Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

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thanks4opensource
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Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by thanks4opensource »

I have released a fork (modified version) of the Rosegarden music editor software at:

https://github.com/thanks4opensource/rosegarden-fork
and/or:
https://sourceforge.net/u/thanks4opensr ... evel/tree/

See the the GitHub page for extensive documentation on the changes and additions compared to the official version of Rosegarden. Most are workflow improvements plus extended visualizations in the Matrix Editor (aka "piano roll"), so the fork's enhancements will be of less benefit to those who primarily use the application's Notation Editor, live MIDI and audio recording, or its many other features. But experienced Rosegarden users -- and if you're not one, you should be ;) -- will notice improvements to the Loop and Marker Rulers, and particularly the extended analysis and automatic lead sheet generation capabilities in the Chord Name Ruler.

Note that the fork builds upon and is indebted to literally decades of work by dozens of contributors to Rosegarden. It has had comparatively little testing, very likely contains bugs, and is likewise the sole responsibility of its author. Please report any problems at https://github.com/thanks4opensource/ro ... ork/issues instead of the mainline Rosegarden sites (unless the bug is confirmed to also affect the most recent official version).

There are many open-source sequencing, recording, and notation editing packages available. I think Rosegarden is one of if not the best, particularly with these new improvements. Feedback -- including opinions to the contrary ;) -- and suggestions for further new features are welcome.

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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by jph »

What would be really cool would be that Rosegarden manages the LV2 and VST3 effects and instruments. Putting it at the same level as its competitors. But it doesn’t seem to interest any developer.
Nevertheless, the MIDI editor is one of the best.

Basslint
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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by Basslint »

Thanks, very nice! I am a packager on openSUSE and would like to package it (if you intend to maintain this in the future), but I find the current name confusing. Could you please give it a different, distinctive name (I don't know, like "Roseyard", "Rosepark")?

The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. [Acts 4:32]

Please donate time (even bug reports) or money to libre software 🎁

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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by folderol »

jph wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 9:36 am

What would be really cool would be that Rosegarden manages the LV2 and VST3 effects and instruments. Putting it at the same level as its competitors. But it doesn’t seem to interest any developer.
Nevertheless, the MIDI editor is one of the best.

I don't think it's a case of lack of interest - more that Rosegarden is incredibly complex (I've looked at the code... and ran away screaming). Both LV2 and VST(n) are extremely demanding so would require deep refactoring. Having said that, all the users I know (including myself) are very happy with its current progress.

The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
thanks4opensource
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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by thanks4opensource »

jph wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 9:36 am

Nevertheless, the MIDI editor is one of the best.

I agree! :)

If you get a chance to try the forked version I'd be interested in your feedback, as most of the enhancements are in the Matrix (aka MIDI) Editor.

jph wrote:

What would be really cool would be that Rosegarden manages the LV2 and VST3 effects and instruments. Putting it at the same level as its competitors. But it doesn’t seem to interest any developer.

See my response to @folderol 's post, below.

thanks4opensource
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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by thanks4opensource »

folderol wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:39 pm
jph wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 9:36 am

What would be really cool would be that Rosegarden manages the LV2 and VST3 effects and instruments.
...

I don't think it's a case of lack of interest - more that Rosegarden is incredibly complex (I've looked at the code... and ran away screaming).

You're a much wiser person than I am. That's what I should have done. ;)

folderol wrote:

Both LV2 and VST(n) are extremely demanding so would require deep refactoring.

As much as I believe that Rosegarden's basic internal design is sound, the project is in need of a deep refactoring in general (IMO). The code has an almost incredibly long history (see https://www.rosegardenmusic.com/resources/authors/ -- how many open source projects can claim roots going back to 1993?) and 17 years after its last major rewrite it's overdue for another one.

Unfortunately this isn't something I can undertake, at least not on my own. I spent many months trying to "hack in" the fork's new features without affecting the rest of the codebase before reluctantly doing so out of necessity. I've completely stayed away from the audio (non-MIDI) aspects of Rosegarden, much less the plugin system which is likely where LV2/VST would be added.

