Hi DioCoN,

Welcome to the party and thanks for the feedback!

The FT2/IT dichotomy has come up before. In addition to CS_TBL's points, which mean that any attempt is simply likely to alienate both IT- and FT2-"style" users, by not being providing a 100% accurate clone for either, I'll say what I always say;

The purpose of reViSiT is not to clone IT or provide IT users with an upgrade path, it's simply to provide the best interface possible. To this end, reViSiT took IT as the starting point, judging it to be a superb interface (see here). However, few features and shortcuts have been arbitrarily inherited from IT. There'll typically be a sensible reason why they are used in reViSiT, that corresponds to the sensible reason Jeffrey Lim coded them for IT in the first place. However, you'll find shortcut keys that are new / have changed, as well as a lot of interface modifications. Similarly, you might find features that are more FT2 in nature, simply because FT2 had the better design for that feature (e.g. an aesthetically pleasing interface!). Hopefully, users will also notice lots of innovations that are unique to reViSiT too...!

reViSiT is about attracting new users to tracking, so the priority is to make features intuitive, accessible or easily-learnable to people without prior knowledge - making reViSiT a VST plugin was aimed at making tracking more accessible to sequencer users. However, one of the fundamentals in learning to use trackers expertly is building up "habits". Unfortunately, FT2 users will have to learn to break a few of theirs before getting comfortable with reViSiT.

Indeed, I'm actually considering using the FT2/IT2 interfaces as part of my PhD research to scientifically evaluate how different interfaces can affect the productivity and creativity of the user. The feature sets of each program were very similar, theoretically affording more-or-less the same amount of expression, but the different interfaces might have encourage certain working methods that favoured different musical styles, sonorities and techniques. Did the use of effects differ between programs? Is the density of pattern data higher in either? What proportion of the instrument settings was varied from the default? And so on...

As for MIDI-triggered pattern playback, this has been on the cards for a while, but not an initial priority. Quite possibly, it will find its way into the v1.0 Pro release, as it occurs that there is very little to appeal to VSTi/MIDI-only users in the current pro offerings (currently, audio routing and surround sound).

I'm really, really eager to hear more about your Cubase 4 crashing problems. I know that CS_TBL uses Cubase 4, and he hasn't yet reported any stability problems. Similarly, I test in Cubase SX3 and haven't had problems - but then don't have the time for long sessions.

Thanks again!

Chris