EigenD only has room for 10 user setups and I'm running out of them. A few months ago there was a mention of these being reworked with also the ability to rename them. It this going to be done soon?
written by: barnone
[edit] - removed previous post -EigenD only has room for 10 user setups and I'm running out of them. A few months ago there was a mention of these being reworked with also the ability to rename them. It this going to be done soon?
If you have some user setups that are complete and don't need resaving, just rename them.
Go to ~/Library/Eigenlabs/[release]/setups
If you rename them as "Custom 1", "Custom 2", "Custom 3" etc, all of the 'custom' setups will appear in a separate sub-menu (in the same way that the Factory/User setups do).
While that works, we were explicitly told to now rename user setups since that could create problems in later versions.
Hi Geert
It is possible to save and recall unlimited numbers of setups in Belcanto, using the commander. I'll ask Sam to post here and show you how.
John
Thanks a lot John
& thanks Geert for saving me from losing a load of setups (I was backing them up in this way). I suppose it makes sense that they might screw up future upgrades, as the setup structure will probably change considerably throughout the versions, and the upgrader probably won't be looking for anything other than the User setups.
The main thing to remember about setups is that to be fully useful in the EigenD world they need to have Belcanto names, and setups that do not are not useful in a number of important ways. Belcanto does not have text as a concept (being musically based) but instead allows setups to be saved and loaded using any tune in the diatonic scale. This can be described by numbers (intervals) and other words in Belcanto. the word 'user' is such a word and this is why 'user 1' is a predefined setup. But you can add any setup you like. Pick a tune in the major scale and you can save a setup called that.
Jim is introducing text tags that will be settable to go with your Belcanto names in the GUI (so you'll be able to call them up either way), as well as the ability to add any number of setups without having to grapple directly with Belcanto, by automatically giving them a usable Belcanto name. I think he hopes to get this into unstable before it goes into testing, so with luck it won't be too long.
And Geert is right, setups that don't have correct Belcanto names are not guaranteed to survive upgrades, so it's best avoided if you can.
John
Hi all,
In order to save a setup using Belcanto in the Commander (in the unstable releases) but still ensure that it will get upgraded by subsequent releases, you need to make sure that you setup name is of the format "user 'n'" where 'n' is a number or a sequence of numbers. This is the best way to guarantee that there is Belcanto support for your new setup name (as 'user 1' is a belcanto noun phrase) and that it will therefore get upgraded.
The syntax for saving setups in the Commander is as follows:
---
eigend hey user n save
---
If you have any questions please do let me know.
Sam
Eigenlabs Software Department
Hi Sam,
How do we save more than 10 user setups?
Would this work?
eigend hey user 12 save
Yes that would be fine - you can replace the 'n' in the above post with any number.
Sam
Cool, thanks.
Hi again Sam,
Is there any way of using other names at all? Assigning numbers is a very ineffective way to find your setups later. It a bit ridiculous to have to keep track of each setup's purpose in an individual text file.
Thanks,
Geert
Hi Geert
You can, using the commander (or a keygroup attached to the interpreter), name and save or recall setups using any sequence of notes,1-8. I use memorable tunes and find this a very intuitive way to remember setups, one that does not require a screen to recall.
Jim is adding the ability to tag setups with a text name as well in the GUI, alongside an automatically incremented user setup number if you want. This will probably go into unstable in the next week or so. I have seen it running on his development machine already. I think this will give you the file like behaviour you want without removing the flexibility of recalling setups away from the computer.
John
Hi John,
Thanks, I'll try that out this weekend. Is there currently already a possibility to drive the commander from the Eigenharp itself instead of having to go to the keyboard to type in text? I'd like to slowly learn the Belcanto language from the Eigenharp itself, they way it was intended to be used.
Take care,
Geert
We deliberately didn't put that into any factory setups to start with. It's quite hard to learn, though amazingly cool once picked up. Dave is much faster playing the notes than typing. I'll ask Sam to make some setups with a language keygroup in next week, and we'll add one into the factory setups now I think. You play the words by accenting the last note.
John
Many thanks John, I really want to learn how to use Belcanto without ever having to go over to the keyboard. I'm already typing enough for my day job, don't want to touch the keyboard even more when I'm playing music :-)
So I tried this out and it works fine, one gotcha though, you can't use spaces in the names after the 'eigend hey user' command since then it starts to create sub-menus. I'm using underscores for now, but it would be nice to be able to have this show up as regular file names.
