There are so many problems with the Zynthian UI but I think this one (from the user guide) is huge:
Like the classic zynthian UI, there are 3 types of push actions that can be performed, depending on how long you hold down the button (or knob!):
short-push: Less than 0.3 seconds
bold-push: Between 0.3 and 2 seconds
long-push: More than 2 seconds (until the long-action is triggered!)
The result of this very, very bad design choice is that things you try when navigating the device appear to work only sometimes because when you tried it before, you got the timing of the short, medium or long presses exactly right (or wrong) but this time, it’s different because you didn’t quite press the exact number of milliseconds expected. Even having long presses at all is somewhat questionable but three levels of presses!?
This is awful in the extreme on a conceptual level and was obviously, unarguably so from the start. How the hell did anyone ever think having three levels of presses was anywhere even close to a good idea?
But OK, let’s assume we’re stuck with it because you’ve got an elite ninja clan of users who have mastered the intricacies of timing their medium presses in the Goldilocks zone of a “bold press” exactly right. It can’t be eliminated because we have to make sure the ninjas never run out of throwing stars or whatever.
But couldn’t there at least be an on-screen indicator, like in the corner, showing which press action/effect you’ll be getting? Like with a little bar to fill up to show when you’re going to the next level of it.
The short/bold/long press interface came from the earlier V1 and V2 designs that only had 4 rotary press controllers and a much, much smaller screen and an underdeveloped touch interface. I still have one of these form-factors.
Here is a somewhat related idea, which is certainly not the only way to approach things but it is just offered as one possible improvement to the design language:
Right now, every menu in the Zynthian UI has a grey background with white text. But different menus will result in different actions happening from the same button or knob inputs. My suggestion is that the background color of the menu should change depending on what the context is that will result in different button or knob press results. That way you’d know that when the background is red, button A will cause action B, but when the background is blue, button A will cause action C and it could aid memorization?
I know it’s generally bad for accessibility to convey information by color because some people are color-blind, but most people aren’t so it’s OK to convey non-essential information by color. Of course, high contrast with the text would need to be maintained for all background colors.
And like I said, this isn’t the only way: it’s just one idea.
Even then, more menu diving would have been preferable to this IMO. I would have gone with no bold presses even on the v1 and had long presses used for opening radial menus.
This is something I have wondered about: If the software needs to maintain backwards compatibility with these older designs, then for essential functions these older devices need to access, any newer physical controls might as well not exist. Does this mean that the real control scheme is just the four rotary press encoders?
But seriously @BenMcLean, try and be more considerate and nuanced, in the otherwise legitimate expression of your Zynthian-related grumbles.
There are people here working hard almost 24/7, on optimising an ingeniously affordable embedded system for music production, with a very smart custom OS + bespoke hardware kit.
The three-level “modular” press dates back from the times when Zynthian was a much smaller and essential black box, controlled by just four cleverly streamlined multi-function encoders. The current, larger and more developed enclosure with colour keyboard offers multiple paths to achieve the same functions, and do not overlook the usage of CUIA keybinding with an external USB keypad, if you aim at eschewing multi-presses (almost) completely!
We also need to keep in mind that devs have matured, and others have come and gone since 2015. The decisions for the small number of people who were using the project around then may have been different if they’d been able to forsee the popularity and hardware changes. Feature requests and code contributions are always considered on GitHub - zynthian/zynthian-issue-tracking: Centralized Issue Tracking for Zynthian Project
The use of three phases of press has been a little contentious over the years but remains a feature that generally improves workflow. You may not like it but bear with me…
The two thresholds (bold, long) can be configured so each user may customise their own experience.
Most workflow is accomplished with short press. This is the preference for accessing and triggering functions.
Bold press is generally used for context type menu, similar to right click on a desktop or press and hold on a tablet or phone.
Long press is mostly used for global functions that are seldom used and we try to make them fairly blunt, e.g. ALL NOTES OFF (panic!).
With just 4 encoders and switches (before the 4 additional switches on the V4) it was a good way to give rapid access to the miriad of UI elements. The V5 added a dedicated 20 button keypad which reduced the need for many of these functions and the resulting UI design for the V5 depends far less on bold and long press.
You could set bold and long to very long periods in webconf and see how you get on just using the ALT button (which provides some similar functions to bold press). Or just the long press to reduce the risk of inadvertently triggering it.
You can also reconfigure every button and encoder action in webconf hardware menu to better suit your own workflow. Have fun in there…
As mentioned above, there are just a small quantity of people working pretty hard on the software which is free and open. None of these people are paid for their work and we try to have a kind and warm forum where their efforts, and those of everyone contributing in any way (including posting here and in the issue tracker) are appreciated. I trust you will join us in that attitude of love and understanding. It is seldom (never?) conducive to encouraging engagement of the developers, to be negative about the hundreds (probably thousands) of hours of work they have contributed and the seemingly endless discussions that have occured to arrive at the current state. Nothing is ever perfect. We aspire towards greatness and achieve something that is usually better than, awful.
