Port is used in VCV Rack terminology. But why? in real rack environment, including Eurorack hardware, “jack” term is used (never “port”).
It’s the reason why I’m using jack in mine module manuals.
Good news if now we can customize cables & jacks colorschemes!
As rule, perhaps BPM-CV can join V/OCT / pitch / note principle, because BPM-CV is a way to control the tempo by analog voltage (instead of pulses/triggers per second), using 0V = 120 BPM, +1V = 240 BPM, +2V = 480 BPM, -1V = 60 BPM, -2V = 30 BPM, and so on.
@contemporaryinsanity — I take back what I said about not being able to reproduce it. I can, and it is now fixed.
Thank you for coming back with a second report instead of letting it go. I missed it at first because it depended on the number of modules in the patch, and I was testing with only a few modules but it was a check that ran on the audio thread for every module. Now the check is off the audio thread completely.
The fix is in the repository and will be in the next release.
@Ohmer — you are right, and for the reason you give. A BPM control voltage doubles per volt: 0V is 120, +1V is 240, −1V is 60. That is volt per octave in every respect except that what it sets is a tempo rather than a note. It is also how the convention this now follows colours it. BPM is in the pitch family from the next build.
One detail. The rule sits after the gate and trigger rules rather than with the pitch ones, because first match wins: a port called “BPM clock” sends pulses, not a voltage, and is still read as a clock. Only a BPM port that is not also named as a clock lands in pitch.
Adding it turned up a problem worth fixing properly. The rules live in a file — <Rack user folder>/DreamerDevelopment/colours.json — written once and then treated as the authority, so that you can edit them. Which means a rule added in a later release would have reached nobody who had already run the plugin, including you.
So the file now carries a version number, and one older than the current rules has the rules added since merged into it. Each is placed where it belongs rather than appended, since position is what decides which rule wins — BPM is inserted immediately before the CV rule, which is the only place it works. A rule you have deleted yourself stays deleted, and one you have edited is left alone.
All of this is in the repository now and will be in the next release.
Thanks for the suggestion, and for the reasoning that came with it. It is the reasoning that made it obviously right rather than a matter of taste.
On jack versus port — I prefer “jack” too. I have stayed with “port” only because it is Rack’s own term, as others have said. I’m tempted to switch back to jack…
I was surprised to see you eliminated the mouse movement trace. But I would never use it, so I won’t miss it.
The “Show popup on adjust” option seems redundant with the VCV View “Show tooltips” option now that you adjusted the size to match the size of the VCV tooltips. I like the VCV tooltips better in that they work for ports and lights as well, and also show the widget description when populated. I use the parameter description in my Venom plugin to show whether a parameter is Locked, and for ports it displays any normalled connections.
Maybe replace “Show popup on adjust” with “Show custom popups”, activate when hovering over a widget, add the extra info for ports and lights, including the descriptions, and let the user set the size and maybe the color? If the default VCV popup size works for you, then maybe you don’t need your own version.
@DaveVenom — I do know the VCV tooltips, and the reason I did not simply use them is contrast. I have an eye condition that makes anything dim or low contrast hard to read, and the native tooltips fall on the wrong side of that line for me.
That is really the story of the whole plugin. Until about three years ago I had given up on Rack, because too much of it was too hard for me to read. Clarity is what let me come back to it, and I am happy to say it worked.
Your suggestion is a good one and I will take it: the popups will become customisable, both in how much detail they carry and in size. One distinction worth drawing though — mine exist to show a value while it is changing, where the native tooltip on a port shows fixed information about that port. They are answering different questions, so I would not expect mine to appear on ports at all. I had mainly added them to make what I was doing legible in demo videos, so it is useful to hear they might do more than that.
A small aside, since it is oddly relevant: I invented tooltips, and gave them the name, when I was a developer at Microsoft in the nineties. We wanted to put things on the toolbar whose meaning was hard to convey clearly in a little picture . A lot of my career ended up being built around making things easier to use, so Clarity is less of a departure than it looks — the same problem thirty years later, with knobs and cables instead of toolbars. It also means I have no standing whatsoever to complain that Rack’s are hard for me to read.
So not even the dark high contrast UI setting helps? Interesting. OK, I see why you have your custom popups now.
Wonderful and inspiring story.
The port tooltip also shows current voltage value when patched, as well as current sources or destinations, depending on type. So they are not strictly static. I should think it could be useful to replicate all those tooltips with your custom design to make them more legible for you (and others)
Even if the tooltip info is static, it can still be very useful. Faceplate labels may often be cryptic due to lack of space. The tooltips are an opportunity to provide more detailed information about the parameter or port or light. With Venom modules I try to be concise but fully descriptive in my names that show in the tooltips.
I have to confess that I have not been good about catering to the color blind population. The small button values on my Venom modules are color coded, without any other distinguishing visual characteristic. I hope the tooltips showing the value in words is adequate for those that cannot distinguish the colors.
Who knows why Andrew called it port, but he did. Consistency is mostly more important than correctnes, so I would definately suggest sticking with “port”.
@DaveVenom — good point, and I had genuinely forgotten. It has been long enough since I could comfortably read them that I no forgot the port tooltip shows live voltage. I’ll add the ability. to render those through the popup display, brighter and larger.
I did provide an alternative way of seeing a signal’s level, in the oscilloscope in the Test Gear module. Attach it to any port and you get a small scope, with a 0V line across it and grid lines marking the levels, so you can read where a signal sits as well as its shape.
Which reminds me of something I have been meaning to add — a voltmeter widget for Test Gear, showing the level as a number rather than a trace. It could show more than the instantaneous value the tooltip gives you: a peak reading, and a smoothed level averaged over a short window, so the number settles into something readable rather than flickering through every sample.
. A lot of my career ended up being built around making things easier to use, so Clarity is less of a departure than it looks — the same problem thirty years later, with knobs and cables instead of toolbars. It also means I have no standing whatsoever to complain that Rack’s are hard for me to read.