v5 - Please deprecate broken features that are not being maintained

[innuendo]

Preface: This is kinda feature request, however as IMHO this does not fit into Feature Requests section, there will be no voting and users who support this suggestion (or otherwise) are encouraged to say so in comments. This is not a rant nor a call for ranting. The intention is to talk honestly about a somewhat sensitive issue and to suggest a pragmatic solution.

Situation:
Reaper is a very feature-rich piece of software. While specific parts of Reaper get quite much attention from both users and devs and are either robust enough for production or being worked on, there are yet other features that apparently don't get this attention nor maintenance nor bug fixes. My understanding is that these features do not fit into devs' philosophy of working on code that they would personally use themselves. I can speculate that they took interest in those features some time ago but then moved on to something else and never looked back.

Problem:
While Reaper is IMHO a great piece of software, especially for the money, users expect every advertised feature to actually work and be production-ready, while in fact this is not the case. This makes them waste time on trying to utilize features that in fact have been abandoned and discover they are not production-ready - the hard way. Obviously the ultimate result is frustrated users, feature requests and bug reports that are not going to be looked at ever soon. Developers, on the other side, have to waste their time skipping those same FRs and bug reports they are not interested in working on and in some cases rants.

Suggested solution:
Evaluation of existing features and deprecation of broken ones that are not going to be fixed soon.

I can contribute 1 specific broken and abandoned feature here: Reamote. From what I read on the forum, other users are experiencing similar issues with different features, and they are encouraged to suggest them here.

[ivansc]

Assuming you are right in your assumption, yes - I would agree. I weed out my unused stuff very regularly as a part of good housekeeping practice and IF there is redundant stuff sort of left behind but no longer working right, it really SHOULD be part of the bug fixing to either remove it or at the very least let us know what is sort of sitting there getting in the way to no purpose.

Having said that, I rather suspect this is akin to telling a songwriter to empty out that desk drawer and throw away all his half-formed ideas...

[Win Conway]

I suspect you will find zero interest in this, while you may see something as abandoned, the developers will say "i will get to it evenrually" that is pretty much always their reply to these suggestions and that is not going to change

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by ivansc

Assuming you are right in your assumption, yes - I would agree.

Well, I can say that for instance Reamote, ReaInsert and Reastream are far from being bug-free, to a varying degree of un/usability. Reamote is basically unusable for serious work. I know because I tried really hard to utilize it in my work and ultimately I failed, as it is simply too buggy. I also tried to work around this with ReaInsert (don't ask how), and it didn't work as it should either. I don't remember exactly what was wrong with it, but it definitely didn't work as it should. Reastream had a terrible lag.

I ended up using Jack for Windows, which also has its share of bugs, but at least it is well-documented, it is in active development and, most importantly, you can make it work if you try hard enough. I filed a bug to their tracker and they responded rather quickly by requesting additional information. This bug may have been fixed by now, I'm not really sure as I'm taking a timeout of mixing right now. By contrast, I filed 2 bugs regarding Reamote, and they are still there - "unconfirmed" - 7 months later. What's the moral of this story?

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by gpunk_w

I suspect you will find zero interest in this, while you may see something as abandoned, the developers will say "i will get to it evenrually" that is pretty much always their reply to these suggestions and that is not going to change

Too bad if that's the case. I understand the circumstances, their resources are limited and they can't do everything they would like to. However I think that advertising features that are in fact unmaintained and not production-ready is a no-no for a company that talks about "An honest business model that aims to provide the best possible user experience". In this case the best possible user experience requires deprecating unsupported, unmaintained and abandoned features. IMHO.

[PitchSlap]

A much better idea in my opinion would be to list certain features as not officially supported (i.e PiP) so people know what is likely buggy, and can choose to use it at their own risk, or not.

Also I think you might be assuming that everyone is getting the same problems or using certain functionality in the same way.

It's unfortunate particular features don't work as expected for your "serious work", but what about everyone one else that may be using the functionality in other capacities?

To use your example, I've used ReaMote to slave an old computer that supports my UAD-1 so the plugins will come up on a system that doesn't even have PCI slots. This allows me to hear the project as I left it, and replace the UAD plugins with native equivalents and re-save.

Get rid of this feature and what do I do? Meanwhile if you don't want to ever see or use it anymore it's a simple as unticking a box in the installer.

I'm pretty sure most would like bugs fixed rather than removing features, but I doubt it's going to happen anyway since removing features could break existing projects and wisely that's something Cockos always tries to prevent...

