I don't _THINK_ that new applications are the way forward. There are wonderful established music tools from DAWs like Ardour and Qtractor to MIDI sequencers and synthesizers. The way forward should be to implement accessibility where possible. Generic GUI toolkits like QT, GTK and others come with accessibility frameworks these days, so fresh developments could start out with that in mind. Some more specific frameworks however neglected accessibility. I think that JUCE is still completely lacking in that regard. Not sure whether or not it is open source, but it is used a lot also in LV2 plugins.Basslint wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 11:45 am ...
I help maintain a repository of FLOSS music software for openSUSE. I'd like to make a spin of it which only contains accessible music software,
This might be a very good starting point, especially if this includes accessible GUI tools. Hopefully well-established apps that are known to work.
and maybe establish a complete workflow. What do you think about this idea?
Not sure what you mean. Point out a collection of applications that work well together and allow complete music production?
Also, what would you recommend developers to focus on?
At the moment I know that - on Linux - there aren't many accessible GUI tools for music making. (To avoid flames: I don't say there are none!) But you could practically start anywhere. Personally I'd love a good modern MIDI sequencer with patterns, looping, tracks of different lengths (maybe). I think seq24 and its relatives have the right feature set.
Audio/MIDI sync is a particular challenge. A good, complete DAW with audio and MIDI built in would solve that. Many have already.
What is the hardest thing to do, except for scoring?
Practically speaking it might be managing plugins. They all have their own UIs, which DAWs, of course, present to the user. On the commandline the usual approach is to give access to control and audio ports. Not necessarily intuitive, but it works. LV2 plugins in particular come with good port/value descriptions. That is still not true for all formats and some plugins have features which cannot be controlled by an external port. File loading...
As for scoring, what do you think is lacking?
Forestalling any further questions here: I'm not writing scores myself. I know people in music teaching and in the classical performance circuit who have to deal with that. MuseScore has been used, because of its great standard conformance. Alas most other teachers, pupils and musicians tend to use commercial tools, which don't conform so well. In the end this might really come down to the old open software vs. "commercial standard". I'm not really the person to comment.
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So advocacy is needed on a few fronts to bring this forward. Unfortunately in open source development, particularly, there often aren't enough people to fix bugs, implement new general features, write manuals and implement accessibility. When time can be made or willing and competent assistance can be found, the FOSS world is very nice and helpful about it.
Sorry, this isn't very helpful. It doesn't point to one particular challenge to take up. Unless you just go and approach your favourite project/program and see what can be done. Or you pick up something that looks easy to make accessible.
Best wishes, Jeanette