Project Future Direction

[Songtech-0912]

Hi all!

I understand that Tenacity has recently faced some serious setbacks. The recent attacks on @cookiengineer are a catastrophe that I think is better left undiscussed - we all know about the horrible events. I believe that for Tenacity to move forward, we need to have a comprehensive discussion on the project. With my perspective as a designer and developer, my opinion is to do these things:

• The first thing we have to emphasize is maximum user privacy. This is pretty much clear from the onset, we are making Tenacity to be privacy-centric. With that in mind, we need to move forward with "user-respecting" as a major theme - we should rewrite the website to remove all forms of analytics and work with LibreJS, among other things. However, we must be careful in doing this, as we don't want to perpetuate the common myth that "privacy == inconvenience". We must begin
• However, our major obstacle is that we are seen as amateurish. To resolve this issue, we need to establish ourselves as a team dedicated to making a professional and user-centric audio editor. We need to bring back some of the polish of Audacity but with the special touch of Tenacity - restyling the website for a different look and feel might be a start, as well as continuing the ongoing discussion on designing a new logo (which I can do). Additionally, we should immediately begin work on the docs - let's keep those in Markdown so that we don't need to run JavaScript for them, and using CSS to handle all the styling.
• The second thing we need to do is to make our community as welcoming as possible. Tenacity is in unstable territory at the moment, and a few (albeit dedicated) volunteers are not going to be sustainable long-term. We also need to do this to distance ourselves from both Audacity and especially Sneedacity - I don't want to push the flame war further, but TBH they are fiercely defensive and not welcoming at all when I tried to have a polite conversation with them. I believe we can do better than that.
• The third thing is to establish a dedicated identity for Tenacity. Because, unfortunately, most users of Audacity use it for convenience (as it is gratis software) - they don't care at all about the free and open-source nature of it, and wouldn't care less if told about the privacy violations that lead to Tenacity's birth. If Tenacity is nothing but Audacity with a few minor differences, no one will use it. To deal with this issue, my recommendation would be to start making a design system for Tenacity. While the words "redesign" may sound quite terrifying, I plan on making incremental, small-scale UI changes that would slowly get users accustomed to a more polished and intuitive UI. This includes building a brand color palette, setting typography, and standardizing UI components. I think open-source design is a completely possible and worthy goal, and what better place to implement it than a community-centric program like Tenacity?

I believe that we should add a ROADMAP.md detailing our future direction, and add a Development Plans section in the README which would point to the ROADMAP.md. Any thoughts and criticisms on this idea would be greatly appreciated.

[fossdd]

You may also want to read https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/8

[Songtech-0912]

I understand there are major divisions in the team - that's understandable, Tenacity has had a difficult period recently. Additionally, the lack of a good platform for communicating live without javascript or sharing info on this area complicates matters. But we've got to work with what we have, don't we? I think the original points in the discussion hold true - a focus on building our identity as distinct from Audacity and as a community-based user-centric music application.

[unbeatable-101]

Additionally, the lack of a good platform for communicating live without javascript or sharing info on this area complicates matters.

There are matrix and irc channels

[Songtech-0912]

Those work but aren't the most friendly for newer developers or newer users to get used to. Something like Mastodon and Telegram used together would be best in collaboration - but they don't solve one major issue, which is to have easily sharable knowledge bases and planning areas. Sites such as notion and HackMD are great for this type of thing but they are proprietary and require JavaScript.

[falkTX]

Matrix is literally opening a webpage, set user and password and be done with it...

It is not complicated and quite on par with other solutions.

[Songtech-0912]

Ok, thanks for letting me know, I'll do that right away. Additionally, I will also do the following:

• Register a Tenacity organization on Penpot, a free/libre alternative to Figma
• Begin working on a new website design on Penpot - this is important in establishing us as an independent and separate project
• Begin work on UI exploration and doing research on how the UI may be improved - it's good already but it could use some polish

[nbsp]

Using IRC can actually done from the Web, without an account. See gamja IRC.

[Songtech-0912]

Alright, so I've made an initial draft design for the website. Here it is:

Feedback and criticisms on this would be appreciated.

[NotAProton]

Nice design. How heavy is it? Would you post your html and css?

