On Monday just gone (27th Feb 2006), I did a gig with Gojira using quartz composer. Various things conspired to ensure that I had not had a chance to test out how the triggers on our drummer's kit would fit into what I was doing. So I plugged everything in, made sure I was receiving the signal from the kit and got ready for the gig. This now comes back to the discussion from a few weeks ago about being able to alter compositions on the fly:- as we were playing I was able to add (or copy) new midi notes nodes and connect them into existing triggers, all in real time taking effect instantly; awesome! Which kind of brings me to a conclusion … for me, the editor interface is not something I want to lose when using quartz composer, and therefore, rather than re-inventing the wheel by adding similar functionality into my own app, here is what I'd like to see …

1. Multiple windows in quartz composer in a single composition, with a simple drop down in the nodes to choose which one it displays on, and with the option to simply mirror the windows (which I‘m guessing would be less processor intensive). This has got to be my top feature request, because it allows me to have a live view of what’s happening on the projection. You would need to be able to independently assign full screen mode to each window.

1. Interface Elements:- the main reason people seem to want to develop stuff in cocoa for quartz composer seems to be to create interfaces for their compositions; why not take all the pain out of it by creating interface elements in quartz composer that can be manipulated with the mouse. Then you could add them into a composition like any other node. Combine this with point 1, and you could be creating interfaces incredibly easily. I‘m making a guess that these wouldn’t be impossible to make currently, but if there were a pre-built library (perhaps essentially just macros that you could edit), that'd be incredibly helpful for newbies (and fast prototyping for that matter). Obviously without point 1, these are kind of redundant.

1. Compile to application:- I think this is the way forward; It just uses a really simple quartz composer player and builds the bindings automatically. This way, if you want to stay within the editing environment you can, but if you‘ve created a great app using 1 and 2, you can just hit a button and bingo, you’ve created an easily distributable package.

Ooooohh just a thought, if you had a midi out node, and used a little midi patch bay application, could you feed midi out of one QC composition into another? That way, you wouldn't need to do anything to get point 1 working, just some midi routing (although a mirroring window would still be really useful) and qc developers could create their own libraries of interface elements or whole interfaces. Hmm, may have to investigate further!

Maybe what I'm seeing is that qc just needs a few more input / output methods?

SteamSHIFT Out.

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