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Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

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Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#91

Post by meowface »

dash2 wrote: post #79
Tantacrul wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Tantacrul Here) It's true that there often exists a clash between designers and those who champion accessibility standards. IMO, this is normally because the designer in question hasn't enough experience working on software. Speaking for myself? I designed the accessibility features in Paint 3D while at Microsoft. I was in charge of accessibility of another Microsoft Studio that worked on Hololens software. For Muse…

I just started using MuseScore 3.6 and I've gotta say it is surprisingly usable for an open source project. There are some annoyances, like drag-and-drop scrolling the page instead of selecting notes, but overall it becomes intuitive quite quickly. So, if that is your work, then congratulations so far! Looking forward to version 4.

If anyone's curious, here are Tantacrul's entertaining videos on MuseScore and designing MuseScore's new font, and the Audacity video from yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZxo96x48A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGo4PJd1lng

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMWNvwLiXIQ

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#92

Post by mort96 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #73
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman) Which is silly because good UX that works for people with disabilities or impairments also benefits fully able users in the vast majority of cases

In fact, accessibility is probably the last remaining hope of power users[0]. With general-audience software, the market doesn't care much about the minority that are the serious users, and it's hard to make a convincing argument to business people here. However, accessibility does have a strong enough ethical argument behind it, which is also increasingly being backed by regulations. Allowing accessibility tools to…

100% agree. I've noticed this as well. A lot of the time, the best objective-sounding argument for something I want is "it's necessary for accessibility", even though _I_ want it for reasons which would've been ignored. And a whole lot of the settings I rely on to make my computing devices comfortable are hidden under "accessibility" menus in settings screens.

There are even cases where the strongest argument for something to have a web version in addition to an Android/iOS app is accessibility. You can make some really interesting and specialized input hardware for Windows PCs which has no chance of working on an iPad, so there are people whose disabilities makes web apps way easier to use than any Android/iOS app. And if there exists a web app, power users can use the service from their comfortable desktop setup rather than from the tiny screen on their phone.

Accessibility is the most effective argument against the "one-size-fits-all" "it works for 90% of users" thinking that's otherwise so pervasive.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#93

Post by augustk »

mort96 wrote: post #89
open0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the UI of recent versions of GIMP to be very nice for the simple image editing / processing that I do.

One thing I don't understand is the move to monochrome icons. I'm really bloody good at recognizing shape+color combinations; the old icons were ugly, but I was able to find the tool I wanted in an instant. After the redesign of the icon pack, I always find myself slowly iterating through every icon in the toolbox to try to find the particular abstract monochrome shape I want. I think a redesign of the icons was nece…

You can still use the old colored icons if you choose Edit -> Preferences -> Icon Theme -> Color.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#94

Post by benjaminjackman »

shawnz wrote: post #24
throw_m239339 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. True, Blender really exploded when they re-designed the interface. I hope someday GIMP team understand that. The software is solid, but the interface isn't great. Some very simple workflow changes made Blender easier to use.

I would say the GIMP team does understand that and they often put a high focus on UI improvements on their roadmaps. I suppose they just have limited resources to work with.

I really just wish GIMP (and Audacity now that I think about it) had a command palette, where I could type in the name of anything found in the menu or assigned to a keyboard shortcut. I don’t use both of them a lot so all of my time is spent search menus for what I am trying to do.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#95

Post by simondotau »

dTal wrote: post #34
simondotau wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, isn't it nice to have a funding model that allows developers of open source software to be sustainably salaried?

Not at the expense of what it stands for, no.

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Can you explain what you mean by that? Then more broadly, can you explain how the creation of more GPL-licensed source code can ever be a bad thing?

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#96

Post by hvis »

mnd999 wrote: post #19
JeremyBanks wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what are they acquiring ?

Seems like they’re just hiring the maintainer and maybe their copyrights. Given the number of contributors, not sure how useful one persons contributions are. Sounds like they want to connect it to their cloud services and improve the UI. They say in the comments they’re not looking to relicense and it’s hard to see how they could.

> Given the number of contributors, not sure how useful one persons contributions are.

OTOH, they are probably not spending too much money as a result. While acquiring better visibility and (hopefully) more goodwill from the audio enthusiast community.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#97

Post by marrs »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #21
wexq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. His twitter ( https://twitter.com/Tantacrul ) and youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/user/martinthekearykid ) are full of interesting tidbits, an you can tell he's passionate about things. Even if you don't do music/notation his video on Sibelius, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI , is ridiculously funny, but also on point.

> OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. True, Blender really exploded when they re-designed the interface. I hope someday GIMP team understand that. The software is solid, but the interface isn't great. Some very simple workflow changes made Blender easier to use.

It’s odd that you singled out Gimp as they are the only free software project I’m aware of who engaged a professional UX consultant to redesign their UI, and that must be maybe 15 years ago

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#98

Post by marcinzm »

simondotau wrote: post #95
dTal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at the expense of what it stands for, no.

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Can you explain what you mean by that? Then more broadly, can you explain how the creation of more GPL-licensed source code can ever be a bad thing?

An extreme example since you asked a very absolute question:

I sell software to the Chinese government to track down dissidents and kill them with drones. I release a lot of code under a GPL license and use the funds to promote OSS software. Most people wouldn't consider this a positive for the world even though more GPL software is created. Or in other words many people do not believe that "the ends justify the means" is a valid reason for something.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#99

Post by chronogram »

benjaminjackman wrote: post #94
shawnz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the GIMP team does understand that and they often put a high focus on UI improvements on their roadmaps. I suppose they just have limited resources to work with.

I really just wish GIMP (and Audacity now that I think about it) had a command palette, where I could type in the name of anything found in the menu or assigned to a keyboard shortcut. I don’t use both of them a lot so all of my time is spent search menus for what I am trying to do.

If you’re using the applications on Linux you can use HUDs like https://github.com/hardpixel/gnome-hud

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#100

Post by mort96 »

augustk wrote: post #93
mort96 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I don't understand is the move to monochrome icons. I'm really bloody good at recognizing shape+color combinations; the old icons were ugly, but I was able to find the tool I wanted in an instant. After the redesign of the icon pack, I always find myself slowly iterating through every icon in the toolbox to try to find the particular abstract monochrome shape I want. I think a redesign of the icons was nece…

You can still use the old colored icons if you choose Edit -> Preferences -> Icon Theme -> Color.

I know. You might've missed this part:

> (And I know you can switch icon themes, but when we're talking about UX, we're largely talking about the out-of-the-box experience. 99.9% of users are going to stick with the default icon pack.)

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