[Win Conway]

Originally Posted by innuendo

Too bad if that's the case. I understand the circumstances, their resources are limited and they can't do everything they would like to. However I think that advertising features that are in fact unmaintained and not production-ready is a no-no for a company that talks about "An honest business model that aims to provide the best possible user experience". In this case the best possible user experience requires deprecating unsupported, unmaintained and abandoned features. IMHO.

At the end of the day, all that honest business hype is just that, hype, like you say, some advertised features do not work as they should, Cockos don't care, deal with it, nothing is going to change haha

[gofer]

I use ReaStream + ReaInsert to play my old Emagic instruments. It works good enough for me. Although there are kinks I'd like to be fixed, I'd be seriously bummed if Cockos took them out.

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by PitchSlap

A much better idea in my opinion would be to list certain features as not officially supported (i.e PiP) so people know what is likely buggy, and can choose to use it at their own risk, or not.

I'm all for it! That's what I meant. Not necessarily "removing" features, but rather "moving" them to a different and labeled drawer. Deprecate.

Also I think you might be assuming that everyone is getting the same problems or using certain functionality in the same way.

It's unfortunate particular features don't work as expected for your "serious work", but what about everyone one else that may be using the functionality in other capacities?

I'm glad to hear you found a good use to ReaMote. In my case, it produced a varying lag on loops, every pass got a differen and incrementally growing lag. I believe that's a common case rather than my specific one, as there is nothing about my system that varies in its lag, as shown for instance by fxteleport (it had other bugs though) and by jack for windows. And more importantly, Reamote is essentialy outsourcing realtime digital processing, so it should (and it definitrly attempts to) automatically compensate for any lag and keep your project in sync. Since it can not do this in its current state, and since 7-months-old related bugs are still "unconfirmed", I think it is abandoned and susequently advertising it as production-ready is wrong.

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by gofer

I use ReaStream + ReaInsert to play my old Emagic instruments. It works good enough for me. Although there are kinks I'd like to be fixed, I'd be seriously bummed if Cockos took them out.

Deprecate does not necessarily mean "take out", in fact what I meant was "move to a different drawer and cleary label it as unmaintained so users don't come to expect it to be fully-functional, don't waste their time trying to use it for production, don't waste their time again by reporting bugs, and don't come to be frustrated while gradually understanding they had been misled.

[gofer]

Last maintenance of ReaInsert was in v4.611 and last maintenance of ReaStream/ReaMote in v4.59. Not the fixes some were hoping for, apparently, but still it seems inappropriate to call them unmaintained.

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by gofer

Last maintenance of ReaInsert was in v4.611 and last maintenance of ReaStream/ReaMote in v4.59. Not the fixes some were hoping for, apparently, but still it seems inappropriate to call them unmaintained.

Well, perhaps you are right. Reamote is maintained. Just buggy. And no one is interested to look into reported bugs 7 months after they had been filed. What then?

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by gpunk_w

At the end of the day, all that honest business hype is just that, hype, like you say, some advertised features do not work as they should, Cockos don't care, deal with it, nothing is going to change haha

Maybe you know something I don't however I don't have any good reason to think that Cockos don't care. I too share the sentiment that they are not as responsive to some user needs and expectations. However there is more than one explanation to their lack of responsiveness and I don't tend to attribute it to "internal" reasons such as lack of "care" or anything evil. This kind of automatic attribution is called "Fundamental attribution error" in psychology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundame...ribution_error

If speculate about their motives, I'd rather say the developers are computer and music geeks, and brilliant geeks, as they manage to produce overall a very good product with a very limited number of manhours available. They are perhaps a little less experienced at scaling their business as it grows, and by now the project has grown to exceed their capacity to maintain it. Possible ways to deal with it are to scale up the workforce, or alternatively to scale down the project. As both of these two choices are difficult, they are reluctant to go either route and some parts of the project stagnate, while others are being developed and maintained. I think they will eventually come up with a proper solution, and I believe reminding them of the problem does make slow and incremental change, even that they don't immediately reply.

[innuendo]

BTW some people here are surprised about incrementing version number without introducing "dramatic" changes. I find it actually logical in the light of previous discussion. This might provide some profit margin that could make it possible to hire new devs. At least I hope this is the plan, as alternative to actually scaling down the project. Obviously this is pure speculation on my side and I hope I don't get banned for it Anyway if my flawed opinion is of interest to anyone, I think there is a need of substantial bug fixes and UI polishing introduced with this release, something that would make people with expired licenses actually want to upgrade... I mean the audio people who are the majority.

