Contents of /gigedit/trunk/NEWS

Version 1.2.0 (2021-05-09)

  This release provides various new features and as always of course also
  numerous fixes.

  A C++11 compliant compiler is now at least required to build Gigedit from
  source.

  The real-time instrument script editor supports now syntax highlighting for
  LinuxSampler's new standard measuring units (kHz, c, ms, dB, etc.) feature for
  the NKSP script language. On the right hand side of Gigedit (the main working
  area actually) there is now a new tab "Script" which reveals a list of so
  called NKSP "patch" variables, which are variables published by instrument
  script authors to be directly accessible from the instrument editor and allows
  to override the values of certain instrument script variables on a per
  instrument basis in order to fine tune certains aspects of a script for
  individual instruments.

  Latest LinuxSampler 2.2.0 added various gig format extensions which are now
  available on Gigedit side as well: for instance for LFOs you can select from
  multiple wave forms (sine, triangle, square and saw) and you can fine tune
  the start phase of each LFO. To make it more intuitive the resulting LFO wave
  is drawn as preview on screen according to the chosen LFO parameters. Another
  gig format extension by latest LinuxSampler are new filter types which can be
  chosen from (along to the already existing filter types which will continue to
  co-exist): lowpass 1/2/4/6-pole, highpass 1/2/4/6-pole, bandpass 2-pole and
  bandreject 2-pole.

  A new dialog has been added to access the meta info of individual samples,
  similar to the meta info dialog that already existed for individual
  instruments.

  Gain can now be set to any arbitary value between -96 dB .. +96 dB. Previously
  it was only possible to set gain to max. 0 dB and there was a checkbox which
  allowed a hard coded boost to exactly +6 dB. The previous appearance
  replicated the appearance of GigaStudio's original instrument editor. The
  previous limitation of having just a single possible value for positive gain
  was unfortunate, but as it turned out this was actually not a limitation of
  the original gig file format. And in fact we have not added any gig file
  format extension for this reason to achieve this new freedom of arbitrary gain
  settings. So setting a positive gain of e.g. let's say +1.45 dB does not break
  compatibility of your sounds with GigaStudio.

  And last but not least various minor convenience functions have been added,
  for instance the default double click behaviour on instruments (which would
  open their meta info dialog) can now optionally be disabled, window size,
  position and vertical spliter position are now auto saved and restored among
  Gigedit sessions and the up/down buttons' steps have been individually
  adjusted to make more sense for the individual synthesis parameters they
  control. And regarding the latter: remember that the up/down steppers do 
  actually have two distinct operations per button: a regular left-mouse click
  for small changes and middle-mouse click for larger changes. Both have been
  adjusted appropriately for the individual synthesis parameters they control.

Version 1.1.1 (2019-07-27)

  This is a maintenance release with numerous fixes and the following
  few new features:

  From the file properties dialog you can now choose to specifically save a
  gig file in GigaStudio v4 file format (from the main menu select
  "File" -> "Properties" -> "File Format"). So you can override the file
  format version of already existing gig files that way.

  There is now a combo box and checkbox on "Misc" tab which allow to define
  when precisely release trigger samples shall be played. This is an
  extension of the original gig file format. You have the option to play
  release trigger samples only on note-off events (which is now the default
  behaviour in the latest release version of LinuxSampler), or only on
  sustain pedal up events, or both on note-off events and on sustain pedal
  up events. These are options on dimension region level, so you can
  override this behaviour even for individual cases, not just for the
  entire instrument.

  When working on gig files with more than one real-time instrument script
  per file, it was sometimes a bit tedious to keep track of which instrument
  was using which script exactly, because it involved a right-click on the
  individual instrument to get to the script slots dialog of the instrument,
  which finally listed the scripts being used. You no longer have to do that
  just to check which scripts are being used: Just hover your mouse over the
  "Scripts" column of the instruments table on the left hand side of
  gigedit; a coloured popup will appear with the list of scripts currently
  being assigned to the instrument.

  Likewise it is a very common task to remove all scripts from an
  instrument. There is now a keyboard shortcut for that: Just select the
  instrument from the instruments list and then hit Shift + Backspace.

