Post by songsbygrover on Sept 13, 2017 8:18:28 GMT -8
EDITED 18th Sep: SOLUTIONS ADDED, PLUS COLOUR CO-ORDINATION TO KEEP THIS THREAD GETTING OUT OF HAND WITH LONG QUOTES-IN-QUOTES
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Hey Jamey, any news on when the next Raven software update is expected?
Had the Raven just over a week and spotted a few bugs and design flaws... checked through the forum here and seems like some of these have been mentioned before, but here's an extensive list of what I'm noticing in terms of issues. Could you confirm which of these should be fixed in the next update? (Or point out any that may be Mavericks related… I may consider upgrading to El Capitan if needed.)
I'm on Raven MTi software version 3.3.0, running OSX 10.9.5 and PT12.4, by the way.
CURRENT ISSUES:
1) Scroll direction doesn't get saved... reverts to "regular" every time. Looks like a bug that a few people have noticed over the last year at least. SOLVED WITH FORTHCOMING UPDATE, APPARENTLY
(And BTW "regular/inverted" should be renamed something like "classic/natural"... since "regular" feels highly IRREGULAR for anyone used to using an iPad/iPhone, for example, which I'd think is pretty much everyone by now)
2) When zoomed in with pinch-to-zoom, click-and-drag finger movements get really unpredictable and jumpy…e.g. if I zoom in to finely move an automation node, while I'm clicking-and-holding, it will jump around the track from maximum to minimum and left to right… essentially unusable like that. I DON'T THINK THE PROPOSED SOLUTION IS RIGHT (CHANGING TO ZOOM WITH 4 FINGER SWIPE)... THE ISSUE ISN'T WITH ZOOMING, IT'S WITH MOVING AUTOMATION POINTS WHILE ZOOMED IN. VIDEO HERE SHOWING THE ISSUE:
3) In Batch Commander, there’s no way I can change the delay on each step of a command. They all default to 100ms, and I can’t lower it in any way (with mouse/keyboard/finger). If I highlight the number and type “1”, the delay changes to “1001”… i.e. there’s no way to get rid of the “100” first! SOLVED... INDEED YOU HAVE TO PRESS DELETE OR BACKSPACE FIRST! DOH!
4) About 30% of the time it doesn’t register me pressing modifier keys on the physical keyboard. Eg. holding ALT while dragging a clip to copy and move that clip, but when I let go it acts as if WASN’T holding ALT. (And yes I’m pressing and letting go at the right times, it works 100% of the time with a mouse instead of the finger. And no I don’t want to use the on-screen modifier keys… I use all the complex modifier-combos which I have in muscle memory and can’t translate to the screen, plus lots of them don’t work without clicking and holding then letting go at the right time, but the on-screen ones you can’t hold in the same way).
MAYBE THIS IS A BUG WITH ONLY MY SYSTEM? HERE'S A VIDEO SHOWING THE PROBLEM IN ACTION... EVERY TIME HERE, I'M FIRMLY PRESSING SHIFT+CTRL+OPTION+CMD, YET YOU CAN SEE ON THE RAVEN SCREEN (BY THE WHITE BORDERS FAILING TO LIGHT) THAT AROUND 30% OF THESE BUTTON PRESSES DO NOT REGISTER, AND ALSO SOMETIME THEY STICK ONCE I LET GO, BOTH OF THESE YOU CAN SEE IN THE VIDEO. THE MODIFIER KEYS ALWAYS REGISTER JUST FINE IF IT'S A MOUSE CLICK, BUT COMBINED WITH A SCREEN TAP THE SUCCESS RATE IS ONLY 70% (ISH). (AND IT'S NOT A PROBLEM WITH MY KEYBOARD... CHANGING TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE KEYBOARD OR THE KEYBOARD ON MY MACBOOK STILL HAS THE SAME ISSUE HAPPENING)
5) Arrow keys pallet doesn’t work as expected… surely it should function like the p & l & ; & ’ keys in terms of moving selections up and down? (I’ll stick to the physical keyboard on those too, but just saying…) I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN JAMEY ABOUT THE SIDEWAYS ARROW KEYS WORKING BETTER THIS WAY - I DEFINITELY AGREE
However, I was actually referring to the vertical arrows. I realised that the issue I noticed is actually with the SHIFT key not working IN COMBINATION with the arrow keys, to allow MULTIPLE selections. VIDEO BELOW, where I show what happens when I press:
#1 - physical SHIFT + physical ";" --- it selects track below while maintaining initial selection
#2 - onscreen SHIFT + onscreen arrow (which apparently just does a ";" press) --- initial selection does not remain
#3 - physical SHIFT + onscreen arrow --- quite a stretch for my right hand while holding the phone in the left... effect is the same as #2, suggesting that vertical arrow keys are not equivalent to "P" and ";" OR that shift is failing both onscreen and physically.