[Lawrence]

One thing... (piehole open )...

There is clearly a logical conflict with Reaper, the way some users view it. Let me explain...

- On the one hand it's celebrated to have a small and reasonably responsive team. You know, we all hate the greedy corporate culture and all that other stuff. We're rebels after all, we frown on all that corporate stuff and rail against it.

- On the other hand some still - expect - Cockos to deliver as if they were the big corporate culture, and maybe flog them when they don't.

We really can't have it both ways. There are benefits to a small independent development team but only the delusional would think those benefits don't also come with some subjective drawbacks, the ying to the yang, and that there is only rainbows and sunshine when being a rebel and there is no potential practical downside to that.

I see the same thing with my other DAW, where it was celebrated that a smallish team could probably concentrate more on the product or users and less on the corporate culture or corporate processes that we believe gets in the way of that. Cool. But on the other hand they're constantly shouting about how Cubase (you know, the corporate thing with like 70 developers and likely an unlimited research budget from Yammy) are releasing new cool stuff every 5 minutes.

You really can't have it all. Pick one.

My thought? Hire 2-3 more developers, raise the price to pay for it, and start doing more of what people are asking for. Then we'll be moaning about the price I guess because it won't be $60 anymore. Hire a full time graphic designer to work on the UI, a full time video coding guy to do all the stuff people will ask for now with video, video plugins, etc, etc.

At any rate, I do think that's part of why S1 is doing so well with an arguably limited feature set so far. That they kinda strike a nice reasonable balance in the middle, between "complete rebel" and "corporate stooge". It's not tiny, but it's not bloated. It's not the shiniest, but it's shiny enough. It's kinda like Baby Bear's bed.

Right now you see people whining about how long S1 v3 is taking... but you can bet that whatever shows up will be well done and well connected, contiguous. Again, you can't have it all. Either you wait a long(er) time for something well designed or you get something fast and then complain about that.

The irony is that so many Reaper users brag about how fast they deliver updates but users on the forum are complaining about stuff they say never really gets finished, or fully fleshed out. Again, you really cannot have it all. Pick one and live with it... or like in my case, pick two.

(piehole shut)

[plush2]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

One thing... (piehole open )...

There is clearly a logical conflict with Reaper, the way some users view it. Let me explain...

- On the one hand it's celebrated to have a small and reasonably responsive team. You know, we all hate the greedy corporate culture and all that other stuff. We're rebels after all, we frown on all that corporate stuff and rail against it.

- On the other hand some still - expect - Cockos to deliver as if they were the big corporate culture, and maybe flog them when they don't.

We really can't have it both ways. There are benefits to a small independent development team but only the delusional would think those benefits don't also come with some subjective drawbacks, the ying to the yang, and that there is only rainbows and sunshine when being a rebel and there is no potential practical downside to that.

I see the same thing with my other DAW, where it was celebrated that a smallish team could probably concentrate more on the product and less on the corporate culture or corporate processes that we believe gets in the way of that. Cool. But on the other hand they're constantly shouting about how Cubase (you know, the corporate thing with like 70 developers and likely an unlimited research budget from Yammy) are releasing new cool stuff every 5 minutes.

You really can't have it all. Pick one.

My thought? Hire 2-3 more developers, raise the price to pay for it, and start doing more of what people are asking for. Then we'll be moaning about the price because it won't be $60 anymore. Hire a full time graphic designer to work on the UI, a full time video coding guy to do all the stuff people will ask for now with video, video plugins, etc, etc.

At any rate, I do think that's part of why S1 is doing so well with an arguably limited feature set so far. That they kinda strike a nice reasonable balance in the middle, between "complete rebel" and "corporate stooge". It's not tiny, but it's not bloated. It's not the shiniest, but it's shiny enough. It's kinda like Baby Bear's bed.

Right now you see people whining about how long S1 v3 is taking... but you can bet that whatever shows up will be well done and well connected, contiguous. Again, you can't have it all. Either you wait a long(er) time for something well designed or you get something fast and then complain about that.

The irony is that so many Reaper users brag about how fast they deliver updates but users on the forum are complaining about stuff they say never really gets finished, or fully fleshed out. Again, you really cannot have it all. Pick one and live with it... or like in my case, I picked two.