Maybe these discussions can generate some fresh interest in Rosegarden and its continued development.

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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by thanks4opensource »

Basslint wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 11:50 am

Thanks, very nice! I am a packager on openSUSE and would like to package it (if you intend to maintain this in the future), but I find the current name confusing. Could you please give it a different, distinctive name (I don't know, like "Roseyard", "Rosepark")?

Wow! Thanks, @Basslint! I wasn't expecting that. And it's a particularly nice compliment because openSUSE is my main distro, and has been since SuSE 6.3 (how's that for ancient history?).

I did consider giving the fork a new/different name but didn't because I felt it would imply I was claiming all of Rosegarden as my own work. Despite the fact that I consider the enhancements to be significant and worthwhile, they still constitute only a fraction of Rosegarden's capabilities and codebase. (Using the common, almost meaningless, metric I get 974,955 total lines of code(!!) of which by an even less accurate measurement I've added or changed 21,106.)

And as much as I'm proud of the fork and would be incredibly flattered to see it honored as a distro package, I'm conflicted about the idea. If nothing else, I think it's premature. Official Rosegarden itself receives insufficient pre-release/pre-packaging testing (IMO), and the fork has had effectively none.

But beyond that, I have mixed feelings about the mere existence of the fork, much less its binary inclusion in distros. If interested you can read my post at https://sourceforge.net/p/rosegarden/ma ... /37735940/ in addition to the https://github.com/thanks4opensource/ro ... motivation section of the README.md.
It's one thing to have the fork as a "get it out there and see if people find it worthwhile" experiment, but another to have two widely used "competing" (if free open source projects can be considered to compete with each other) versions of Rosegarden (or Rosegarden vs Roseyard/Rosepark/whatever).

And as much as I didn't intend the fork, or my posting here, to be an attempt at coercing Rosegarden's maintainer ... yes, I admit that what I still really would like is for it to be merged back into the official codebase. Again I'll state my appreciation for his huge contributions to the open source music software world (including beyond Rosegarden), my understanding of what I believe to be his reasoning (despite disagreeing with some of it), and his complete right to steer Rosegarden in whatever direction he chooses. But the fork exists mainly because I received no response to over 6 months worth merge requests, and I'm not willing to live without features I spent so long implementing ... nor to keep them strictly to myself .

Bottom line: Let's wait and see what happens. Maybe someone will find a fatal, un-fixable bug in the fork's code or architecture. Maybe the maintainer will reconsider and merge some/all of the fork, either directly as code or as re-implementations of its features. Maybe I'll give up and quietly sulk away in despair. ;)

Apologies for this overly long post, and thanks again for the compliments, expressed and implied, on the fork.

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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by Basslint »

I understand and I too in the past was interested in forking Rosegarden to:

  • Give it a more contemporary UI (I actually wrote two small patches for this, one and two)
  • Give more centrality to the score editor
  • Remove the audio capabilities (this might not be necessary if someone can maintain them, but right now they are lagging behind other DAWs like Ardour), making Rosegarden a MIDI sequencer

I think that if a maintainer is legitimately unwilling to take contributions, forking is not a sign of disrespect, it's part of how FLOSS works. If you are willing to take Rosegarden in a different direction, it's only fair to rename your fork and work for that purpose, IMHO. Also to receive contributions from people with a similar vision for it. Rosegarden will keep existing and pursue its maintainers' vision.

The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. [Acts 4:32]

Please donate time (even bug reports) or money to libre software 🎁

Jam on openSUSE + GeekosDAW!
alex stone
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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by alex stone »

thanks4opensource wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 8:18 pm
Basslint wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 11:50 am

Thanks, very nice! I am a packager on openSUSE and would like to package it (if you intend to maintain this in the future), but I find the current name confusing. Could you please give it a different, distinctive name (I don't know, like "Roseyard", "Rosepark")?

Wow! Thanks, @Basslint! I wasn't expecting that. And it's a particularly nice compliment because openSUSE is my main distro, and has been since SuSE 6.3 (how's that for ancient history?).

