing, using the right widget controls etc. that would make a lot more people want to use (and hopefully support) such software.
+1 this, 1,000x this.
Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released
#84I am so glad for Audacity but the UI always feels more convoluted than it needs to be. I wish they would copy Sound Forge's controls
How is it convoluted? It's as simple as it can possibly be. There are play, stop, pause, and record buttons, and the waveforms go in the main area. Timeline tools are in a smaller section, there are effects in a drop down menu, and the options you'd expect are in the places you'd expect them. I don't see how it could possibly be any more straightforward unless it read your mind.
Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released
#85I wish there was a some sort of a Open Source UI squad that would just work towards making awesome UIs for projects like Audacity, GIMP etc. There are so many low hanging fruits here like - iconography, spacing, using the right widget controls etc. that would make a lot more people want to use (and hopefully support) such software.
Building a solid design culture is extremely hard - in my experience having worked professionally as a designer and engineer, much more so than a solid engineering culture (which is already insanely hard). There’s a reason only a handful of organizations in the world succeed at both.
I spent time volunteering for Gnome many years ago (2.x days), and it was extremely hard there, even though it had a reputation for being one of the most designer friendly open source projects. It was a struggle to push for design considerations with obvious benefits such as accessibility - let alone anything remotely resembling aesthetics.
The issue with open source is that ultimately, the project maintainers tend to be programmers with programmers’ priorities and views on design.
Good design requires consistent, thoughtful sacrifice and compromise, and someone at the top to enforce it. If the open source UI squad makes recommendations that the Gimp maintainers choose to ignore, then what?
Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released
#86Full support for 10.12
Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ardour ( https://ardour.org/ ) and LMMS ( https://lmms.io/ ) are probably the two most popular open-source DAWs. I also really like MuseScore ( https://musescore.org/ ) for composition.
technically Ardour is free as in free speech, but not as in free beer. They do not have official binary downloads for free. If I remember correcyly its more involved than ./configure && make && make install Though Ubuntu Studio has a version ready to go.
Lots of software that's considered free-as-in-speech-and-beer doesn't have official binary downloads at all. Ardour additionally provides the option of paying to download an official binary. Building from source is pretty much the same as anything else, although there are quite a lot of dependencies. If you're used to installing from source there's no reason Ardour should give you any great difficulty (unless you're unlucky and your distro doesn't supply the required dependencies or something).
Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released
#88I wish there was a some sort of a Open Source UI squad that would just work towards making awesome UIs for projects like Audacity, GIMP etc. There are so many low hanging fruits here like - iconography, spacing, using the right widget controls etc. that would make a lot more people want to use (and hopefully support) such software.
Building a solid design culture is extremely hard - in my experience having worked professionally as a designer and engineer, much more so than a solid engineering culture (which is already insanely hard). There’s a reason only a handful of organizations in the world succeed at both. I spent time volunteering for Gnome many years ago (2.x days), and it was extremely hard there, even though it had a reputation for bei…
Perhaps having "skins" capabilities would allow the best of both worlds...though it might end up like WinAmp with thousands of unuseably designed yet popular skins.
Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released
#89I wish there was a some sort of a Open Source UI squad that would just work towards making awesome UIs for projects like Audacity, GIMP etc. There are so many low hanging fruits here like - iconography, spacing, using the right widget controls etc. that would make a lot more people want to use (and hopefully support) such software.
(UI) Designers don't want to work for free. This is more or less the observation I made in regards for Open Source software.
Having some side projects or helping OSS is somewhat expected from a programmer. From other professions not so much.
Re: Audacity 2.2.0 Released
#90I recently switched my workflow to all linux compatible free as in beer software. I like being able to produce music on pretty much any hardware no matter where I am. I love audacity and want to say thanks to the team!
I'll chime in:
Thank you Audacity (-team) for always being there when I need you (aka consistent quality and maintenance).