Even then, three levels of presses was a very bad design choice. I’m comparing this to the Tomagachi and GigaPets devices from the 1990s which only had four buttons, not even encoders and yet despite some of the later ones eventually getting fairly elaborate software functions, they never used long presses for normal user operations because that was too confusing, let alone three levels of presses. I don’t remember ever having three levels of presses on a Yamaha or Roland keyboard either. I can kind of see how two levels of presses could make sense design-wise to try to get more functions out of fewer physical controls, but three is just madness.
(Note some of the LCD handhelds from the 90s did use long presses for doing factory resets but not for normal user operations)
No my friend! Our old implementation of long press was madness, where you had to guess and let go of the button before the long press occured. We fixed that so that the long press activates without release. This actually works quite well and, judging from the quantity of complaints, is acceptable to most users. (You find yourself in a very small minority.)
I have used many devices that use long press. It is not an absurd idea.
Your idea of indicating the press phase has been suggested in the past and is a good one. Maybe a feature request is in order. I had a quick look at the code (and was reminded of the last time I did the same) and it isn’t trivial but maybe something we could investigate. We would want to consider all the input and display methods, e.g. V5 buttons and LEDs, V4 encoders and screen, touch-only screen, VNC mouse and keybinded, etc.
The short/bold/long press paradigm seemed like a bad idea to me at first but personally I completely adapted to it in a week or two.
But I do think it would be good to have an option available to choose between bold press or double-press (if set to double-press, the setting that’s currently used for the length of a bold press could instead set the timing for a double press). This would preserve the workflow we currently have but let people who don’t like bold pressing to have an alternative that’s a lot more familiar (from using a mouse where single/double/long clicking has been standard for decades obviously, but also single press/double press/hold is VERY common in guitar pedals and MIDI footswitches).
EDIT: even though I’m used to bold-press now, if I had the option I’d switch it to double-press just because my live rig also includes an Octatrack (single/double press), a Morningstar MC-6 footswitch (single/double/long press) and a Vox/Korg Delaylab pedal (single/double/long press) so it would make the Zynthian consistent with everything else.
EDIT 2: Also, swapping bold press for double press would make it possible to set the long press to a much shorter time without interfering with bold press timing. Shorter long presses would be handy during performance and in general more options for personalizing the response of controls that get used for musical performance is always a good thing.
@LagoonCity that sounds like a feature request It may be challenging to implement and have some unexpected behaviour. We currently trigger actions on short release that users may expect to occur on time. To implement double press we need to wait some time after the first release before triggering the short action which may lead to a feeling of lag in operation of short press.
That’s why it’s so vital to have visual feedback! The people who click once should at least see something on screen to show that their click registered even if they won’t get their new menu or whatever other change they want right away. It might even be a good idea to partially darken the rest of the screen during that interval so the visual feedback shows up even more.
I remember thinking double clicking was a little counter-intuitive when I first used Windows 3.1 and I’ve met a few elderly people who had real problems with it but it is at least a conceptually different action from holding, where holding for a medium vs long length of time appears to be using the same action for different things in a way that definitely feels inconsistent, especially to new users.
I have had many problems with the self-built Zynthian… usually due to my computer ignorance… but the buttons are something that has never created problems for me… maybe because I am a musician and a telegrapher and especially for the second passion, the duration of the pressure becomes quite precise…
This is a difficult button…
I actually had considered comparing the three press lengths concept to telegraphy. This design might possibly have worked for the 19th century when there was a large population of highly skilled telegraph operators but almost everyone in the present day is not a telegraph operator.
True… even ON AIR 99% of “telegraphers” use the PC to transmit… But the charm remains… but I’m an old man who can’t even stand the sequencer… or keyboards with 10 keys… so take my words as a revolt against a “musical progress” that I don’t like…
Not quite, because typical instrument playing has a musical rhythm to adhere to. This has no such natural reference point for the timing since there’s also neither visual nor auditory feedback for the operation. It’s more like a 19th-20th century typewriter where typing too fast would cause the machine to jam so you had to slowly build up a natural sense of exactly how fast you could type without jamming which would differ between different machines based not only on model but also on condition.
It seems to me that this is a bit exaggerated… There is a fairly wide tolerance in these three types of pressure… but I am sure that soon the Zynthian will work with the power of thought given the developments it has had since I discovered it online… the problem will be when the instruments will also be played with the thought… without a minimum of study and effort to learn, everything loses its charm…
It may be challenging to implement and have some unexpected behaviour. We currently trigger actions on short release that users may expect to occur on time. To implement double press we need to wait some time after the first release before triggering the short action which may lead to a feeling of lag in operation of short press.