(piehole shut)

Reaper is a flexible monster, but it's still a monster. If what a user needs is a nice quarter horse or a housebroken terrier then they will be disappointed with a monster. Some need and like the monster. I think the devs are in that camp. Lawrence is right.

So is Reaper allowed in the house, or just S1?

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by plush2

Reaper is a flexible monster, but it's still a monster. If what a user needs is a nice quarter horse or a housebroken terrier then they will be disappointed with a monster. Some need and like the monster. I think the devs are in that camp. Lawrence is right.

Right. But to get a really pretty and well designed monster requires a larger dev team, or a much longer wait.

No matter how talented any single developer is, he or she is still only one person and can only do so much in a day. If you want "small and responsive" you have to also recognize that they won't deliver like a team of 30. See Tracktion. Julian is certainly a highly skilled developer, but he's only one guy.

Is it a sheer coincidence that things like Cubase and PT have some really advanced features that don't exist in Reaper or S1 yet or is maybe more the case that they have enough people to delegate to do that stuff faster? That's partly why those apps cost so much, because developers have to eat and you can't hire an experienced C++ guy for $15k a year. No matter what people say about it, Cubase is a monster... and has a relatively large team behind it... and yes, it's time signatures work correctly in all situations. If it didn't they could likely dedicate someone to it for months until it did.

I used S1 as an example because their team is likely under some of the same stresses as the Reaper team, trying to manage very large expectations with a much smaller team... while also very likely splitting responsibilities, likely coding stuff for the digital consoles and Ipads and all that at the same time.

We, as users, have to kinda manage our own expectations to more align with reality. Do I expect Reaper to have a notation function as deep as Cubase's? Nope. That would be an unreasonable expectation. If they did that, something else would have to suffer because there's only like, 4 of them, and Steiny has the former Sibelius dev team.

My expectations for both of those products is high, but reasonable.

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

One thing... (piehole open )...

There is a clearly logical conflict with Reaper, the way some users view it. Let me explain...

- On the one hand it's celebrated to have a small and reasonably responsive team. You know, we all hate the greedy corporate culture and all that other stuff.

- On the other hand some still - expect - Cockos to deliver as if they were the big corporate culture, and maybe flog them when they don't.

We really can't have it both ways. There are benefits to a small independent development team but only the delusional would think those benefits don't also come with some subjective drawbacks, the ying to the yang, that there is only rainbows and sunshine and there is no potential downside to that.

I see the same thing with my other DAW, where it was celebrated that a smallish team could probably concentrate more on the product and less on the corporate culture or corporate processes that we believe gets in the way of that. Cool. But on the other hand they're constantly shouting about how Cubase (you know, the corporate place with like 70 developers and likely an unlimited research budget from Yammy) are releasing new cool stuff every 5 minutes.

You really can't have it all. Pick one.

(piehole shut)

All of that is most certainly correct, however I can not see how this relates to the subject of proper maintenance and standing behind the released parts of the project (or deprecating them when it's impossible to maintain them properly). Do you imply that keeping all parts of the project production-ready is one of those features we can only expect from big corporations?
That is countered by successful open-source projects, for example. Take Gnome, KDE etc etc etc. These are tremendously large projects, perhaps larger than Reaper, they obviously have bugs, but generally are good enough for production. They are fast, they are reliable, they look good, they have little "dark corners" and they are properly maintained as far as I can tell. Yes that's entirely different business model, with much higher number of developers involved. But then it's a non-corporate business model. There are smaller non-open source projects that are still well-maintained. Foobar, xnview for 2 examples. Then there are "indie" commercial plugin developers who make as good or even better job as the corporations. Like DMG audio, PSP, OverTone, Voxengo, iZotope. You won't find 7-months-old bugs that no one ever looked at closely there.

[Lawrence]

Yeah, it all ties in. Schwa probably can't be coding that new notation function at the same time he's fixing or changing all of the random stuff people want changed in Reaper's midi.

Pick one. He's a helluva developer imo, but he's not Superman. If they hired another guy they could probably do both things at the same time, full time, non-stop, dedicate a guy to do nothing else but that, clean up stuff that maybe got left behind, but somebody has to pay for that.

If they stop doing new features and circle back then the other group will be annoyed about them not making new flashy features. There's no way around it, people can only do so much. For the record, I'm actually in the first camp that thinks they should just stop or pause and circle back and clean up all that stuff.

