MusE Sequencer • Spring 2025 large fixes and features

Code:

- Effect rack plugins: Persistent plugins now added.  Even if a song is missing effect rack plugins and it is saved, all the information   necessary to recreate the plugins is saved. When the missing plugins are finally installed,   the song loads noramlly and everything is preserved.  (Previously only synth tracks had this persistence.)- Effect rack plugins: Fixed drag and drop. Both drag move and copy work now.  Controllers and midi assignments are also moved or copied.  Fixed corrupt XML in drag and drop plugins. QByteArray was not being used correctly.  TODO: Drag to desktop still not working, apparently it's very complicated.- All effect rack operations (adding/removing/moving/drag etc.) are now undoable/redoable.- Mixer: Added Undo and Redo menu items to mixer 'View' menu.  Tested Ctrl-Z and Shift-Ctrl-Z: Works OK now.  Helps when dragging plugins but also works with some of the other mixer functions   like track rename, track create.- Effect/synth plugins: Do not store or recognize initial parameters if custom data is present.  The assumption is that control or parameter values would be included in the custom data.  This is in fact alluded to in the vst spec. It says chunks can store the whole state,   but if chunks are not used then an alternative is to store the parameter values.  One of the things this might fix is complaints that some plugins immediately show   an indicator that they have been 'modified'. It might be because we were sending all   these parameters along with (after) the custom data.- Effect/synth plugins: Fixed name vs. label issues. Made consistent in both.- DSSI plugins: DSSI OSC path url cannot contain spaces (verified).  Major rewrite of OSC support. Switched to sending indexes rather than text in the OSC URL.- Effect/synth plugins: Fixed: Editing track name does not change titlebars in UI windows.  Fixed for generic UIs, DSSI, LV2 and native VST.  For DSSI, and LV2 External UIs: Unfortunately these take a titlebar name at creation time   and cannot be changed. So we close them and then re-open them again with the new text.  Note that when closing and re-opening a DSSI UI, either manually or automatically,   it does not save and restore the UI's geometry.  That's because there is no way to query the UI for the current geometry! Or set it as well.  Note that AMSynth DSSI for example insists on putting a prefix in front of your title bar text.  The LV2 version does not.- All plugin/synth native and generic UIs, and all mixer strips, now show fully qualified track   name with track index number as prefix.  This is because we allow blank and even duplicate track names. So this helps identify them.  Rack plugin UIs show a fully qualified name including the rack position number.- VST: Some VSTs were not saving or updating our mirrors of control values when controls changed.  VST does not use 'ports'. Eliminated the mirrors for VST. Use VST parameters throughout.  This bug was mentioned by a user. Tests OK now.- VST: Fixed crashes with open native VST UIs when exiting app, because we delete on close.  Removed close() call in ~VstNativeEditor(), and changed "delete _editor" to "_editor->close()"   in VstNativeSynthIF::deactivate3(). Testing OK so far!- VST: Fixed VST native window open state not updated when closed, menu item still said open.- Effect/synth plugins: Major rewrites and changes:  Ongoing efforts towards a unified single 'plugin' system (still in progress).  Both Plugin and Synth now share a base class PluginBase.  Many common members have been moved there.  There is no more SynthType member of class Synth, or separate _isDssiSynth, _isDssi, _isLV2Synth,   _isLV2Plugin, _isDssiVst, _isVstNativeSynth, _isVstNativePlugin etc. members of class Plugin.  Instead there is now one common member in PluginBase, an enum PluginType.  This enum PluginType, and several other plugin-related enums that were in global_defs.h   were all moved into plugin_scan.h, in namespace MusEPlugin.  Before any more plugin architectures (VST3, CLAP etc.) can be supported in MusE, it would be most wise   to complete this work first, instead of trying to 'shoe-horn' it into the Plugin/PluginI class.  Added a Description column to the SynthDialog.  Added column sorting as well.- XML files: Fixed XML file saving ending tag indentation eyesores: Over 100 places where   tag was used instead of etag, and/or things like: tag(level, "/someEnd") or level--.  Replaced all with etag(--level, "someEnd")- Song files: CHANGED Song file format. Added AudioTrack and Track tags.  Controllers and midi assignments no longer have upper bits for rack position.  They have been moved under the plugin tag and the AudioTrack tag.- Song file version bump required !!!  Bumped to 4.0- Translations: Fixed several problems with updating translation files (*.ts)   (when UPDATE_TRANSLATIONS cmake variable is set on).  Still one remaining issue with one global string in globals.cpp:  Most of the problems were actually caused by very stale ifdef optional sections of code   with bad bracketing, missing/stale variables and so on, like this:  "Parenthesis/brace mismatch between #if and #else branches; using #if branch"  Updated translation files. They had not been done for a long time.- Character encoding: Fixed all usages of QString::toLatin1(), toLocal8Bit, and toUtf8.  After much research and a better undertanding of encoding, it was realised that   many mistakes were made. Several hundred places were corrected.  For example all our XML files now store text as UTF8.  This should help a with different locales having various issues with name characters etc.  Short story: Use toUtf8 for storing strings in files and use toLocal8Bit for system calls,   and BANISH usage of QString::toLatin1 wherever possible.- Song loading: Eliminated waiting cursor while loading songs.  Various incident dialogs or message boxes might come up during song loading,   which made clicking OK awkward since the cursor was a waiting cursor, not a pointer.  It turns out, we don't even need a waiting cursor because... we already have a progress dialog!  But it kept getting hidden by other various windows as they would appear (mixer etc).  Fixed progress dialog: QProgressDialog::setWindowModality(Qt::ApplicationModal)   appears to be what we wanted. Tested OK.- Song loading: When effect or synth plugins are missing, replaced individual message boxes   for each missing plugin with a single 'missing plugins dialog' showing all missing plugins.  This was a request from a few dozen months ago.- Track names: Allow user to change track name to one that's already used.  Changed three relevant dialogs: In track list, mixer, and strip to ask if user really   wants to use the name, instead of forbidding it completely.  Duplicate track names have actually been allowed in the application for many years now,   since many midi files have blank or duplicate track names.  The app never searches by track name any more, it uses track index.- OS cross-compatibility: Ongoing efforts:  Replaced ALL usages of popen with QProcess for better portability across platforms.  Rewrote grepmidi application to be all QT with no popen etc.  Replaced ALL usages of dlopen, dlclose etc. with QLibrary for better portability across platforms.  TODO: Switch jack dlsym stuff over to QLibrary.  Replaced all hard-coded "*.so" with QLibrary::isLibrary() for better portability across platforms.  Replaced all fdopen with Qt equivalents. Rewrote Scripts class to use QTemporaryFile instead.  TODO: Some scripts don't seem to work?