A tour of the window

This page describes the main window from top to bottom: the three menus and every control in the top bar, the console pages and how the mouse works on them, pages in windows of their own, panels, the plain stop list, the swell faders, the on-screen keyboard and the context menus. Registration, pistons, tuning and recording are covered on Playing.

The window opens at 1280 x 760 pixels and can be resized freely. From top to bottom it holds:

The top bar

From left to right the bar holds the File, View and Settings menus; the No DSP box; the volume slider with its dB readout; the level meter; Set; the stepper (<, the frame readout and >); the tuning button, which shows the temperament and the pitch of A; the layout selector, when the organ offers a choice; the save button; and the Panic button, drawn as an octagon with a cross.

File

View

The Swell faders, Keyboard and window items are described in the sections below. Show played keys is described under Show played keys.

Settings

The standalone application supplies the three settings windows. In the VST3, LV2 and AU plugins the editor has no handler for Organ settings… and General settings…, and Audio and MIDI… is absent.

Controls in the bar

The bar shortens in a fixed order when the window narrows. The level meter gives way first and the volume fader keeps at least 90 px. When the sequencer, tuning and utility buttons leave less than 350 px for the menus, No DSP and the fader, the buttons move to a second row of their own.

The sequencer buttons on a phone or tablet are 44 px wide and the Panic and Save state buttons 46 px wide, as against 30 px and 38 px on a desktop.

The status line

The strip along the bottom edge shows, from left to right and separated by |:

1. The result of the last load: the number of stops and ranks, the samples loaded with their size in MB, and any of N missing (named in the log), N unreadable (named in the log), N encrypted, N awaiting a licence and INCOMPLETE (memory limit). A load with no audio reads graphics only - no audio loaded.
2. voices N: the number of voices sounding now.
3. While the sample cache is being written, saving the samples for the next load, with a percentage and, after a few seconds, the time left.
4. When non-zero, each after a comma: dropped N (note starts that found no free voice), no audio N (starts whose samples were not in memory), late blocks N (audio blocks that took longer than the audio they produced) and, with streamed release tails, a warning that the disk fell behind.

After a load with no audio, the line reads `65 stops, 312 ranks, graphics only

• no audio loaded | voices 0, no audio 24`. The line is cut short in a narrow window; the whole text appears as a tooltip. The window has no CPU readout.

Page tabs

A console that ships more than one page shows one tab per page. A page is named as the organ names it, or Page 1, Page 2 and so on. Panels shown as tabs follow the console pages. A click on a tab shows that page.

In the standalone application each console page tab carries a small button, a square with an arrow. A click on it opens the page in its own window; the button is filled while the window is open, and a click then closes the window and brings the page back to its tab.

A right-click on a console page tab opens a menu:

A right-click on a panel’s tab offers Rename <name>…. In the plugins the pages stay tabs and the icon and menu are absent.

The console

Where an organ ships console artwork, the console is the organ’s own: the bitmaps of its drawstops, pistons, couplers, shoes, manuals and engraved labels, placed as the set places them. A click on a drawstop moves the switch the drawstop is bound to and changes its picture in one step.

Scaling

The window shows a whole page at once, so the console has no scroll bars. The page is scaled by one factor for both directions, and the factor is raised as well as lowered: a console drawn smaller than the window is enlarged. The factor is the largest at which the whole page fits. The page is centred and the spare room is split evenly on both sides. The proportions are kept, so the case and the keys keep their shape.

A page much smaller than the organ’s first page (a settings panel a few hundred pixels wide, for example) is shown at the scale of the first page, which is smaller than the largest scale that fits. This applies when the first page is at least twice as wide and twice as tall as the page shown. A page in its own window always fits the window.

Clicks, drags and right-clicks land on the picture at any scale.

Layouts

A set can draw its pages again for another screen shape, with up to three alternate layouts beside the main one. A layout counts as portrait when its console is taller than it is wide. The layout selector in the top bar lists them as Console: main, Console: alt 1, Console: alt 2 (portrait) and so on.

The window follows its own shape. When the area for the console turns taller than it is wide, the first portrait layout is chosen; when it turns wider again, the first landscape layout is chosen. A layout picked by hand holds until the shape turns. A page that declares nothing for the chosen layout is drawn in the main layout, whole.

Clicking and dragging

A control is dragged up and down, with the pointer’s movement scaled to half a unit of the 0 to 127 range per pixel. A control drawn lying down, such as a slider labelled from Original to Silent, is dragged sideways: right is more, and the movement is scaled to the drawn width, between 0.3 and 1 unit per pixel. The axis is whichever the pointer has moved further along from the press. A control whose artwork says that clicking higher decreases the value is reversed. The drag keeps working when the pointer leaves the picture, and the value stops at the ends of its travel.

A drag of the crescendo pedal fires each step it crosses, in order. See Crescendo.

The console has no mouse-wheel handler: the wheel does not move a drawstop, a piston, a shoe or the crescendo.

Stops that make no sound

Two kinds of stop are drawn and move but make no sound. A tooltip names the cause when the pointer rests on the drawstop for 700 ms.

A stop with no pipes is also held in. A general, the crescendo, a tutti, a MIDI message and the organ’s own wiring leave it pushed in. A switch that also draws a stop with pipes stays free to draw it, and so does a switch that the organ starts engaged. A stop whose pipes are reached only through a pallet that a key opens counts as having pipes. When none of the organ’s stops has pipes, the organ is not a demo and its stops are left as they are.

A stop that was left out of the load has to be loaded again to sound: change the choice in Organ settings and load the organ again.

Context menus

A right-click opens the menu of the object under the pointer. The mappings themselves are described on MIDI and consoles.

