Objectives Evaluation

[meganindya]

Client

Palette

• narrower and collapsible
• general (basic) blocks and niche (advanced) blocks
• group similar blocks
• plugin buttons

Main Toolbar

• run (full-speed) and stop; run-slowly and run-step-by-step to be in dropdown of run
• new project, load project, export to sheet music to be grouped together
• canvas features: save artwork, save animation (GIF), record canvas (MPEG4), record audio (MP3/WAV/OGG) to be grouped together
• undo-redo
• language
• guide

State Toolbar

• global settings
• statistics

Canvas

• debatable page mode (no infinite canvas)
• linear block stacks arrangement (no random position) with a canvas to the side

Canvas Toolbar

• maps (e.g. cartesian planes)
• reset
• rearrange blocks, toggle canvas mode (linear or free) to be grouped together
• zoom, collapse, expand, snap-to-grid to be grouped together

Functions

• history management (blocks and canvas)
• context management (e.g. CanvasContext, AudioContext, MediaContext, etc.)
• manage widgets based on feature API

Broker

Pool (Shared Memory)

• block tree

Functions

• signal dispatcher (for client-engine) communication
• block framework
• serialize/deserialize block tree
• feature API middleware

Engine

Core

• single stack-based state management
• effective low-level transitions (e.g. directly work on pitch frequencies)
• feature API (e.g. ADSR properties, time-measurement, etc.)

Scheduler

• variable-based Gantt-chart using Tone.Transport

Utilities

• signal dispatcher (to client via broker)
• sheet music export algorithms

[meganindya]

@walterbender did I miss anything? This one's sort of an exhaustive list of all features and their arrangement. I have been thinking about the organization throughout the week, and this makes most sense to me. The classes will should be fairly simple to identify if we get this module-based requirements right.

[walterbender]

Looks great. I am just uncertain about where the export belongs. We prob. want to keep a log of the notes played on the client side and then use a utility to convert that log into sheet music, etc. What do you think?

[meganindya]

Tbh I don't like the dependence of the sheet music conversion on the program running. How about we identify the sheet music just from the blocks itself? We can, in fact, do it on the fly. I understand there are interactive elements but can't we get around that?

[walterbender]

Let's think about it some more. I think losing interactivity is a major step backwards. For example, we had a use case in class this morning: The kids are writing games... there is a theme music sound track and differ music that comes in during different events --- approaching a monster, defeating a monster, etc. The kids what to print the sheet music as a transcript of their game play. I think it is a pretty cool idea that we would not want to lose.

[meganindya]

I personally don't like the experience where the program plays without any effect, i.e. no sound and artwork, during the translation. Perhaps, a dynamic way
(when program runs) and a static way (from the block tree)? I'd very much want a visual timeline, but I can't really think of a non-static way.

[walterbender]

The way I had originally done the exports (and I don't recall why we changed it) was that you exported whatever you last ran, so it was not a matter of rerunning the code without any effect. Maybe we go back to that?

[walterbender]

Or maybe: start recording now; end recording; export.

[pikurasa]

Do we want to add any things related to collaboration and "version control" to this list? (Or is that for a separate list, for the server?)