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New idea: disable automation regardless of active()

#1

I was testing with some exported effects today and thought that a way to disable a widget from appearing as “automate-able” to a DAW would be useful in a few cases:

  • Sometimes using checkboxes as an “LED” of sorts in an instrument. The widget is active(0) and only acts as an indicator, but appears automate-able.
  • If a widget is active(1) but causes a re-init, disabling automation might be considered a “safety” feature to prevent people from not understanding why the effect/instrument misbehaves when they automate certain changes.

I assume/understand if implemented, this would have to be set at “widget init”, that they couldn’t be changed dynamically… I don’t think DAWs like it when the list of automate-able values changes :wink:

#2

This would involve some serious rewiring of Cabbage. And you would have to reinstantiate the plugin each time you made a change. Ouch.

You can just use an image as an LED. They are not auromatable.

#3

I wasn’t sure what would be involved, and if it’s too much that’s fine… just thought I’d suggest it as I’m wading through WAY too many automation channels at the moment. Some of which are definitely my own fault.

The idea tho is it’s not meant to be used as something that gets changed in identchannel… you set it once when you create a widget and that’s it. Once it’s marked non-automate-able, it’s stuck that way for the instance. And changing what elements are available to automate makes it appear almost like an entire new plugin to a daw… so that is definitely not my intended use. I think of it more as a way of “hiding” elements that you may want visible and/or interact-able but not automate-able.

I can’t remember why I was having better luck with a checkbox in some cases. I think maybe because I was originally setting it with simple 0|1 values to the main channel as a shortcut rather than having to format an identchannel statement, or maybe because I was flipping it too quickly as a clip light? I can definitely skim some stuff down to images (I’ve already been doing some of that) but I don’t know, I feel like even ignoring those examples this would still be pretty useful.

For a better example (or maybe not, I dunno)… disabling automation on buttons that affect/interact only with the instrument’s gui, for instance making a window popup or close, or changing which element of a few similar ones is visible.

#4

Yeah, it’s not a bad idea. I understand that daws can suffer from serious parameter bulge. It’s annoying when there are only really a handful of meaningful parameters at time. I’ll take a look and see what I can do.

1 Like
Time to talk abut multichannel options
#5

This feature got added at some point recently, but I don’t remember where/when else it was discussed… so digging up this dinosaur :wink:

Should this get mentioned in the docs, or does that wait for the feature to move from beta into official?

#6

It’s already in the docs. I must have snug it in there at some point :laughing:

#7

Oops! I’d swear my ctrl-f had disagreed before I’d posted… but now I don’t recall which widget’s page I’d checked :thinking: :face_with_hand_over_mouth: