[LCtalk] Fixture patching

[PragmaLab]

Hello Fokko & Mattijs,

thank you for supporting me in my effort to understand how patching 
works in Lcedit+.

wearing my critical glasses, I would say so far we have:

1) a confusing lable ("Base DMX  add", ->will be corrected next version)
2) a small bug (entered data is only shown correct after re-entering the 
'Fixture Setup dialog')
3) a small hack (a patch in a local 'Fixture Setup' appears to be global 
data)
4) patch info can be entered, but never removed (only overwritten)
5) no documentation or Help-info on the subject

hmmmmm, the good news is that I'm starting to understand why I gave up 
patching after almost 1 hour of desperate finding the concept and logic 
behind this feature of the application.

Mattijs suggested "to detect if the user is trying to get rid of a 
mapping, ...." . I don't think that would be a good idea because that 
would just be another hack (to correct the first one). My suggestion 
would be:

1) define which properties belong to fixtures, to shows, to cuelist, and 
which are global settings of an application
2) then make sure that the user knows for which entity he or she is 
entering data (clear use of dialog titles, menu-item titles, etc)
3) use the data that was entered only as a property for the entity is 
was entered.

So, if you like to use extra-patching features (which is offcourse fine 
because every user wants something else with Lcedit+), use a global 
patch-editor for that (independant of fixtures) and don't mis-use the 
'Fixture Setup' dialog for that, because that should be data belonging 
to the fixture only.  And when entering patch-data for a fixture, this 
data is gone the moment you delete the fixture.

The way it is implemented now is confusing, that we both agree upon I 
think.  And saying that it isn't actually harmfull is not completely 
true if I might say so. In my case, I had 2 fixtures installed (at 
DMX-address 120 and 160).  It's quite easy to get into a situation in 
which you only have 1 fixture patched, control the, lets say, movement 
of the patched fixture and all of a sudden the second (non-patched) 
fixture goes mad. Just because some channels overlap due to the partly 
invisible extra patching. Note that there's no way you can see or check 
this global info (not even with the cast-window), unless you happen to 
patch another fixture which (partly) overlaps. Please correct me if I'm 
wrong.

Perhaps it also a good idea to have a closer look at the way the 
information is presented in the cast-window. The last column is the 
DMX-column and when a lot of addresses are present in that column you 
have a hard time getting the complete line in view. That is simply 
caused by the fact that you don't allow the user to re-size the 
individual colums but for some reason (framework?) have chosen to use 
fixed proportions of all columns.

If I wear my sunny glasses, I would say, thanks for the support. I'm 
glad I now figured out the story behind the 'Base DMX add' editfield.

regards,

Rob van Lieshout

ps: a 'wiki-like' knowledgebase sounds OK, but why not start with a 
'list of known bugs' and some release notes with the next release ?