Help texts upon touch

Ideas / Feature requests
,
1

Once you have too many synths than is smart (like I have) and you get a bit older (like I am) or your memory is lousy (like mine :thinking: ), it becomes harder to remember all the quirks each individual synth has.

Here’s an idea to support these shortcomings, so we can keep all our sound engines: a helptext that can be added to a control. The help usually is not shown, allthough it would be great to have a setting or function by which you can have controls highlighted (or not) when a helptext is added to them. For instance like in Excel, by adding a tiny red triangle in the control slot corner.

In any case, recalling the helptext would then happen by long encoder press, and the text would then dissappear by a) releasing the encoder or b) after the release by touching any of the encoders.

Such helptext should be bound to its control. If you move the control around, then the text would at least keep its context.

5 Likes
2

Sorry to dig this old request out. I am new to the E1

I would like that too. It could have as well performance notes in regard to parameters.

3

The notion of a pop up window was never part of the original design and I haven’t seen an easy quick way to do it even now.

Yes, with the graphics additions, you could craft something, but it would be a lot of code and a lot of extra stuff for all your pages.

4

How about a large Text-only “pad” that could be placed on the last/first page as a kind about this preset and some function? I don’t think it needs to be connected with the controllers directly but having a simple text pad could help orientate around a preset.

5

I can imagine the help text / hint being shown in the status bar at the bottom of the screen, eg, when the knob is being touched.

The general preset info - till now - we relied on having such information in the editor application on the computer, I understands, however, that having that on the device itself would be quite helpful sometimes.

6

A use case : for synths where parameters are hidden in menu’s or combined with shift-buttons or other key combinations, it could help to show in the E1 help text what key combinations are needed on the physical synth to reach the same result.

1 Like
7

For those that need some small help texts, here’s a way.

By default the timer function is disabled, and its period is set to a quarter second.

When touching a pot, the onPotTouch is triggered.It looks for the text to display, based on the control touched, and then triggers the showHelp function.
The showHelp (that can be triggered from elsewhere too) then displays the text in the lower right screen corner.and enables the timer.
The onTick will revert the display back to its default text after about a second (4 ticks).

The reason to do it like this, is that during preset use , the display is not delaying the speed of operation. If you touch pots faster than within a second, you’ll immediately get to see the last applicable text, and the timer resets to display the last one for 4 ticks.

timer.setPeriod(250)
amountTicks = 0
events.subscribe(POTS)

function timer.onTick()
  amountTicks = amountTicks + 1
  if amountTicks > 4 then
    timer.disable()
    info.setText(authorDate)
  end
end

function showHelp(helpText)
  info.setText(helpText)
  amountTicks = 0
  timer.enable()
end

function events.onPotTouch(potId, controlId, touched)
  if touched == false then return end
  helpTexts = {{7,"shift + Volume"},{85,"shift + Portamento"},{48,"hold + Unison"},{53,"hold + Unison"},{42,"shift + OSC2 detune"},
    {55,"shift + Sync"},{60,"hoshiftld + Sync"},{49,"shift + Sync"},{65,"shift + Sync"}, 
    {88,"hold + Sync"},{94,"hold + Sync"},{54,"hold + Sync"},{60,"hold + Sync"},{49,"hold + Sync"},{65,"hold + Sync"}, -- page MANUAL + CONTROL
    {39,"shift + Rate"},{366,"shift + OSC1 Waveform"},{126,"shift+ OSC1 Waveform"},{40,"hold + LFO Waveform"},
    {30,"shift + OSC1 Freq"},{158,"hold + OSC1 Freq"},{31,"shift + OSC2 Freq"},{36,"hold + OSC2 Freq"},  
    {37,"shift + Filter Freq"},{84,"hold + Filter Freq"},{49,"shift + OSC1 PWM"},{159,"hold + OSC1 PWM"},
    {46,"shift + OSC2 PWM"},{165,"hold + OSC2 PWM"},{38,"shift + Volume Mod"},{319,"hold + Volume Mod"}, -- page Modulation
    { 1,"hold + OSC1 Saw"},{  6,"hold + OSC2 Saw"},{154,"shift + Sync"},{388,"shift + OSC2 F.Env"}, -- 
    {80,"hold + OSC1"},{184,"hold + OSC1"},{81,"hold + OSC2 FV CC"},{188,"hold + Track"}, -- 
  }  
  for _, pair in ipairs(helpTexts) do
    if pair[1] == controlId then 
      showHelp(pair[2])
      return
    end
  end
end
5 Likes