I did consider giving the fork a new/different name but didn't because I felt it would imply I was claiming all of Rosegarden as my own work. Despite the fact that I consider the enhancements to be significant and worthwhile, they still constitute only a fraction of Rosegarden's capabilities and codebase. (Using the common, almost meaningless, metric I get 974,955 total lines of code(!!) of which by an even less accurate measurement I've added or changed 21,106.)

And as much as I'm proud of the fork and would be incredibly flattered to see it honored as a distro package, I'm conflicted about the idea. If nothing else, I think it's premature. Official Rosegarden itself receives insufficient pre-release/pre-packaging testing (IMO), and the fork has had effectively none.

But beyond that, I have mixed feelings about the mere existence of the fork, much less its binary inclusion in distros. If interested you can read my post at https://sourceforge.net/p/rosegarden/ma ... /37735940/ in addition to the https://github.com/thanks4opensource/ro ... motivation section of the README.md.
It's one thing to have the fork as a "get it out there and see if people find it worthwhile" experiment, but another to have two widely used "competing" (if free open source projects can be considered to compete with each other) versions of Rosegarden (or Rosegarden vs Roseyard/Rosepark/whatever).

And as much as I didn't intend the fork, or my posting here, to be an attempt at coercing Rosegarden's maintainer ... yes, I admit that what I still really would like is for it to be merged back into the official codebase. Again I'll state my appreciation for his huge contributions to the open source music software world (including beyond Rosegarden), my understanding of what I believe to be his reasoning (despite disagreeing with some of it), and his complete right to steer Rosegarden in whatever direction he chooses. But the fork exists mainly because I received no response to over 6 months worth merge requests, and I'm not willing to live without features I spent so long implementing ... nor to keep them strictly to myself .

Bottom line: Let's wait and see what happens. Maybe someone will find a fatal, un-fixable bug in the fork's code or architecture. Maybe the maintainer will reconsider and merge some/all of the fork, either directly as code or as re-implementations of its features. Maybe I'll give up and quietly sulk away in despair. ;)

Apologies for this overly long post, and thanks again for the compliments, expressed and implied, on the fork.

I've just found this thread whilst looking for something else.

@thanks4opensource , thanks for making your fork public. The new tools are enjoyable to use, and make for faster, and more efficient, workflow. (imho)
I'm looking forward to seeing, and trying, more, if you're continuing with your fork. (Which I hope you will do. Your code is good, and you're obviously seriously invested in music/midi workflow, which is good for us.)

And for what it's worth, I too think the audio code should be removed, and sharpen the focus on a really good dedicated midi sequencer.

Thanks again,

Alex.

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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by folderol »

I STRONGLY disagree with removing the audio code :(
I don't record audio with Rosegarden but I do frequently import an audio file and compose MIDI alongside it. Particularly when collaborating with other musicians.

Also, Why are you forking it? I've always found the devs very amenable to suggestions/patches.
Have you tried talking to them on the email list?
rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net

The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
alex stone
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Re: Enhanced fork of Rosegarden released

Post by alex stone »

folderol wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 10:30 am

I STRONGLY disagree with removing the audio code :(
I don't record audio with Rosegarden but I do frequently import an audio file and compose MIDI alongside it. Particularly when collaborating with other musicians.

Also, Why are you forking it? I've always found the devs very amenable to suggestions/patches.
Have you tried talking to them on the email list?
rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net

I'm not talking about removing audio from RG, just the fork, and it's a suggestion, nothing more at this stage. You can continue to use RG in its original state. (if that's what the current maintainer decides)

@thanks4opensource has stated above that he submitted patches to improve RG, over a six month period, but they were declined by the current maintainer. At what point does enough constitute enough?

I've built and tried the fork, and the changes are a decisive step forward for midi workflow, imho.

And I have to ask, if the maintainer refuses patches in order to continue RG as he wishes it to be (as is his right as the maintainer), that we should all just accept that, and not diversify if potential improvements are offered that may not fit in the current maintainer's vision for the app?

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