adapt visible Skin Settings in small Deck in Latenight

[nopeppermint]

This PR:

• adapts the visible Skin Settings in small Deck in Latenight
• makes small Deck usable as skin option
• adds smal knobs to the toolbar if small deck are used as skin option (not with big library)

Further more I would like to add an eject and headphone button to the small decks.

What do you think about the different points?

[ywwg]

This looks good! I bet our podcaster users will like the simplified interface.

Does it make sense to have the keylock icon on all the samplers? Is it common for the rate to change on samplers? Apologies if that's not even something you changed :).

Adding headphone button and eject to small decks sounds like a good idea. Personally I don't think eject buttons are super necessary (just load something new!), but there's space for them.

[ronso0]

This looks good! I bet our podcaster users will like the simplified interface.

I'm curious: what are podcasters and why do they need a simple interface?

[ywwg]

or I guess, streaming radio hosts. They usually use Mixxx for microphone input and autodj. They don't care about waveforms, or eq, etc. Mixxx's support for broadcasting to shoutcast is the best in the open source world so we have a lot of non-dj users in that space

[ronso0]

@nopeppermint Thanks for bringing this up again.
Overall it looks good.
An Eject button is okay for me, I just suspect we loose space that's better used for the track title on screens close to minimal skin size.

Improvements:

• While I see use for the master mixer knobs in the toolbar for the podcaster use case @ywwg pointed out, I think headphone controls thwart the idea of a minimal decks: for just playing songs you don't need a headphone volume knob or a Pfl button, and when DJing with a controller the headphone controls are there.

• please remove 4 DECKS, SPINNY, PREVIEW DECK, COVER & COVER IN LIB from the toolbar. Those toggles are mostly set up once and we moved them to skin settings menu to keep the toolbar clear & tidy. (with a clean worktree git revert 19d72e3)

• please keep an eye on the code indentation.

• CO and title for small decks: [Skin], show_minimal_decks and Minimal Decks ? They are actually tiny, until now the only control is Play ;)

• please remove the gap in between small decks and waveforms. It's necessary when we show maximized library, though, so remove it from deck_small.xml and paste it into decks_small.xml: above decks 1/2 (only if [Master],maximize_library = 1) and above decks 3/4

[ronso0]

@ all: should we do this for Deere and Shade as well?

[nopeppermint]

please remove 4 DECKS, SPINNY, PREVIEW DECK, COVER & COVER IN LIB from the toolbar. Those toggles are mostly set up once and we moved them to skin settings menu to keep the toolbar clear & tidy.

ok

[nopeppermint]

please remove the gap in between small decks and waveforms. It's necessary when we show maximized library, though, so remove it from deck_small.xml and paste it into decks_small.xml: above decks 1/2 (only if [Master],maximize_library = 1) and above decks 3/

ok

[nopeppermint]

@ronso0

CO and title for small decks: [Skin], show_minimal_decks and Minimal Decks ? They are actually tiny, until now the only control is Play ;)

do you suggest a name change of this feature?
or what? I didn't get it..

[ronso0]

do you suggest a name change of this feature?

Yup. So that we have 'regular' decks and 'minimal' decks. For the sake of consistency, the related control would be [Skin],show_minimal_decks.

If we want to push the idea even further, we could add a toggle that hides decks when the library is maximized (opt-out, skins set show_minimal_decks to 1 on first load with this new feature). Becasue I suppose not all users need minimal decks and enlarge the library for a reason: small display, or maybe the just run a preparation session where they sort tracks, clean up crates etc.

[nopeppermint]

@ronso0 I just found out that not only on Latenight but also on the other skins the tracktime is not width enough => "fix minimal required width for tracktime" bd14722

[nopeppermint]

different time formats from #1985 it can shrink even further with 'Traditional coarse', so 50min is a reasonable value

I was not aware of this..

maybe we can set a minimal width based on the selected time format?

[ronso0]

@ronso0 I just found out that not only on Latenight but also on the other skins the tracktime is not width enough => "fix minimal required width for tracktime" bd14722

Okay, try to fix it by setting title width attribute to i,[height]. i means 'ignore' and the title should grow to available space.

[ronso0]

maybe we can set a minimal width based on the selected time format?

we have 3 display options and 5 time formats = 15 possibilities for setting fixed width, and we didn't even take hours into account...
I suggest to figure out suitable SizePolicy combinations for title and playposition. I know it's tricky and there are some quirks with SizePolicy but it should be doable.

