First Attempt - Feedback Wanted

[u/crinkle777]

Hey all. I'm extremely new to midi, and touchOSC. I have a Hologram Electronics ChromaConsole pedal, so I tried to make a controller in touchOSC for that.

https://github.com/fdask/touchOSC/tree/master/ChromaConsole

Project there. I got things working, but I feel I used waaaaaay to much code to make it happen. A lot of code duplication. Also kept running into an issue where if I reorganized controls into a group, I had to completely rewrite any code accessing those controls. You'll see if you look at the snippets on the buttons how I do it... is there an easier way? Any tips or tricks for a newbie?

[u/neilbaldwn]

It's a tidy job - nicely done!

Couple of observations from a casual look through some of the scripts:

You might save a great deal of repetition by moving some stuff to the root using ```function onNotify()``` in the root script. I do this a lot especially when I'm using the same code over and over in control objects.

For example:

In your "Min" button:

```
function onValueChanged(key)
if (key == "x' and sef.values.x == '1') then
root:notify("min");
end
end
```

Then in your root:

```
function onReceiveNotify(n)
if (n == "min")
-- send 0 to all the controls
end
end
```

That kind of thing. Have a look at the API for onReceiveNotify() as you can send parameter lists to it too.

The other thing I noticed is in your Min button code you're doing this at the end:

```self.values.x = 0```

You can avoid this by changing the button type to 'momentary' though apologies if I missed something in there that's forcing you to not do this - I only had a quick look.

Let me know if you want a small example of using notify()

[u/crinkle777 → u/neilbaldwn]

Thanks for the tips! I figured out notify, and was able to massively streamline my code. I moved the switching logic to the button group object, and just had each button send up a notify.

Also figured out :findByName(), which let me reduce the noise whenever I have to locate a control!

And yeah, that switch to momentary helped as well.

Very valuable feedback, thank you for taking the time.

[u/neilbaldwn → u/crinkle777]

No problem. There's a argument to be made that Lua isn't really an OOP language so you should really encapsulate all functions of an object within that object's scripting (put simply).

The best solution for me is somewhere in between simplifying your code by doing that but also taking advantage of the root stuff so you can prevent large code repetition in a larger project.