[peepo5]

dark theme would look better imo :L

[peepo5]

also i would put features like- privacy-respecting, etc above download button

[Songtech-0912]

@not-a-proton It's meant to be super lightweight, no frameworks, just HTML + CSS, so < 200KB. However, I'm not super happy with the design. I think some further exploration is necessary.

[Gapstare]

If we are going with a bright theme, could we at least tone it down a bit? I have a problem looking at bright screens for an extended time.

[Songtech-0912]

Additionally, here's my design for a conceptual improved UI:

Of course, this is anything but complete and finished. Many parts of the UI should be improved, and there are big issues with the mockup. However, it is a good foundation to work on further.

[peepo5]

Looks really good! Make sure to share this somewhere where wxwidgets and qt is discussed. if/when wxwidgets are replaced, a better interface such as this could be implimented.

[cookiengineer]

Did you use a specific iconset for creating the (smaller) buttons on the right (below the volume meters)? If a specific icon set can be used, it would ease up the spritemap generation part.

Audacity's codebase chose to use a crappy icon format (xpm) that's basically C-code representing a char array; and I'd love to make this use something like png (or if possible) svg formatted icons that would ease up the process of potential theming later.

[Songtech-0912]

The icons I used were a mix of 3 icon sets:

• 50% were from Material icons
• 30% were from Font Awesome (but this was because I was a bit too rushed to carefully look through the material icons and find the ones I wanted)
• 20% were custom-designed ones, you can see (a limited set) of them here

@cookiengineer I'd love to help with the effort to clean up the icon system, especially because I'm actually also working on an icon set at the moment (from another project).

[Songtech-0912]

Additionally, I also have an idea for future governance of the project: we can assign a periodically rotated set of experienced contributors to serve as governance members of the project, keeping the project alive, moving, and in good hands.

[Songtech-0912]

New website design (updated) - do note that the text here is JUST PLACEHOLDER TEXT, I am a horrible writer and I just added whatever came to mind in terms of labels!

See https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/163#issuecomment-881988712 for more details

[bitsper2nd]

I would like to remind people that the best way for @Songtech-0912 to receive feedback directly is to open an account in Figma and comment on the mockup design. Here is the latest iteration of the mockup.

In case you don't want to open an account on figma(it's free as in beer), just leave a comment below then. The link above is to see the design as it were a live page for the website. It's what we call a prototype. Currently there is only a mockup for the home page. But as the design progresses, you will see the mockups for other pages.

[RAMChYLD]

that is a non-issue. if you disable javascript, expect for some functionality to not work. most users don't care. they leave javascript enabled.

How about a compromise? One thing web devs seem to be forgetting nowadays is accessibility. We can have the javascript flashiness on the page meant for most browsers, but how about also having a more basic version of the page that is viewable in links/lynx, and the user is redirected to that page if the browser replies with a user agent that is not a js-capable browser?

[bitsper2nd]

One thing web devs seem to be forgetting nowadays is accessibility.

Nope, modern web devs do consider accessibility. Javascript is another tool for that.

but how about also having a more basic version of the page that is viewable in links/lynx, and the user is redirected to that page if the browser replies with a user agent that is not a js-capable browser?

Then you should switch to a more capable browser that complies with the standards. Sorry.

[RAMChYLD]

The reason I brought up lynx is because it's upfront the easiest way to tell if the site will read properly to visually impaired people using screen readers or braille displays. Javascript often causes these to malfunction.

[yonderbread]

The reason I brought up lynx is because it's upfront the easiest way to tell if the site will read properly to visually impaired people using screen readers or braille displays. Javascript often causes these to malfunction.

While I do agree it would be awesome to have a more minimalist version of the website available, modern HTML has built-in features for accessibility such as screen readers.

[mhsabbagh]

Eagerly waiting for a release from your side folks, so that we can publish a press article about it on FOSS Post: https://fosspost.org

Fully supporting this.

[FrostKnight]

Glad you guys are working on this, it is extremely sad to see what audacity has become.

One could say, them calling themselves open source is now an "audacity"

:p

That being said and pun intended, I would love it, if you could remove the conan dependency and instead use something less bloated.

Heh, but if you don't want to, that's fine, I am just extremely glad you forked from Audacity.

Hope it all works out for you!

I hope yonderbread sees this repository, he was trying to maintain a fork, but the audacity team got his taken down.

