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Revision 3375 - (hide annotations) (download)
Sat Nov 25 22:25:58 2017 UTC (6 years, 4 months ago) by schoenebeck
File size: 14479 byte(s)
Created gigedit branch 'release1_1_0'.
1 schoenebeck 3374 Version 1.1.0 (2017-11-25)
2    
3     This release adds various improvements for the NKSP real-time instrument
4     script editor of gigedit. LinuxSampler's NKSP script editor API is now
5     used by gigedit to visualize all issues of scripts (errors and warnings)
6     in real-time while you are typing with the script editor. The respective
7     locations of script errors / warnings are automatically highlighted in
8     red and yellow color respectively and when the mouse pointer is moved
9     over those code locations, then the precise error / warning message is
10     displayed as tooltip. And since gigedit's script editor is now tightly
11     coupled with the sampler's script engine this way, all the heavy work of
12     handling all aspects of the script language is now performed by the actual
13     sampler's script engine and thus you can now be sure and immediately see
14     whether there are any issues with your scripts with any character you are
15     typing, and if yes what kind of issues exactly, and that without
16     requiring to actually load the script into the sampler. To use these
17     features, gigedit must be compiled and linked against liblinuxsampler.
18     If gigedit is not compiled with liblinuxsampler support then the old hand
19     written, error prone and very feature limited script editor implementation
20     is used instead. Needless to say that compiling gigedit without
21     liblinuxsampler support is discouraged. Additionally when clicking on the
22     script editor's "Apply" button or using Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut, then
23     the script is automatically reloaded by the sampler. So you no longer
24     have to reload the respective instrument manually while you are
25     developing instrument scripts. There are also visual enhancements for the
26     script editor, for example the line numbers are now shown on the left,
27     the font size can be altered by the user, and unused code portions (i.e.
28     disabled by NKSP preprocessor statements) are automatically striked
29     through.
30    
31     Another major new feature in this release are macros. A macro is a set of
32     changes that should be applied to currently selected instrument. Such
33     macros can be reviewed and edited, and they can be saved permanently for
34     example as templates for common instrument creation tasks. Macros can be
35     assigned to F keys on the keyboard so that they can be quickly triggered,
36     you can transfer them over the OS clipboard and you can write comments
37     to your macros so that you never forget what kind of purpose you had in
38     mind for them. The macro features are based on libgig's new
39     "Serialization" framework and accordingly you need at least libgig 4.1.0
40     for using these macro features.
41    
42     All user settings of gigedit are now persistently saved and automatically
43     restored. This also includes gigedit's windows' dimensions and positions.
44    
45     Multi-row selection has been added to all list views now, so you can now
46     more efficiently apply actions to multiple samples, instruments or scripts
47     simultaneously at once, instead of requesting those actions for each item
48     individually.
49    
50     Also modifying key features of several dimension region zones
51     simultaneously is now supported. That means you can now delete, split and
52     resize multiple dimension region zones at once.
53    
54     You will also note that there are now icons displayed on the individual
55     regions and dimension region zones. Those icons visualize common key
56     features of regions and dimension region zones. For example if you forgot
57     to assign any sample to one of them, then you will see a red dot on the
58     respective region or dimension region zone. Another icon type is showing
59     you whether a region or dimension region zone uses a sample loop. This way
60     you can immediately see and control the key features of all regions
61     and their dimension region zones, without requiring to browse through all
62     of them individually.
63    
64     Various new keyboard shortcuts have been added so you can work more
65     efficiently on your sounds. For example you can now use Ctrl+Left and
66     Ctrl+Right to navigate through all regions of the currently selected
67     instrument, and likewise you can use Alt+Left, Alt+Right, Alt+Up and
68     Alt+Down to navigate through all dimension region zones of the currently
69     selected region. Since there are many actions that can be either applied
70     on instrument level, or on region level, or on dimension region level, as
71     a general rule, for all keyboard shortcuts the Alt key is used by gigedit
72     for actions on dimension region level, whereas the Ctrl key is used on
73     region level and the Shift key is used for actions on instrument level.