  Gigedit provides a large number of tooltips when you are hovering your
  mouse over the huge amount of individual controls and menu items the
  application is offering in the meantime. In case you find that annoying,
  you can now disable those particular tooltips which are specifically
  intended for beginners from the main menu by unchecking "View" ->
  "Tooltips for Beginners". All other tooltips that are still useful for
  daily work with gigedit are still being shown when this option is
  unchecked.

  The previous release of gigedit introduced "Macros" for quickly
  performing frequently used sequences of editor actions, and you were able
  to assign your macros to keyboard function keys F1 .. F12. In this release
  you can now also assign macros to function keys up to F19, in case you own
  one of those keyboards with such a large amount of function keys.

Version 1.1.0 (2017-11-25)

  This release adds various improvements for the NKSP real-time instrument
  script editor of gigedit. LinuxSampler's NKSP script editor API is now
  used by gigedit to visualize all issues of scripts (errors and warnings)
  in real-time while you are typing with the script editor. The respective
  locations of script errors / warnings are automatically highlighted in
  red and yellow color respectively and when the mouse pointer is moved
  over those code locations, then the precise error / warning message is
  displayed as tooltip. And since gigedit's script editor is now tightly
  coupled with the sampler's script engine this way, all the heavy work of
  handling all aspects of the script language is now performed by the actual
  sampler's script engine and thus you can now be sure and immediately see
  whether there are any issues with your scripts with any character you are
  typing, and if yes what kind of issues exactly, and that without
  requiring to actually load the script into the sampler. To use these
  features, gigedit must be compiled and linked against liblinuxsampler.
  If gigedit is not compiled with liblinuxsampler support then the old hand
  written, error prone and very feature limited script editor implementation
  is used instead. Needless to say that compiling gigedit without
  liblinuxsampler support is discouraged. Additionally when clicking on the
  script editor's "Apply" button or using Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut, then
  the script is automatically reloaded by the sampler. So you no longer
  have to reload the respective instrument manually while you are
  developing instrument scripts. There are also visual enhancements for the
  script editor, for example the line numbers are now shown on the left,
  the font size can be altered by the user, and unused code portions (i.e.
  disabled by NKSP preprocessor statements) are automatically striked
  through.

  Another major new feature in this release are macros. A macro is a set of
  changes that should be applied to currently selected instrument. Such
  macros can be reviewed and edited, and they can be saved permanently for
  example as templates for common instrument creation tasks. Macros can be
  assigned to F keys on the keyboard so that they can be quickly triggered,
  you can transfer them over the OS clipboard and you can write comments
  to your macros so that you never forget what kind of purpose you had in
  mind for them. The macro features are based on libgig's new
  "Serialization" framework and accordingly you need at least libgig 4.1.0
  for using these macro features.

  All user settings of gigedit are now persistently saved and automatically
  restored. This also includes gigedit's windows' dimensions and positions.

  Multi-row selection has been added to all list views now, so you can now
  more efficiently apply actions to multiple samples, instruments or scripts
  simultaneously at once, instead of requesting those actions for each item
  individually.

  Also modifying key features of several dimension region zones
  simultaneously is now supported. That means you can now delete, split and
  resize multiple dimension region zones at once.

  You will also note that there are now icons displayed on the individual
  regions and dimension region zones. Those icons visualize common key
  features of regions and dimension region zones. For example if you forgot
  to assign any sample to one of them, then you will see a red dot on the
  respective region or dimension region zone. Another icon type is showing
  you whether a region or dimension region zone uses a sample loop. This way
  you can immediately see and control the key features of all regions
  and their dimension region zones, without requiring to browse through all
  of them individually.