Anywho, peace, hoping for you guys to be blessed to find a new way forward. :)

[sosasees]

I hope yonderbread sees this repository

I just mentioned @yonderbread in this reply so he is much more likely to see it

[crsib]

He moved to GitLab: https://gitlab.com/yonderbread/audacity/activity

[yonderbread]

My apologies for not getting back to you guys sooner.

It seems that my decision to change the license from GPLv2 to v3 may have put the Audacity team's neck-bearded devs in a fit. Panicked, I backed up the code, deleted the Github fork and put it up on Gitlab where it would be safe from these corporate demon spawns. It's entirely my mistake if I had a misunderstanding of the license agreement terms and I apologize to anyone who got confused on why the repo just yeeted itself out of existence.

I'm not sure what to do with my project now that there are quite a few others that have gained attention and are actively maintained. I despise redundancy, so the last thing I want to do is start doing what everyone else is doing unless I were to think of an original plan for my fork.

Is anyone still interested in tossing some ideas around for a neat audio tool? Let me know.

[yonderbread]

Ping @awslabspl @crsib

[FrostKnight]

I saw a response, about how you should "switch to a capable browser that complies with the standards in response, to people who wanted to be able to use the website on lynx and non corporate like browsers"

Javascript is not secure, modern standards are questionable right now, due to google and webextensions, etc...

My point being, if bitsper2nd's position is the official position of this fork's community, then you are very close to alienating me.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the direction the regular audacity is going in, but, that's such a rude position to take.

That is like saying, "Deal with it or get lost!"

I cannot abide in such foolishness, I may have to look elsewhere...

IF you change your mind, however, or at least are reasonable about this, I may change my mind about supporting you. That being said, I don't know if you will. If you won't, later... :/

[bitsper2nd]

I saw a response, about how you should "switch to a capable browser that complies with the standards in response, to people who wanted to be able to use the website on lynx and non corporate like browsers"

Yes. The majority of people are using webkit and blink based browsers. There is no need to support the 2 or 3 users on lynx or any other obscured text based browser.

Javascript is not secure, modern standards are questionable right now, due to google and webextensions, etc...

This is just for a homepage website. It's not a security nightmare.

My point being, if bitsper2nd's position is the official position of this fork's community, then you are very close to alienating me.

The most important thing here is Tenacity. As in the program, not the website. Getting mad over something trivial such as website using javascript or not supporting lynx is pointless.

[yonderbread]

I say we keep the website as minimal as possible and make it entirely in pure HTML.

[FrostKnight]

To be honest @bitsper2nd, if you don't want to do something, that's fine I guess, but your reasoning is flawed as hell, its just... as unfriendly as can be.
Yes, it is a homepage, and no I don't use lynx, my reason for replying is just to point out, you were being very selfish with your reply more than anger or anything else...

PS, webkit and blink browsers suck, they are insecure and craploaded.

That being said, would it really be that much work to fix?

[bitsper2nd]

PS, webkit and blink browsers suck, they are insecure and craploaded.

Those are the browsers that most users are going to be when accessing the website. Sorry, they are the standard. It is what it is.

Yes, it is a homepage, and no I don't use lynx, my reason for replying is just to point out, you were being very selfish with your reply more than anger or anything else...

Sorry, but I'm being realistic with you. Supporting obscure browsers and removing javascript is not a Tenacity project goal.

That being said, would it really be that much work to fix?

Why do you care more about a homepage website than the actual program that it was made for?

[akleja]

I've stayed out of the web design discussion so far. But I'd like to add my perspective.

• Base the page on sensible HTML written so it renders at least okay in text-based browsers and without stylesheets. This ensures accessibility. It is important for many screenreader based browsers to work, for one.
• Then add a layer of CSS to make it look fancy
• If javascript must be used, turning it off should not diminish accessibility, just remove som extra flair.

Accessibility has been a big focus in the design of the program for a very long time. Mostly making sure screen readers can make sense of everything, and having modes for the visually impaired. To me it would seem strange to not adhere to the same principles when designing the web page.

[bitsper2nd]

I agree with everything you just wrote. The discussion wasn't really much about design, but a disagreement with some users that are misinformed due to ignorance or simply being contrarian. They think that everything related to javascript and modern design trend is bad.

