Screenshots of the new colour and naming features for Channels and Instruments are now on the site.

http://revisit.nashnet.co.uk

Channel naming and colours
The channel can be given any name of up to 14 characters, though these will be truncated upon display, if the pattern font prompts too narrow a channel. Each channel can have any colour assigned to it from 16.7 million options. reViSiT will remember up to 16 custom colours per session, but these will not be saved between sessions.

Instrument labelling and colours
Even before channels got such features, I'd already added similar features for instruments. Instead of numeral indexing, you can use the Instrument List to specify alphanumeric identifiers (including symbols) for instruments. This is done simply by moving the cursor in the Instrument List left of the instrument name and typing as appropriate. For example, you can change instrument "07" to be Instrument "Vi" (for Violin). Or perhaps 07 and 08 can become "V1" and "V2" for First and Second Violins. In the pattern editor, you just type in the appropriate 'label' as you would a number. Although, if you only have one instrument beginning with, for example, a 'V', you will only need to type the first 'V' - reViSiT will select that instrument automatically, so you could set up a number of 1-key fast access instruments, if you wanted. Note: If you use the same label for two instruments, the pattern will always point to the first. It is, of course, also possible to rename instrument "02" as, for example, "01" - it's up to you to be sensible. Also, if you have renamed, for example, instrument 07 as "Vi" and then type "07" in the Pattern Editor, reViSiT will spot that you are using indexing and insert "Vi" automatically, assuming you haven't named another instrument "07". The feature can be disabled by pressing the '`' key whilst in the instrument column, or Alt-'`' in the Instrument List, should you need to find out what the original indexes are.
   Instruments can also be colour coded, using the same section of the Instrument List. For memory reasons, the pattern only uses 16 colours (4-bits) in total, of which there are 5 presets available to use to code instruments - White (Alt-0), Red (Alt-1), Green (Alt-2), Yellow (Alt-3) and Blue (Alt-4). This may not be enough to have different colours for every instrument, but is still useful for denoting instrument familes or other voice groups. It can also be used more dynamically: for example, if you simply write everything in white and then want to quickly find all occurences of one or more instruments in the pattern, you can switch those instruments to Red and they will stand out in the patterns and the pattern overview. (Note: The colours will not be visible when the channel is muted.)

These features will be available in 0.90.1, to be released shortly. The screenshots are also your first glimpse of the Pro Edition, though the above features are part of the Standard Edition too. The avid eye will spot two new settings in the new Order List screen - Panning Depth (Front to Back) and Theta (Azimuth, or rotation), part of the Pro Edition's surround sound features. More details to follow.

All the best,
Chris

I know. I loathe it, and decry IBM for their utter stupidity - all for a couple of inches desk space. And it would annoy me very much when tracking, if I actually had time to do anything more than simply test reViSiT. My default keyboard was bluetooth, but I went through a period of needing to access the BIOS (which you can't do with a Bluetooth keyboard) and got fed up of plugging and unpluggin wired keyboards, so eventually just left it plugged in. I didn't buy the bugger - I too would look for the standard layout - but got it free from BT, and had it sitting in the back of the cupboard.

When I get serious about doing some music, I'll either go for a Creative Labs Prodikeys (which does have the standard layout and MIDI keyboard built-in), or just a simple 104-key keyboard. I also have tentative plans for a homemade tracker keyboard.

I don't find that, though perhaps when you need USB (however, there's always a PS/2-USB adapter). In any case, there's thousands of the buggers out there on eBay and in secondhand computer shops, going for £3/€5 or so.

I'll likely have a paragraph in the coming PhD, but nothing detailed. Although it does violate one of the cognitive requirements for building computer 'virtuosity'. The stupidity's fairly obvious to anyone who thinks about it. It's just a shame that doesn't include hardware designers!

Chris