  Various new keyboard shortcuts have been added so you can work more
  efficiently on your sounds. For example you can now use Ctrl+Left and
  Ctrl+Right to navigate through all regions of the currently selected
  instrument, and likewise you can use Alt+Left, Alt+Right, Alt+Up and
  Alt+Down to navigate through all dimension region zones of the currently
  selected region. Since there are many actions that can be either applied
  on instrument level, or on region level, or on dimension region level, as
  a general rule, for all keyboard shortcuts the Alt key is used by gigedit
  for actions on dimension region level, whereas the Ctrl key is used on
  region level and the Shift key is used for actions on instrument level.
  So as another example you may copy all parameters of the currently
  selected dimension region zone by hitting Alt+C, then you might select
  another dimension region zone, or another instrument and then use Alt+V
  to apply the parameters from the clipboard. While the parameters are
  (as macro actually) on the clipboard you can also review, edit and
  delete the individual parameters before applying them. As a final
  example for new important shortcuts you may now use Shift+Up and
  Shift+Down for switching between instruments.

  Also the Combine Tool has been improved. You can now simply select the
  (multiple) instruments you want to combine directly from the applications
  main window, i.e. by Ctrl or Shift clicking them from the instruments
  list view, and then right click to call the combine tool on that
  selection. The Combine Tool now also shows you as preview the order in
  which the selected instruments are going to be combined. This is
  especially useful when combining instruments with certain dimension
  types where the order matters for the actual resulting sound; for example
  when using the velocity dimension. Simply use drag n drop to reorder
  the previously selected instruments before combining.

  Since LinuxSampler 2.1.0 added a Giga format extension which allows to
  control the envelope generators' state machines more precisely; new
  options have been added to gigedit to control these new EG features.
  For example there are new check box which you can use to define for
  each envelope whether the individual EG stages should still be completed
  or rather aborted if a note-off was received. These new EG settings matter
  a lot for certain instrument types like percussive instruments.

  And last but not least a filter option field had been added to the
  instruments list and samples list, which allows you to find specific
  samples and instruments very quickly by typing search key words, which is
  especially very helpful in case you are working on gig files which contain
  a very large amount of samples or instruments in a single gig file.

Version 1.0.0 (2015-07-17)