Me and ED and GPunk do agree there. But the new video stuff will split up the user camps even more, some will be asking for more and more video stuff, and they're still only 3-4 guys.

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

Pick one. He's a helluva developer imo, but he's not Superman. If they hired another guy they could probably do both things at the same time, full time, non-stop, dedicate a guy to do nothing else but that, clean up stuff that maybe got left behind, but somebody has to pay for that.

If they stop doing new features and circle back then the other group will be annoyed about them not making new flashy features. There's no way around it, people can only do so much.

I think there is no way around doing the 2 things in parallel in any contemporary software business model that is to succeed. You have to do proper maintenance, and you have to introduce new "shiny" features. The problem is the _scale_. So you also have to plan ahead resources... Counting the maintenance in. Which I feel is what doesn't get enough attention here.

Looks like Reaper is overall heading in the direction that is somewhere in between the "indie" business and the "open source" business. That can be successful, as there is community to rely on. Community could potentially fill in some gaps here (and it does so to some degree already). If anyone noticed, there was even this momentary toying of Justin with the idea of open-sourcing the project. But I think (and you have probably seen the FRs I have recently filed) that more needs to be done for this "fusion" model to roll. For one, more support for community developers, at least by reinforcing the link between them and the final users. For second, well, those community developers are Reaper users, too, and they want their software useable... So we're back to proper maintenance here.

Originally Posted by Lawrence

I'm actually in the first camp that thinks they should just stop or pause and circle back and clean up all that stuff.

Count me in that camp, too.

[musicbynumbers]

No matter what happens, hands of PIPs!

That needs finishing and not abandoning!

[Lawrence]

P.S. Don't give my comments too much value. Like most, I'm just here running my piehole because I have nothing better to do at the moment.

Like I said before, it's their enterprise and they should always do what they think is best. I hardly have enough real information to judge that with any real confidence.

But it's the net so... we do it anyway. It's fun to chat about this stuff but Reaper will go on.

[ProfRhino]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

My thought? Hire 2-3 more developers, raise the price to pay for it, and start doing more of what people are asking for. Then we'll be moaning about the price I guess because it won't be $60 anymore. Hire a full time graphic designer to work on the UI, a full time video coding guy to do all the stuff people will ask for now with video, video plugins, etc, etc.

see, I told you we would agree again on other topics ...
Exactly what I've been thinking all the time.
Not counting the video stuff I still don't care for.
What Reaper needs is a lot of man hours to fix and consolidate all those loose ends, and this will have to be expertly, meticulously executed routine work for the most part, not something anybody might do just for fun.
I'm all for hiring extra personnel (with specialized capabilities ?), and I wouldn't mind paying for a solid DAW centric v5, even though I just bought v4.
The potential is there in spades, the devil is in the details.
ymmv,
Rhino

[nofish]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

But the new video stuff will split up the user camps even more, some will be asking for more and more video stuff, and they're still only 3-4 guys.

FWIW, for me the new video stuff is enough to do my (basic) video needs completely in Reaper now. Fades / Crossfades / some FX (which are user-expandable), that's it. Happy.

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by ProfRhino

see, I told you we would agree again on other topics ...
Exactly what I've been thinking all the time.
Not counting the video stuff I still don't care for.
What Reaper needs is a lot of man hours to fix and consolidate all those loose ends, and this will have to be expertly, meticulously executed routine work for the most part, not something anybody might do just for fun.
I'm all for hiring extra personnel (with specialized capabilities ?), and I wouldn't mind paying for a solid DAW centric v5, even though I just bought v4.
The potential is there in spades, the devil is in the details.
ymmv,
Rhino

Personally I think some parts of graphics and UI can be offloaded to community, and there's a good start for this with theming and scripting. The video part IMHO would be best to release from the beginning as some kind of collaborative project with the community. Maybe as an open source addon. There are plenty of folks doing open source video coding out there who would probably gladly chime in. I don't need video in any shape, but it _might_ get more users and devs involved in the project. The "loose ends" work, on the other hand, definitely requires a paid dedicated developer. I think rising the price a bit might be a good idea, but not much, otherwise people will buy less and pirate more, so it would hardly make significant difference to the income.

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by nofish

FWIW, for me the new video stuff is enough to do my (basic) video needs completely in Reaper now. Fades / Crossfades / some FX (which are user-expandable), that's it. Happy.

Yeah, but others will want more and are already asking for more.