A page in its own window

A console surrounds the player: jambs to either side, the key desk in front, a combination panel above. A set draws each on a page of its own, and each page can open in a window of its own to spread the console over several screens. The windows are available in the standalone application. A page is opened from the icon on its tab, from the right-click menu of its tab, or from View > A page in its own window.

A page window:

• has the title <page name> - <organ name>, a native title bar with minimise, maximise and close buttons, and can be resized;
• opens with the page’s own size and shape, scaled down to fit 1600 x 1000 pixels at most, and never above its own size; a page that draws nothing opens at 1000 x 700;
• opens on another display when there is one, and on a portrait display when its layout is portrait and one exists. With one display it opens beside the main window, offset 40 px down and across for each window already open;
• shows its page whole at the largest scale that fits, centred;
• opens in the layout chosen in the tab menu, or follows the shape of its own window as the main window does (a portrait layout when the window is taller than it is wide);
• passes the computer-keyboard shortcuts of the MIDI windows to the program;
• on close, returns the page to its tab in the main window.

The windows are remembered per organ: which pages are open, where, at what size and in which layout. They close when another organ loads and reopen where they were once the organ is in. A position that no display shows any longer is moved onto a display that exists.

Panels

A panel shows the organ as equal rectangles with the name in the middle, for a touch screen or for a console that is hard to read at a distance. An organ has up to two panels. Each panel is a tab beside the console pages, or a window of its own on any screen. Every rectangle stands for something the organ already has, so its MIDI mapping is the stop’s, piston’s or control’s own.

View > Panel of the whole organ makes the first panel; View > New panel makes the second. The panels are named Panel 1 and Panel 2 until renamed.

Sections

The panel is divided into columns, one per section, in this order:

A division’s own prefix, repeated on its stops (HW Principal, HW Flute), is dropped from the names in that column when most of the column’s names carry it. A footage at the end of a name (8', 2 2/3', IV) is set on a line of its own below the name.

Using a panel

The bar

The bar along the top of the panel holds, from left to right:

In edit mode every element shows a tick box at its top-right corner. A click on the tick box shows or hides the element; hidden elements are dimmed in edit mode and absent otherwise. A click anywhere else on the element, or a right-click, opens a dialog with the element’s name. The dialog has OK, Organ’s name, which gives the organ’s own name back, and Cancel. On a fader the title bar names it and the rest of the fader shows or hides it.

A panel made, deleted or renamed through the View menu is written at once. Other changes are written by Save. The panels of an organ are kept in organs/<organ>.mppanels, in the data folder described on Files and folders. A panel window opens at the position and size saved with the panel, or 1024 x 600 pixels centred.

New stops and sections that an organ update brings show by default. The file lists only what was switched off.

The plain stop list

An organ that ships no console artwork opens on the plain stop list. It shows the organ’s stops under a heading for each division, as tiles 190 px wide in as many columns as fit, with a slim scroll bar. A drawn stop is ivory with dark lettering; a pushed-in stop is dark. The list follows the engine, so a stop drawn by a piston, a combination or MIDI shows drawn here too.

A stop that was left out of the load is dimmed and carries the tooltip Not loaded: chosen in Organ settings, Stops. A stop whose ranks ship no pipes is disabled and carries the tooltip This stop’s ranks ship no pipes in this sample set.

The list holds stops. Couplers, tremulants and pistons that the organ has as switches alone are reached through a panel.

Swell faders

View > Swell faders shows a strip 120 px wide at the right of the window with one vertical fader for each swell shoe of the organ. The item is present when the organ has at least one shoe. The strip is off at every start.

• Each fader runs from 0 (closed) to 127 (open) in steps of 1. Every fader starts open, at 127, when an organ is loaded.
• The label under a fader is the shoe’s name with the words Enclosure, Swell box or Swell taken off the front, so that two boxes called Enclosure R and Enclosure PO read R and PO. A shoe with no name left reads Swell. The organ’s own full name appears as a tooltip.
• A shoe moved over MIDI moves its fader.
• Two enclosures worked by one shoe share one fader.
• A control that sets a level, and that the organ asks to remember, has no fader here; the organ draws it on a page of its own.
• The crescendo has a fader in the Expression section of a panel, or the organ’s own drawn control.
• A right-click on a fader opens the menu of a continuous control described under Context menus.

On-screen keyboard

View > Keyboard shows a keyboard along the bottom of the window, 96 px high. It spans MIDI notes 24 to 108 (C1 to C8, with middle C as C4), and the key width follows the window width. A click plays the key through the same path as a MIDI keyboard, so stops and couplers apply.

When the organ has more than one playable keyboard, a selector above the keyboard names the manual that the keys play. It starts on the organ’s preferred manual, which is the widest compass when declared and otherwise the unenclosed manual with the most pipework. The keys play on the channel assigned to that manual in Settings > General settings > MIDI, and follow a change of channel made there while the organ is loaded. The keyboard is off at every start. The keys are played with the mouse.

Show played keys

View > Show played keys is ticked by default. While it is on, a key of a drawn manual lights when the key is down on that manual, whether it was pressed on the screen, on a console or by a recorded performance. A key lights on the manual it reached. Switching the item off stops the console from looking at the keys and from drawing them; any key lit goes dark once. Drawing the keys is the most costly part of repainting the window in a fast passage, so the item helps on a slow machine. The choice is kept for every organ.

Keyboard shortcuts

The window has no fixed shortcuts. Any stop, coupler, piston, setter and other object that has a MIDI window can be given a computer key there. The key then works from the main window, from page windows and from the Combinations window, unless the control with the focus uses the key itself. See MIDI and consoles.

Tooltips

A tooltip appears after the pointer rests on a control for 700 ms.

Where the plugins and phones differ