6) Can't get mix window to display properly with 24 tracks. Red line won't disappear so the faders won't line up, and also MIX 24 button should also hide the track-list, no? SOLVED, I WAS JUST MISTAKEN ABOUT HOW TO USE THIS (THOUGH COULDN'T IT HIDE/SHOW THE TRACK-LIST AS WELL AS TOGGLE THE FADER NUMBER?)
7) When in “MIX 22" mode surely the BANK buttons should change from BANK 24 to BANK 22? Also, can’t we have somewhere in between... an additional BANK 8 option would be ideal… moving by 1 at a time is infuriatingly slow. HUI LIMITATION - CAN'T BE SOLVED CURRENTLY. WORKAROUND: FINGER SCROLLING ISNT TOO BAD. FOLLOWUP: Any potential to add a button that sends 8 "BANK 1" commands in quick succession? Can't find a way to do that in batch commander.
8) Hitting BANK 24 when there are less tracks offscreen than 24, it should logically just move to the last track. Pretty ridiculous that if your session has 50 tracks, you can’t get to the last few using 2 taps of the BANK 24 button. HUI LIMITATION - CAN'T BE SOLVED CURRENTLY.
9) Why can’t the Raven mixers (internal and external) show more characters for the track names… at least as many as Pro Tools itself does? It’s very confusing having the names displayed differently to how they’re named in PT. HUI LIMITATION - CAN'T BE SOLVED CURRENTLY.
10) The track icons should ideally colour their backgrounds to the correct track colours instead of staying black. HUI LIMITATION Or at least you could include solid colour “track icons" as well as the instrument pics, so we can do that manually (I can make these myself of course with a bit of work, but should definitely come included with the software). WORKAROUND... SET THE TRACK SATURATION ON HIGH, SO THE WHOLE TRACK IS BRIGHTLY COLOURED INSTEAD OF JUST THE TOP PART. BTW you're missing some obvious icons for popular instruments, eg acoustic guitar… very unimportant but just that missing stuff like that makes the software feel a little unfinished I guess. VERY MINOR ISSUE THOUGH
FOLLOWUP: Sure, I figured that Pro Tools wasn't sending colour info via HUI, but you guys managed to make the faders map to the right colour on the internal mixer. So if the software can already do that, can't it then copy that info into the "icons" as solid colours like I described. Then those same colour "icons" would be shown in the external mixer too right? You'd have to bank through the whole session once to make them populate I guess, but it might be possible? Personally I could work almost entirely without track names as long as the colours are shown in the right places... for now I'll stick to the internal mixer anyway. I think if the pan knobs were indeed added to the internal mixer, the external one would pretty much become redundant anyway...
11) The quick list in batch commander is a bit of a mess - stuff is named inconsistently (e.g. “audiosuite/audio-suite/audio suite”) which makes searching harder. Also very annoying when something like 'do for 10 tracks’ is available but ‘do for 1 track’ is not (e.g. split into mono and delete extra is available for 10 tracks but not for 1?). Also would be nice to show instructions for anywhere it’s necessary to have the setup a certain way… a little “info” icon that will bring up info on how to use that quicklist command properly without it failing. FOLLOWUP: Could you solve this by having a "hide legacy commands from search" option (that's turned on by default)? Then all the old mislabelled commands can just be duplicated with new ones that are consistently labelled, but without everyone having to see both when searching. Also if you did add something like in point 17, then all commands with a specific number would become unnecessary and could also be "hidden" to reduce clutter. Eg Name tracks x4, names tracks x8 etc, would all be covered by a "name tracks" command that asks "how many?". VERY MINOR ISSUE THOUGH
12) Lots of the preinstalled batch commands simply do not work for me. Usually appears that the mouse clicks it’s trying to do are not aligned in the right place, e.g. the ones for Vocalign. This would be ok if I could edit them manually once loaded to fix problems, but that seems impossible currently (as the preloaded commands appear as single actions instead of as a list of actions). WORKAROUND... SAVE AS A USER PRESET, THEN RELOAD AND COMMANDS ARE LISTED STEP BY STEP... THEN POSSIBLE TO FIX ANY SINGLE STEP.