74     So as another example you may copy all parameters of the currently
75     selected dimension region zone by hitting Alt+C, then you might select
76     another dimension region zone, or another instrument and then use Alt+V
77     to apply the parameters from the clipboard. While the parameters are
78     (as macro actually) on the clipboard you can also review, edit and
79     delete the individual parameters before applying them. As a final
80     example for new important shortcuts you may now use Shift+Up and
81     Shift+Down for switching between instruments.
82    
83     Also the Combine Tool has been improved. You can now simply select the
84     (multiple) instruments you want to combine directly from the applications
85     main window, i.e. by Ctrl or Shift clicking them from the instruments
86     list view, and then right click to call the combine tool on that
87     selection. The Combine Tool now also shows you as preview the order in
88     which the selected instruments are going to be combined. This is
89     especially useful when combining instruments with certain dimension
90     types where the order matters for the actual resulting sound; for example
91     when using the velocity dimension. Simply use drag n drop to reorder
92     the previously selected instruments before combining.
93    
94     Since LinuxSampler 2.1.0 added a Giga format extension which allows to
95     control the envelope generators' state machines more precisely; new
96     options have been added to gigedit to control these new EG features.
97     For example there are new check box which you can use to define for
98     each envelope whether the individual EG stages should still be completed
99     or rather aborted if a note-off was received. These new EG settings matter
100     a lot for certain instrument types like percussive instruments.
101    
102     And last but not least a filter option field had been added to the
103     instruments list and samples list, which allows you to find specific
104     samples and instruments very quickly by typing search key words, which is
105     especially very helpful in case you are working on gig files which contain
106     a very large amount of samples or instruments in a single gig file.
107    
108 schoenebeck 2795 Version 1.0.0 (2015-07-17)
109    
110     With this release we added support for new GigaStudio 4 features, for
111     example there are now dialogs for editing some of the new so called
112     "iMIDI rules". These can be used i.e. to trigger notes by MIDI CC and to
113     define a set of legato samples. You may have heard that the GigaStudio
114     software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4. Tascam officially
115     discontinued this product, its intellectual property has been sold several
116     times among companies and there is currently no way to buy a new copy of
117     GigaStudio anymore. However the GigaStudio format is still under active
118     development with gigedit and LinuxSampler. For the first time ever we added
119     our own extensions to the Giga format: one of it is major new feature
120     called "real-time instrument scripts", which allows to bundle small programs
121     with your .gig sounds, which extend the sampler with custom behavior for
122     specific sounds. You may know such kind of instrument scripts from
123     commercial software samplers. Find out more about this new feature on
124     http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/. Another rather minor
125     extension to the Giga format is support for various other MIDI CCs which
126     were never supported by GigaStudio before. So you can now use any MIDI CC
127     for EG1 controller, EG2 controller and attenuation controller. Obviously all
128     those extensions will not work with any GigaStudio version, they only work
129     with a recent version of Gigedit and LinuxSampler. Gigedit will inform you
130     whenever you are using such kind of custom Giga format extension, so that you
131     are always aware in case your changes are not cross/backward compatible with
132     the GigaStudio software. A load of enhancements have been added to Gigedit
133     in the last six years: Until now you were only able to edit either exactly
134     one dimension region or all dimension regions simultaneously. With this
135     release you may now hold the Ctrl button and select a specific set of
136     dimension region zones in the dimension region selector area (on the very
137     bottom of the Gigedit window) with your mouse. All synthesis parameters you
138     then change, will all be applied to that precise set of dimension region
139     zones. Also managing dimensions have been improved: previously to change the
140     amount of zones of a dimension you had to delete and recreate the dimension.
141     Which was not just inconvenient, but you also had to redefine your synthesis
142     parameters from scratch. Now you can just open the dimension manager dialog
143     and increase or decrease the amount of zones of a dimension with few clicks.
144     Same applies to the dimension type: you may now simply open the dimension
145     manager dialog and alter the type of a dimension with few clicks.
