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Subject: Re: General LCX observations...
From: Matthijs van Duin
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 10:49:43 +0200

1a) An extra list or floating window to allow quick visual feedback about the other cues within a cuelist.

That's in 3.1 (though we initially designed it for editing, I now realize it's also useful in run mode, so I'll make sure it'll work there too)

It won't be an "extra list" btw.. it's the replacement of the script editor, now called the Cuelist Editor.

1b) Ability to name cuelists and cues in plain text (even if only stored at the LCEdit end)

Yea.. often asked for. It's a bit tricky though.. I worry that it might get desynchronized with the lanbox. Then again, it could happen just as easily to the stage and that's never been a problem..

I'll see what I can do, but I don't know if it'll be in 3.1.

1c) A timeline window

Unlikely to happen (any time soon at least). It's a lot of work.


2a) Plain text naming of layers

There's no room in the layer list anymore. (try it.. running at 999.99, paused, layer ID 'BK', locked, output off, mixer off, fader off, manual output, solo)

2b) Standardise terminology

It should be "layers" everywhere. I'll be sure to check 3.1 throroughly.


3a) Given a fixture that is set correctly, how do I set all (or some) of the channels as active in the current layer? The little green buttons allow me to REMOVE a channel, but not to add one.

As Jon said, you can press enter to activate the selected channels, and clear them (backspace, enter) to deactivate them.

A shortcut he didn't mention: option-enter activates all channels of the selected fixture(s). option-backspace deactivates 'em all.

Note that the little green button does NOT toggle activation of the channel, it only toggles its output while the channel remains active, which is normally not what you want.

Output is generally automatically turned on for a channel when it's activated, but you can disable that with the "manual output" button on the control window. (no, I'm not aware of anyone who actually uses it)


3b) Some method for defining one or more dynamic named location/focus for each light such that when I change the named position, all cues that reference it are updated together.

Jon already mentioned Add-layers as a tool to offset pan/tilt. Another useful thing is a "reference scene": You can make a step show the scene of another step. The command is something like "show 15.4 for ..." (you can specify a hold and fade time different from the original step)

To be honest, there's no good way to adapt your show to changes in the setup yet.. and it's not an easy problem to solve. Maybe you can use backup files and a spreadsheet program.

c) Defaults for new cue list steps

It's not particularly difficult, but we have no prefs file at all right now and we have no suitable panel to put the setting...

I'll see if I can come up with something.. maybe I can make it automatically use the most recent setting you used.


d) A way of clicking on the trackball to allow the use of the Up/Down/Left/Right keys to position the light.

The left/right keys are already in use though for editfields.. I would like to point out there are shortcuts to select the pan and tilt fields of the first trackball: 'x' and 'y'


5. Script editor
a) "It would be nice if..." each data step could be interpreted by fixture, even if this was only by outputting the channels for each fixture on a separate line! This would simplify splitting up cues by fixture a great deal.

The new cuelist editor won't interpret by fixture, but it will make things a lot easier because it shows channels in columns... you'll see what i mean when 3.1 is released :-)


6b) An LCEdit plugin interface to allow 3rd party plugins to extend the interface & LanBox control program. At the moment a programmer can extend the LCX by defining new FORTH words, etc but there is no way to reflect/control the enhancements via LCEdit.

Well, LCedit should still remain an editor. You can easily do custom stuff in environments like Max.

And I should point out that noone has actually extended the LCX software yet, so until someone does this point is fairly moot :-)


Anyway, it's warm in here (little internet room on the cruise boat), so I've skipped a few points. I'll get back to them later, weather permitting ;-)

regards,

Matthijs van Duin
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