Fractal Tune Smithy

In a way, this is a bit of a public plea to Robert...

I went to the FTS site (or one of them, it is hard to know) because I
hadn't played with it in a long time. I knew he had at least one newer
version out. And, unfortunately, the site is plagued with the same
issue he has always had:

Pages and pages of text and explanation, all over the place, without
cohesive guidance on what the program does, how to do it, etc.

Robert, you know I love you. I believe FTS is a strong program with a
lot to offer. But it is virtually *impossible* to ascertain how to use
the program, and what it's various functions and features are. You
desperately need an editor to go through and rewrite all the
description of the program. Maybe a very short page that summarizes
the main features, with pages that branch off for each feature, and a
clear separation between descriptions of the features and how to use them.

Right now, it is screenfulls of text and images that wander wildly. I
think when I looked I almost gave up. Well, actually, I did give up.

Just like Scala, I think FTS can have a big place helping people get
on with microtonal investigations, at least using their computer. This
is another in my series, over the years, of pleas to our dear Robert
the Inventor to step away from the code and work on how best to
present his 'product' to the willing masses.

And now my heartfelt semi-rant is over. <3

Indeed. Fractal Tune Smithy was one of the first programs that I used.
There were just too many disparate features for me to figure out how
to access everything, though.

> Indeed. Fractal Tune Smithy was one of the first programs that I used.
> There were just too many disparate features for me to figure out how
> to access everything, though.

Well, it's often the case that powerful programs have a lot of knobs and
require a bit of learning... I did put together a web page that I thought
would help people get started with using FTS for microtonal work. I've
pointed to it before, here:

http://rm-and-jo.laughingsquid.org/FTS-HowTo/MicroOrchestra.html

If you try all that stuff with the FTS setup and can't get it to work, I'd
be interested in hearing your story so I can improve my "tutorial"...

[It's also well known by this time that the next version of GPO will have
supposedly microtonal support (Scala files).]

Rick

Hi Everyone,

Just to say I'm on the case right now - by synchronicity, encouraged by a very keen FTS user who feels exactly the same way that the help is the main thing that lets the program down, and wants to improve the help.

Thanks for your comments. I'm exploring various ideas. At the moment I'm exploring the idea of a wiki, and have made one at robertinventor.com

Assuming it goes ahead, it should be ready in a week or two. AT the moment I'm installing it, checking it out, adding packages, importing the old FTS help and generally getting it ready to go live. Once it is ready, if anyone wants to help with it then they will be very welcome.

So for instance, Rick, perhaps I could add your help about microtuning the orchestra to the wiki? I found a tool to auto convert web pages to wiki markup so porting web pages into the wiki goes very quickly.

There is so much to document, and though I've got better at it, organising it well may not be my Forte. If I can make it more of a community thing then it could go much more quickly.

If anyone wants to help right away let me know off-list. There's not so much to do right now (unless there is anyone here with experience as a sysop for MediaWikis who can help with the techy issues of installing packages and extensions, configuring the php and so on), but in a few days time, or maybe a week or two depending how it goes, there may be loads to do, once I've got a fair amount of the old help enough up to date for others to help reorganising it etc, and once I've sorted out some of the ground rules such as how to refer to the help for a particular window for more detailed help about a particular control (I plan to auto - import all the tool tip help from FTS into the wiki soon).

I've not yet finally decided on the wiki - the main thing about it is how to integrate it with the program as there would be far too much material in an on-line wiki to ever package it all in the installer. If I do go for it, probably the way to do it is to include just the pages most useful to a newbie in the installer, and provide the wiki for off-line browsing as a very large download or CD. But this is something under discussion right now. I'll know better in the near future.

Anyway thanks for the discussion. Also sorry I've been so quiet recently. There has been so much programming to do that I've not done much composing if any, and the programming stuff is rather techy most of it and not really the sort of thing for this forum, also not had much time for participating in discussions with everything else I've been doing. Just a phase of my life I reckon. Things go in waves, maybe I'll be back here again some time posting more regularly. I dip in from time to time to read a few of the posts.

Best to reply to me personally if you want to get in touch with me, and you want a quick reply.

Thanks,

Robert

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Robert --

Glad to see you'll be doing some work on FTS help. Sounds like many
potential users would like that...

> So for instance, Rick, perhaps I could add your help about microtuning
> the orchestra to the wiki? I found a tool to auto convert web pages
> to wiki markup so porting web pages into the wiki goes very quickly.

By all means, please go ahead.

I probably also need to do some updating of that to work with GPO "2", the
Kontakt2 player, which they have now integrated...

Rick