  With this release we added support for new GigaStudio 4 features, for
  example there are now dialogs for editing some of the new so called
  "iMIDI rules". These can be used i.e. to trigger notes by MIDI CC and to
  define a set of legato samples. You may have heard that the GigaStudio
  software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4. Tascam officially
  discontinued this product, its intellectual property has been sold several
  times among companies and there is currently no way to buy a new copy of
  GigaStudio anymore. However the GigaStudio format is still under active
  development with gigedit and LinuxSampler. For the first time ever we added
  our own extensions to the Giga format: one of it is major new feature
  called "real-time instrument scripts", which allows to bundle small programs
  with your .gig sounds, which extend the sampler with custom behavior for
  specific sounds. You may know such kind of instrument scripts from
  commercial software samplers. Find out more about this new feature on
  http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/. Another rather minor
  extension to the Giga format is support for various other MIDI CCs which
  were never supported by GigaStudio before. So you can now use any MIDI CC
  for EG1 controller, EG2 controller and attenuation controller. Obviously all
  those extensions will not work with any GigaStudio version, they only work
  with a recent version of Gigedit and LinuxSampler. Gigedit will inform you
  whenever you are using such kind of custom Giga format extension, so that you
  are always aware in case your changes are not cross/backward compatible with
  the GigaStudio software. A load of enhancements have been added to Gigedit
  in the last six years: Until now you were only able to edit either exactly
  one dimension region or all dimension regions simultaneously. With this
  release you may now hold the Ctrl button and select a specific set of
  dimension region zones in the dimension region selector area (on the very
  bottom of the Gigedit window) with your mouse. All synthesis parameters you
  then change, will all be applied to that precise set of dimension region
  zones. Also managing dimensions have been improved: previously to change the
  amount of zones of a dimension you had to delete and recreate the dimension.
  Which was not just inconvenient, but you also had to redefine your synthesis
  parameters from scratch. Now you can just open the dimension manager dialog
  and increase or decrease the amount of zones of a dimension with few clicks.
  Same applies to the dimension type: you may now simply open the dimension
  manager dialog and alter the type of a dimension with few clicks.
  When working on complex Giga sounds you certainly noticed that one could
  easily get confused about which samples are exactly used by which instrument
  or even whether a sample is actually used at all by any instrument or just
  left orphaned and wasting disk space. This was also due to the fact that the
  Giga format does not require unique names for samples. We have worked on
  resolving this usability issue. In the sample list view you can now read the
  amount of times a sample is referenced by instruments of your .gig file. If a
  sample is not used at all, then it will be shown in striking red color in
  the sample list view. You may also right click on a sample and select
  "Show references...", a new window appears on your screen which will show you
  where exactly that particular sample is used by, that is which by which
  instruments and by which regions of those instruments. Also the other way
  around has been addressed: when you now edit the synthesis parameters of a
  particular dimension region, you may now click on the new "<- Select Sample"
  button and Gigedit automatically selects and displays the respective sample
  in the samples list view, which you may then might rename to some more
  appropriate sample name, or you might check by which other instrument(s) that
  sample is used by, etc. You may now also remove the current sample reference
  from individual dimension regions (assigning a so called "NULL" sample) by
  clicking on the new "X" button next the sample reference field on the
  "Sample" tab of a dimension region; this allows you to define "silent cases",
  that is a case where no sample should be played at all, for example this is
  often used for very low velocity ranges of i.e. between 0 and 6. If you are
  working on .gig files with a large amount of Instruments, then you might also
  be glad to know that you can finally also re-order the instruments of a file
  by simply dragging the instruments around in the instruments list view.
  Another handy new feature for sound designers is the new "Combine" tool,
  which you can reach from the main menu. It allows you to select two ore more
  instruments (by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting with mouse click)
  from your currently open Giga file and combine those selected instruments to
  a new instrument. This way you may for example create stunning layered
  sounds, or you may create velocity splits, crossfade sounds by MIDI
  controller and much more, all with just a few clicks. This may sound like a
  trivial task, but if you have worked on this before, you certainly noticed
  that this was often a very time consuming and error prone task before,
  especially with complex individual sounds which had custom region ranges,
  custom velocity splits and much more exotic stuff to take care of. The
  combine tool handles all such cases for you automatically.
  Last but not least, the interaction of Gigedit with LinuxSampler (in so
  called "live mode") had been improved: When you click on the "Edit" button of
  a channel strip in QSampler or Fantasia, Gigedit will be launched with the
  respective instrument automatically being selected. Vice versa you may now
  also just select another instrument with Gigedit's instrument list view and
  LinuxSampler will automatically load and play that instrument on the
  respective sampler part for you. So no more need to switch between the
  Gigedit window and QSampler/Fantasia window all the time while working on
  your sounds.

Version 0.2.0 (2009-07-31)

  When gigedit is running as a plugin in LinuxSampler the gigedit
  keyboard may now be used to trigger notes. The settings in the file
  properties window are now editable. A new function for replacing all
  samples is added. Otherwise this is mostly a bug fix release, and
  upgrading gigedit and libgig is strongly recommended, as previous
  versions had bugs that may cause edited gig files to be corrupted.

Version 0.1.1 (2007-12-06)

  Parameter edits can now be applied to multiple regions and dimension
  regions simultaneously - three checkboxes were added that select if
  changes apply to all regions and/or all dimension regions.

Version 0.1.0 (2007-10-15)

  Many fixes have been made to make sure that the gig files created by
  gigedit are working properly in LinuxSampler and GigaStudio. Gigedit
  can now be run as a LinuxSampler plugin, allowing live editing of
  loaded instruments. Sample loop parameters and instrument global
  properties can now be edited. 24 bit samples can be imported. A
  quick-start document has been added. Lots of other minor fixes and
  improvements have been done.

Version 0.0.3 (2007-03-24)

  First version of gigedit. The program is renamed from gigview to
  gigedit as it is now an editor, not just a viewer. Basic support for
  both editing existing gig files and creating new ones from scratch
  is provided.

Version 0.0.2 (2006-11-05)

  Quick fix for a thread initialization problem.

Version 0.0.1 (2006-11-05)

  First version of gigview.