[akleja]

Then I guess I have nothing much to add.
Of course I have preferences and I guess I belong to the no-javascript crowd, but I can also see the benefit of mass appeal.

[FrostKnight]

Pointless comments have been deleted by Frostknight on this post.

Edit: This and most of my comments earlier this year were meaningless like grasping for the wind...

I wrote a reply elsewhere somewhere here...

Feel free to delete all my comments from more than a week ago here if you want.

As I may have mentioned below in a comment, the web is getting increasingly bloated and non mainstream web browsers are gonna get shafted I fear, due to user agent blockades, javascript and other nonsense... also uxp sucks now because source code is being worked on behind closed doors somewhat, last I checked... Thus It is completely and totally prideful the way I thought before. Bitsper was absolutely right, although for a very different reason then at least I thought.
I did not foresee this insanity, kind of shows me how little I actually know about somethings... I posted twice btw on same topic just so he can see what I wrote... aka bitsper2nd.

[sosasees]

In the website redesign thread, this is this webpage I came up with.

Is it accessible? I believe so, because when I tested it on both my computer, my phone, and in lynx, all 3 web browsers displayed the page as intended.

It is based directly on the Original tenacity website, because I thought it was already almost prefect.

[igavronski]

Any ideas on having an Android app? It would be great to have the ability to open projects on the road and do audio editing when traveling without carrying a laptop around!

[bitsper2nd]

Well, let me start with the obvious. Buttons are inconsistent. If they are supposed to serve as navigation, then a navbar would be a better choice. Two columns for the sections below the header is a must on desktop. Having only one column for is a lot of wasted space. See mpv as a reference on how you can tweak the landing page for desktop. This is my feedback for now. You are free to follow through or ignore.

[sosasees]

For now þe website is good enough. Just like @bitsper2nd suggested,

The first step would be to actually do a Design System for Tenacity.

, and then we can redesign the software and website for the better.

We will need a new discussion thread for the design system.

Update: I now made the design system thread.

[yonderbread]

Let's start with þe colors, because any good design system has good colors.
¿How about þese ones based on my tenacity webpage design?:

Wouldn't it be better if the colors were variable and easily changeable with some sort of stylesheet or settings menu? Now if these are the default color schemes I think they look good but I feel like we should choose one that is reminicent of the old audacity colors, but with a vibrant fresh coat of paint.

[sosasees]

Yes: With how controversial the subject of the color palette can be if not done carefully, we need it to be user-changeable.

[yonderbread]

Something I'd really want to see done with this project is implenting features allowing for much more customization and UI layout arrangement within the app.

[Songtech-0912]

@ALL I would like to clarify a few things here:

• First, I do wish that everyone can stay peaceful and tolerant of a variety of opinions here. And everyone should be able to accept other people challenging and critiquing their viewpoints. Thanks to @mc776 I realized that my copy-writing was flawed (I've changed it to all placeholders now).
• I am wishing that @FrostKnight and @bitsper2nd can accept each others' viewpoints on the browser support issue. I am a user who uses BOTH the latest version of Firefox Developer Edition for webdev and Lynx/Gemini/Eww in Emacs to browse so I understand, to a varying level, the concerns of both of you. My position is to do both, we try to support everything as much as possible, and also make accessibility a top-level priority.
• Thank you to all for sharing commentary, I really do appreciate all of it. Please continue doing so.

[FrostKnight]

Yeah, I now feel certain, that the web is too bloated to use anything but mainstream web browsers or forks that support very new technology,
Let's just say, things have gotten very... toxic in the uxp web browser zone, I am now realizing I was on a sinking ship... more so, because the uxp devs have closed most of their source code thus making themselves appear to not care about open source, but that is neither here nor there, I admit now, I was too prideful, forgive me, also, I don't think github allows most web browsers that aren't mainstream anyways... so I don't see it as much of a problem as I did before. Perhaps bitsper2nd was right in at least one way, its just not sustainable for a different reason though, there is a lot of user agent blocking non mainstream web browsers happening...

Long story short, I was too hotheaded and it was all meaningless... -_-
So yeah... sorry bitsper2nd and community fork of Tenacity, I hope Audacity has a force to reckon with, with at least one of these audacity forks.

Anywho, peace!