Hi Geert
All text filenames that aren't in the Belcanto dictionary will get you in trouble later, they aren't supported in upgrade scripts at all. The submenu creation with spaces is a feature to aid those who have lots of setups, it really helps when you start to have to organise your songs.
If you want to save and load setups consistently they need to be stored in Belcanto names. If you want to move beyond 'user X' (where X is a number) you can use any word in the lexicon, or make your own up as a tune using the numbers 1-8. You will gain the ability to add text tags to them (and create them automatically) in the GUI shortly. In the meantime I'd be careful about what names you use - it's actually a bug if you are able to use text words (or underscores) that aren't in the lexicon and such setups might seriously not be there after upgrades.
I know this might seem a bit mad right now, but there are very good reasons for it. The tagging feature being introduced shortly will give you the text functionality that you want without breaking things. It is something we've wanted since we first released EigenD, but it has taken a while to get to.
John
Ok, thanks John, I'm just curious why spaces have been chosen to create the submenus and not simply a directory structure. What do you mean by 'a word in the lexicon'? The commands that are listed in the Commander?
Anyway, the warning about not being able to upgrade seems moot atm since upgrades from setups in unstable releases isn't supported anyway. So nothing I save through the Commander will actually be upgraded. It's a good point to make though for when the current unstable branch is promoted.
Really looking forward to a tagging feature since I can't find which setup belongs to what song anymore without having to look at a list of names to numbers mappings.
Take care,
John
Hi Geert
You have to remember that EigenD is fundamentally not a GUI driven program. We used to run it as toolbar process with no window at all. All interaction was via Belcanto, played as notes on the instrument. This sounds pretty hardcore, but is actually quite easy to get to grips with. The current Commander was solely a visual feedback as you played notes (the ability to type into it is very new). We all got pretty comfortable with this - it feels nicely musical and means that screens become a really secondary issue on stage. It does however require some commitment to learn, as we discovered not that long before we launched. Pretty much all initial feedback was along the lines of 'where the **** is the GUI?'.
In a rapid response to this we produced the current browser, to allow various things to be selected. It's not pretty, but Al wrote it in under three weeks to serve a purpose. We have spent the last few months figuring out how to make a proper GUI play nicely in a linguistically driven system designed to be run without screens. Things have been made complicated by my (ocasionally slightly rabid, it must be admitted) insistence that we not break the language - it is my firm belief that seriously accomplished players in years to come will gravitate towards this way of interacting with the system - you can do realy cool stuff right in the middle of a performance, all while staring into your audiences eyes. This isn't really possible with a screen and mouse.
However, as ever, the user community have a good point. There are many things for which a GUI is great. Jim figured out a neat way to make all this possible a while back, and that's what we have been working towards ever since. It's looking pretty good,
When you ask why we use spaces to delineate the hierarchy, you're asking the wrong question really. The setup names are just Belcanto phrases. Belcanto phrases are made up of a sequence of Belcanto words (the words you see in the Commander's dictionary), but our system is also dynamic and you can invent your own word for certain purposes. This is what you see when you see a setup name, a series of words in Belcanto. The text representation is just a translation into English of these words, if such a translation exists. The reason that you see a hierarchy formed from the words is that it makes using the GUI easier - the hierarchy is only really there in the GUI, it doesn't exist in the Setup Manager (an Agent in the system that looks after this stuff for you) - it was just a really convenient way to show setups that allowed players to organise them by being a little careful about how they named them. It allowed us to name setups stuff like 'Factory 1' and have them display nicely. Think of the spaces as '/''s if you like.
Also, remember that you can make words up for your setups. They won't appear as English tranlations if there isn't one, you'll just see something like 11356, to show the note sequence. In the new setup manager interface you can add text tags to any Belcanto named setup, and should you choose you can just ignore the Belcanto names completely. There will always be an underlying Belcanto name though, for everything that you save, even if you haven't made one up - it automatically generates one for you. The great thing about this is that you can then always recall a setup, either directly from the instrument while standing on stage using Belcanto, if you've learned a little of that ('11356 load') or using a talker you've predefined (which will be easy to do in the new Workbench world). Hopefully this gives us the best of all worlds, the power of the Belcanto interface for those that want it, with the ease and obviousness of a GUI style load/save for those who don't. And the two will inter-operate nicely, so you can mix and match.
Sorry, that was a long explanation of a simple thing. As Pauli once said, 'I've no time to be brief!'
John
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