It's funny how that works. I recall demoing Mixcraft and being highly impressed with its basic video implementation. Then when I started to play with it more the inevitable happened, it simply didn't do some basic stuff I commonly do in Vegas or VMS so the first thought I had was...

"This is actually pretty nice tbh but I'll so often be thinking about the relative subjective creative limitations that I might as well just sync up Vegas via midi and not have any of those limitations. Not like it's hard to do that."

But sure, if you don't have a video editor and/or only have kinda basic needs, no need to look beyond it.

But that's the potential rabbit hole (with focus on "potential", as in "not necessarily"), that it's subjective limits will kinda stick out... for people who own and use dedicated editors anyway.

Of course, it's still brand new... and 2-3 years from now it might not have any of those limitations anymore. Vegas Video 1.0 was not exactly a world beater either... but it's at version 12 and the requests are still coming fast and furious.

It will be very interesting, imo anyway, to see what it looks like in Reaper a few years down the road. It might end up being something pretty special, we'll have to wait and see.

But again, see the previous... "Running of the piehole during bored times." ... comment for perspective.

[PitchSlap]

As much as I'm a bit gutted that it now seems a native Session View will never be part of Reaper and think it's a bit too early to see how it plays out, I really like what's been done with PlayTime so far.

It's a major feature that many people (myself included) have been begging for for years, yet Cockos didn't have the resources or desire to do it, let alone do it properly and maintain it.

Hopefully with the new R5 scripting improvements it will be easier for people in the Reaper community to tackle some overlooked areas themselves. This could work especially well for areas that some users a very passionate about, but Cockos is indifferent about (i.e. Session View).

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by PitchSlap

Hopefully with the new R5 scripting improvements it will be easier for people in the Reaper community to tackle some overlooked areas themselves. This could work especially well for areas that some users a very passionate about, but Cockos is indifferent about (i.e. Session View).

That's what I hope will happen. However it would be very hard to achieve with the current way users are expected to find out about Reaper extensions (scripts included), i.e. by following the forum. Most (let's optimistically say 90%) users never bother to waste their time in this weird manner, which limits the amount of feedback and appreciation extension devs can expect to get. It's what would happen to the Android ecosystem had Google not introduced their app store or whatever it's called. Recently I attempted to file a FR to integrate extensions browser and installer (etc. etc., call it "Reaper Store" lol) into Reaper, but up until now only 10 people voted for it, and I bet most of them are extension devs. I wonder if anyone at Cockos had the chance to grasp the potential and if they are going to do anything about it.
Here it is, just in case:
http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=5469

[musicbynumbers]

I thought I read (or dreamed) somewhere that now that that code is more open that playtime could potentially be incorporated very deeply into reaper. Enough that it appears to be part of it and acts just like the ableton one.

The notation editor is an example of this and gives me hope that this is the right way forward for features the devs may not get around to doing etc.

Originally Posted by PitchSlap

As much as I'm a bit gutted that it now seems a native Session View will never be part of Reaper and think it's a bit too early to see how it plays out, I really like what's been done with PlayTime so far.

It's a major feature that many people (myself included) have been begging for for years, yet Cockos didn't have the resources or desire to do it, let alone do it properly and maintain it.

Hopefully with the new R5 scripting improvements it will be easier for people in the Reaper community to tackle some overlooked areas themselves. This could work especially well for areas that some users a very passionate about, but Cockos is indifferent about (i.e. Session View).

[Win Conway]

Pretty sure Helgoboss said he had no interest in doing that, i dont think it can be integrated more now than it could have before using the C++ extensions

[musicbynumbers]

Originally Posted by gpunk_w

Pretty sure Helgoboss said he had no interest in doing that, i dont think it can be integrated more now than it could have before using the C++ extensions

Crap

I hope that somehow changes but I'm not going to say anymore on it in case it brings out your wraith again.

...friends?

[Gates of Horn & Ivory]

Originally Posted by gpunk_w

Pretty sure Helgoboss said he had no interest in doing that, i dont think it can be integrated more now than it could have before using the C++ extensions

I thought Helgoboss said he asked Cockos about doing that but they weren't interested.

Originally Posted by sinkmusic

Did you talk to Cockos before releasing it into the wild ?
I'm just asking, as i wish that such a beautiful and useful feature would have been natively integrated into Reaper (instead of being a 3d party vst). Maybe that, just like with Elastique, they could have been interested into licensing it, or find a deal with you to straightly embed it into Reaper ?