146     When working on complex Giga sounds you certainly noticed that one could
147     easily get confused about which samples are exactly used by which instrument
148     or even whether a sample is actually used at all by any instrument or just
149     left orphaned and wasting disk space. This was also due to the fact that the
150     Giga format does not require unique names for samples. We have worked on
151     resolving this usability issue. In the sample list view you can now read the
152     amount of times a sample is referenced by instruments of your .gig file. If a
153     sample is not used at all, then it will be shown in striking red color in
154     the sample list view. You may also right click on a sample and select
155     "Show references...", a new window appears on your screen which will show you
156     where exactly that particular sample is used by, that is which by which
157     instruments and by which regions of those instruments. Also the other way
158     around has been addressed: when you now edit the synthesis parameters of a
159     particular dimension region, you may now click on the new "<- Select Sample"
160     button and Gigedit automatically selects and displays the respective sample
161     in the samples list view, which you may then might rename to some more
162     appropriate sample name, or you might check by which other instrument(s) that
163     sample is used by, etc. You may now also remove the current sample reference
164     from individual dimension regions (assigning a so called "NULL" sample) by
165     clicking on the new "X" button next the sample reference field on the
166     "Sample" tab of a dimension region; this allows you to define "silent cases",
167     that is a case where no sample should be played at all, for example this is
168     often used for very low velocity ranges of i.e. between 0 and 6. If you are
169     working on .gig files with a large amount of Instruments, then you might also
170     be glad to know that you can finally also re-order the instruments of a file
171     by simply dragging the instruments around in the instruments list view.
172     Another handy new feature for sound designers is the new "Combine" tool,
173     which you can reach from the main menu. It allows you to select two ore more
174     instruments (by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting with mouse click)
175     from your currently open Giga file and combine those selected instruments to
176     a new instrument. This way you may for example create stunning layered
177     sounds, or you may create velocity splits, crossfade sounds by MIDI
178     controller and much more, all with just a few clicks. This may sound like a
179     trivial task, but if you have worked on this before, you certainly noticed
180     that this was often a very time consuming and error prone task before,
181     especially with complex individual sounds which had custom region ranges,
182     custom velocity splits and much more exotic stuff to take care of. The
183     combine tool handles all such cases for you automatically.
184     Last but not least, the interaction of Gigedit with LinuxSampler (in so
185     called "live mode") had been improved: When you click on the "Edit" button of
186     a channel strip in QSampler or Fantasia, Gigedit will be launched with the
187     respective instrument automatically being selected. Vice versa you may now
188     also just select another instrument with Gigedit's instrument list view and
189     LinuxSampler will automatically load and play that instrument on the
190     respective sampler part for you. So no more need to switch between the
191     Gigedit window and QSampler/Fantasia window all the time while working on
192     your sounds.
193    
194 persson 1959 Version 0.2.0 (2009-07-31)
195    
196     When gigedit is running as a plugin in LinuxSampler the gigedit
197     keyboard may now be used to trigger notes. The settings in the file
198     properties window are now editable. A new function for replacing all
199     samples is added. Otherwise this is mostly a bug fix release, and
200     upgrading gigedit and libgig is strongly recommended, as previous
201     versions had bugs that may cause edited gig files to be corrupted.
202    
203 persson 1562 Version 0.1.1 (2007-12-06)
204    
205     Parameter edits can now be applied to multiple regions and dimension
206     regions simultaneously - three checkboxes were added that select if
207     changes apply to all regions and/or all dimension regions.
208    
209 persson 1441 Version 0.1.0 (2007-10-15)
210    
211     Many fixes have been made to make sure that the gig files created by
212     gigedit are working properly in LinuxSampler and GigaStudio. Gigedit
213     can now be run as a LinuxSampler plugin, allowing live editing of
214     loaded instruments. Sample loop parameters and instrument global
215     properties can now be edited. 24 bit samples can be imported. A
216     quick-start document has been added. Lots of other minor fixes and
217     improvements have been done.
218    
219 persson 1119 Version 0.0.3 (2007-03-24)
220    
221     First version of gigedit. The program is renamed from gigview to
222     gigedit as it is now an editor, not just a viewer. Basic support for
223     both editing existing gig files and creating new ones from scratch
224     is provided.
225    
226     Version 0.0.2 (2006-11-05)
227    
228     Quick fix for a thread initialization problem.
229    
230     Version 0.0.1 (2006-11-05)
231    
232     First version of gigview.

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