Old 10-26-2012, 02:21 AM   #1
Stretto
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Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 147
Default Custom Graphical Overlays and Automations

AFAIK reaper offers limited gui support for plugins(although I've seen a few functions in the api that look promising). There is also limited mouse interaction.

I'm fairly new to reaper and don't have time to investigate these ideas at this point but maybe someone will has a desire to look into it:

There are two ideas here: First, it seems that it would not be difficult at all to either modify reapers gui externally through a plugin or simply add overlays(custom buttons/graphics) and possibly even panels.

If run runs the tools "Spy++" it is quite easy to get certain "windows" in reaper such as track meters, toolbar, menu, title bar, etc. This suggests we could easily apply overlays to these elements(assuming we can keep them sync'ed properly). It may be even possible to delve deeper into the window to get reapers specific buttons and not only replace their look but hook into their wndproc.


The second method is to provide mouse and keyboard interaction. Sort of "record macro's" that you find in some apps. This should be pretty doable. One can easily write a thread that uses the mouse and keyboard to send to reaper(SendKeys, SetCursorPos, etc...). This essentially would extend actions to include certain mouse movements(draw a curve or something). The mouse interaction would be blind but though.

Coupling the two methods above may provide some interesting automation possiblities(automating reaper rather than track automation) along with customizable graphics interfacing(slightly different than what skins provide).

The power lies in how far one can take these too possibilities. At some point it becomes more trouble than it's worth. Getting some basic demo's going shouldn't be difficult at all. It's always better if when Cockos directly implements such features though.

As a side note, something that maybe of interest to script users is a global cache. It doesn't seem that a python script can easily store "global" variables(except to files, which may cause performance issues). To get around this one could write a simple reaper plugin that provides a simple interface to a dictionary which exports a few methods to python.

Also being able to run scripts periodically could be beneficial. Simply allow a script to register itself to run(or a hot key to run) by writing a plugin that exposes the functionality to the scripts.

Last edited by Stretto; 10-26-2012 at 03:34 AM.
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