VST Preset Generator

This isn’t a real task. You should close it and start opening some real tasks.

Build, test and release for Linux platform.

Possible linux release formats:

• source code

Beware of VST SDK. It must not be distributed freely.
Maybe replace it by VeSTige (aeffectx.h)

• distribution package: deb, rpm, etc. (see https://build.opensuse.org/ ?)

• linux portable app: AppImage, Guix, Snap, CDE, flatpak, etc.

Improve the VST-list management:

• open/save
• xml versionning
• sort VST name
• edit VST name edit Preset name
• Save all parameters.
• Show VST plugin folder, and other informations.

Load the values of a preset.

User case: open an existing preset and randomize some parameters of this patch to create a new one.

Improve randomness

Create a Windows installer.
The generation must be automated in the build.

Qt framework has build-in Windows installer.

The build script must generate following output:

• windows installer for 32bit and 64bit version, each version could be a package that the user may select in the installer GUI. Obviously the 64bit version can’t be selected when the platform is 32bit.
• Zip file of the binaries with documentation. Same as release 0.2.6.
• Source of the code that have been used for this build (tar.gz ?)
• MD5 and SHA1 sum of all the files

The version number musts be extracted from the vpg.pro file, and propagated to all installer packages. So a template mechanism must be implemented.
The license file, roadmap and documentation must be dynamically generated and added to the packages.

Allow the user to set parameter names for standard method (non-chunk).

When the user load a fxb/fxp that doesn’t use the opaque method, then there is no information about the parameter names.

Two use cases:

• The user can set the names manually.
• The user can specify the “dll” file to get the names. If the user loaded a dll of a non-chunk plug-in, the current dll must be re-used. See mda plug-ins.

Plug-ins that does not support bank: currently nothing is generated.

There must be an error message to inform the user?

Since the move from Sourceforge to TuxFamily, the e-mail contact and website have changed.

The new website is http://vst-preset-generator.org and the e-mail is contact@vst-preset-generator.org

Hence all the reference to old contact address and old website must be updated.

The sourceforge website must also be updated to force the user to download from the new official website.

Add unit test to cover as much code as possible.

This include some refactoring to make the code testable. For instance MainDialog do too many things that must move in other classes: preset writing, settings, etc.

Fix typo in french translation, in “A Propos” dialog:

“...VOUS pour utiliser cet outils !” ⇒ “...VOUS pour l’utilisation de cet outil !”

The current generated binary Windows exe does not have information about the version numbers, the revision, the application name, etc.

See qmake VERSION parameter:
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qmake-variable-reference.html#version

and the QMAKE_TARGET_* parameters:
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qmake-variable-reference.html#qmake-target

Using these qmake parameters will delete the current rc file. Hence the application icon must be handled by the RC_ICONS variable:
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/appicon.html

The following meta tags are missing on the website:

<meta name="description" content="bla bla bla">
<meta name="keywords" content="xxx,yyy,zzz,abc">
<meta name="author" content="xxx yyy">

Remove “.html” extension in hyperlinks, as notified by the w3c.

Currently, the value of the parameters is bound to [0;1], which is the value that is send to the VST API.

It’s not user-friendly, because this value will be translated by the plugin into meaningful value like ON/OFF or 1/2/4/8/16 for polyphony or a db value for volume.

So, as a user I want to see the real value of the parameter in order to better know the value that will be displayed in the GUI of the plug-in.

Technical note: use getParameterDisplay in the VST API to get this value.

As a user I want the default bank size to be the max number of program that the plug-in can handle in order to generate the maximum amount of random preset.

Note: in the GUI, the high bound must also be the max number of program of the plug-in.

The filename of the license file is “licence.txt”, which is wrong for english name.
Replace it by “license.txt”.

Other places where “licence” is used instead of “license”:

• Roadmap.txt line 136
• vstpresetgenerator.h line 23

Also check the website for similar mistakes and change the license.txt file encoding to UTF-8.

The size written in the header of fxp/fxb files are wrong.

The computation of size misses the 4 octets that specifies the chunk size.

See VSTPresetTest unit tests.

EndiannessConverter failed with long values.

See EndiannessConverterTest::testfromBigEndian and EndiannessConverterTest::testToBigEndian.

When the user double clicks on a VST Plugin name in the VST list, then the previous values of the parameters are lost.

User story:
As a user I want to keep track of my previous random parameter values like val1 or val2 when I load an other plugin, in order to more easily manage many plugins at the same time.

Some unknown characters appears after the parameter names in the parameter table.

To reproduce, open GLFO plug-in (from GStuffs) and observe the parameter names displayed in the parameter table.
(see attached screen-shot)

As a user I would like to keep the same target value for constant random method and normal random method, in order to not lost this information when switching between them.

Example:

Let a parameter with “constant” random method and the target value of 0.1. When the user change the random method to “normal”, the middle value should be 0.1.
Same behavior is expected when the user click back to “constant” random method.

When clicking on buttons to change the random method for all parameters, the values from previous action are kept.

The expected behavior is to get default value, except for the yellow “Everything random” button.

To reproduce:
- load a plugin
- change the value of a parameter, for instance min: 0.5
- click on “set normal method to all” (the red icon)
- click on “set uniform method to all” (the blue icon)
- the min value is 0.5, instead of the default value (0.0)