[nopeppermint]

we have 3 display options and 5 time formats = 15 possibilities for setting fixed width, and we didn't even take hours into account...

wtf why we introduced so much options ... 👎

[nopeppermint]

<Size>e,20f</Size> works for all options I tested

[nopeppermint]

Yup. So that we have 'regular' decks and 'minimal' decks. For the sake of consistency, the related control would be [Skin],show_minimal_decks.

I would keep small deck to prevent a massive renaming ;-)

If want to push the idea even further, we could add a toggle that hides decks when the library is maximized (opt-out, skins set show_minimal_decks to 1 on first load with this new feature). Becasue I suppose not all users need minimal decks and enlarge the library for a reason: small display, or maybe the just run a preparation session where they sort tracks, clean up crates etc.

nice idea

[nopeppermint]

While I see use for the master mixer knobs in the toolbar for the podcaster use case @ywwg pointed out, I think headphone controls thwart the idea of a minimal decks: for just playing songs you don't need a headphone volume knob or a Pfl button, and when DJing with a controller the headphone controls are there.

ok. In the toolbar I would keep the balance and master gain knob.

[ronso0]

wtf why we introduced so much options ... 👎

Becasue all of them are valid. There are zillions of Mixxx users with quite a few different use cases and personal preferences. So I guess 15 theoretically possible combinations is not so much...

[Be-ing]

wtf why we introduced so much options ...

That's kinda how I feel about this PR. I understand the desire to have the decks take less space, but I'm concerned this is heading down a path towards unmaintainable complexity, especially if we're making these "minimal decks" like the maximized library view but not exactly like them so we need to handle even more conditions in the mini deck template. Can you clarify what the use cases for this new option are? Otherwise we will struggle to decide how minimal is too minimal. For example, if the goal is to show only what is required for vinyl control users who have an external mixer, or controller users who don't want any info on screen that's visible on their controller, I think this may be enough as is.

[ronso0]

I would keep small deck to prevent a massive renaming ;-)

as easy as using sed -i 's/small\_decks/show\_minimal\_decks/g' *.xml in LateNight dir

[ronso0]

@Be-ing I fear this complexity as well. That's pretty much why I'd insist on keeping the mini decks template as it is.
The changes introduced here (mainly) just alter skin.xml and skin settings menu to an justifiable extent IMO.

I agree, in general we should pay attention that skins don't get even more complex. At some point it might be more reasonable to create a new skin focussing on a distinct use case. With color schemes this can adapt to personal preferences.

[ronso0]

..and maybe that's due to introducing Tango where there accumulated so many (valid) options over time which raised the bar so much that we now have to constrain further growth off all skins. Except Shade which fortunately has no settings menu.. ;)

[ywwg]

or I guess, streaming radio hosts. They usually use Mixxx for microphone input and autodj. They don't care about waveforms, or eq, etc. Mixxx's support for broadcasting to shoutcast is the best in the open source world so we have a lot of non-dj users in that space

I solicited some feedback on facebook and started collecting it in a blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/mixxx/+spec/streaming-ui. We don't have to worry about this for now but it could provide some nice guidance for a small-deck mode that those users might like

(direct link, not sure if this works: https://www.facebook.com/mixxxdj/posts/10155728946020213?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARBIOq1bsJKD4f3bhBa2iVaXZSgH5brC9zL0KyErwTJhuCWaf3YZNs9k-2_CccY_tZ8toK7XZo3j6rwWhHdsxkGdiB8E1nsDQ8EjcZMEUgqU1DuuAnOwYA430grj4MSLRMfAyBe1ri4Pfx_l1ISckQP0Ep4yYITPccC063pzuG84KKdzzQCq7_RuHYl3_r8Tb48-4HnUm0ZU3NBThjV_Hho-ueSWxkrOnv3Wkagfw1r823JCIiO_CD0zqpSDmvX17T4msA2aKqlFGlUOsbmC9VOOl-J8OsTwEk6kt9ncxYo8oNnMaB-e16voba3kFScTB9gI7_JSYlVOwQ&__tn__=-R)

[daschuer]

What is the state here? Conflicts have emerged.

[ronso0]

Considering the effort to resolve the merge conflicts: optional minimal & medium decks are in #2736 as well.

I still like the idea of moving the master / headphone mixer to the toolbar, like in Deere. This would give us more space in the decks / mixer row. That mixer section should be hideable though for those who don't need it.

[nopeppermint]

What is the state here? Conflicts have emerged.

we may continue in #2736

[Holzhaus]

Alright, then we can close this.