Originally Posted by helgoboss

@sinkmusic
Thank you! Infact I tried to contact Cockos some months ago to talk about that but they were probably busy Then I was thinking it's not that bad to have it as an optional plugin because not everybody needs a session view and is willing to pay for it. So I moved on.

[Win Conway]

Originally Posted by Gates of Horn & Ivory

I thought Helgoboss said he asked Cockos about doing that but they weren't interested.

There seems to be some mystery, first he said that he contacted Cockos and they did not reply, then later he said that is better as a VST, best of both worlds was his comment i believe (Which of course is total nonsense)

Then on ask Justin we have Justin when asked twice about Playtime integration, his first reply was akin to, not sure but i know Jeffos wants that, and the second time, it is hard for us to do anything like that now, because Playtime exists we don't want to crush somebody who has built something for Reaper

So basically put, we are now screwed, Helgo says no direct integration (Screwed) and unless Cockos directly buy him out (Unlikely because Justin could code Playtime in about 5 minutes) then we will see no session view from Cockos, because they don't want to harm somebody who jumped in and made something for Reaper users, so by creating the stop gap session solution Playtime, he has effectively removed any chance of us getting a native solution

Although at some point, somebody will build a native version using scripting/extensions and then Helgoboss is screwed, so really it is a bad situation all round

[Win Conway]

Originally Posted by innuendo

BTW some people here are surprised about incrementing version number without introducing "dramatic" changes.

There is a reason for that, people who have been around here a while have seen things like this
v3.001
v3.001b
v3.002
v3.003
v3.01

And so on and so forth, now all of these had actual features, not just bug fixes, so when they then turn round and release a jump from
v4.77
to
v5
Yes it is human nature to expect some big things, if anybody including Cockos can't see that, is their problem, but the reality is, that people will expect big things
And to be fair, v4 was a huge release too, so again people will expect big things from a v5

[innuendo]

Originally Posted by gpunk_w

Yes it is human nature to expect some big things, if anybody including Cockos can't see that, is their problem, but the reality is, that people will expect big things
And to be fair, v4 was a huge release too, so again people will expect big things from a v5

I was just sayin' that there is a hope that Cockos plan increasing the workforce and that could explain the rush to increment. Of course it's 0% facts and 100% positive thinking of someone who hasn't been around for too long.
Also if forum folks are any indication of the majority's sentiment, it seems this time the only big thing we dare to wish is that they finish everything they have already started before starting more big things ;-)

[J Kennedy]

Big education for me, mostly from perspectives of Lawrence and Innuendo.

Frustrated by a killer bug in ReaControlMidi, but have given up the fight. Has been reported and verified from the dark ages forward. Guts my workflow, but a spec of temporary dust out here, no importance to anything.

Won't be diving in to ver 5 any time soon just to pay for the same bug. Nail into the third eye if you depended on a process that should work as advertized..

Small group of brilliant devs. So many new features, esp the video stuff.

Doesn't mean shit to a tree what I think, but some advice anyway.

Of the opinion that Reaper should halt anything new. Get back to the good basics and fix existing bugs. Listen to guys like Evil and get the house in order. Make the ap solid and secure before adding anything else spreading the workforce thinner.

John

[donchilcott]

For quite some time I have given up using reaper. I hope Justin does hire more developers. I would much rather pay more for a reaper I can use than to continue not to use it. Doesn't anyone else wonder how 2 developers can possibly compete with all the other continually improving daws? I know lots of users praise the reaper business model but really, how is that model working in 2015? It doesn't seem to me it takes a software developer or a CEO to look and see reaper has grown unmanageable for small team we have. I will gladly pay more for reaper if that's what it takes.

[J Kennedy]

Double thinking my whining about the ReaControlMidi bug (metronome crashes the mod wheel setting). Still pissed it wasn't fixed years ago, but no excuse for me coming off like a jerk. Apologies to the devs and collective for spreading bad vibes.

Hit a place in life where I can afford any software I want, but using Reaper, because it is the best for my application otherwise.

Lot of us wanted midi notation, and now it is happening at no small effort on part of the devs.

Video expanding and refining. Can almost see a day when I can import my next Platinum MTV video into Reaper to edit.

The bigger concept seems to be moving to a really ethereal place. Eventually being able to open one application and get it all done.

Til then, got a workaround for the dismal ReaControlMidi crash and burn.

I have faith that good things are happening.

John