13) Can’t clicks be referenced from the corner of an open window instead of from the corner of the screen? It seems like some of your built-in commands must do this (e.g. "preview audiosuite”), but I can’t seem to do it manually, eg if I want to automate a click on a specific button in the same audiosuite window. (If I record a mouse click it never seems to play back in the right place). SOLVED, BUT THE SOLUTION IS APPLESCRIPTS, WHICH IS QUITE TECHNICALLY INVLOVING. I'LL PROBABLY REQUEST A FEW PLUGIN-SPECIFIC CLICKS IN THE FUTURE
MORE IDEAS:
Also here are some ideas for how the functionality of the system could be improved even further in the future. I’m happy to provide much more detail on these if that’s of interest… e.g. I’d love to be involved in the design and/or testing phase if you do consider adding these features!
14) Selectable grid size for the batch command palettes would be nice. Eg if you have a 2-command palette and you think of a 3rd and 4th to add in the same category, instead of having to manually copy these commands to a new 4-command palette, it’d be better to be able to change the width (2/4/6/8) the same way as you change the name and colour. (Obviously it’d have to throw an error if there were other buttons in the way, preventing it from getting wider). VERY SMALL ISSUE, TOO HARD TO PROGRAM SO IGNORE.
15) Include a new separate floating panel like the floating mixer but with just a single fader plus a single knob… make this so it controls whatever is under the mouse cursor (by simulating mouse click-and-drag without moving the cursor from the original spot). That would be AMAZING for accurately changing any small fiddly controls in the edit window or on many plugins. (BTW I think it’d be best for the fader to simulate a vertical click-and-drag, and the knob to simulate a horizontal click-and-drag, ideally with an option of whether you want the knob to work linearly on radially. And I guess the fader would have to snap back to the middle each time you let go, since it can’t actually read levels/automation if it’s only simulating mouse clicks.) WISH LIST ITEM #1!
16) Pan modes in the external mixer would be way better done like the pans in Addictive Drums (overall L&R, plus width control) instead of separately controlling L & R. Also would be nice if the internal mixer overlaid a similar pan control above the faders and over the PT pan knobs (including a graphic similar to the one in AD as well for stereo tracks). Best way might be horizontal click and drag for width, vertical for overall L&R… then you don’t need pan toggle buttons at all and you’d have full control of the whole stereo field with just one finger! (Though obviously include a "classic mode” option for people who prefer it the way it currently is) WISH LIST ITEM #2
17) An “ask for input” stage in Batch Commander, so the software can pause and wait for a text input or mouse-click on a specific item, so commands can be customised on the fly each time they’re used. Eg. ask how many times to repeat an action. WISH LIST ITEM #3 (+ THE EASIEST OF THESE TO PROGRAM, I ASSUME)
18) Alternatively to 15, some sort of plugin zoom function would be good… a toggle in the overlay that can zoom the screen just the right amount so the plugin is maximised in size for easy clickability without having to pinch zoom in and then back out. Maybe if plugins can be streamed via a screen-sharing protocol from Pro Tools to the Raven app, they’d be much more custom-ly controllable with batch commander as well… any weirdly non-touch-friendly controls could be remapped to soft knobs displayed below, labelled and colour coordinated. TOO HARD TO PROGRAM AND WOULD BE SOLVED BETTER BY #15
19) Definitely more long term, but adding a very small and basic amount of image recognition A.I. (which I’m sure you could license rather than develop) would let you do way more awesome stuff (in all DAWs)... eg. if the software could “SEE” what tracks are selected or what plugins are open and WHERE they are on the screen, it could dynamically adjust and self-confirm that each action had been successful before moving to the next, which would keep everything running more reliably. TOO HARD TO PROGRAM FOR NOW
Sorry to leave such an essay! I’m passionate about this now I have one… currently it’s very good software that comes with the hardware, but I think these tweaks would make it a dream come true. Hopefully some are forthcoming, and hopefully you guys will consider the rest too.
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Hey Jamey, any news on when the next Raven software update is expected?
Had the Raven just over a week and spotted a few bugs and design flaws... checked through the forum here and seems like some of these have been mentioned before, but here's an extensive list of what I'm noticing in terms of issues. Could you confirm which of these should be fixed in the next update? (Or point out any that may be Mavericks related… I may consider upgrading to El Capitan if needed.)
I'm on Raven MTi software version 3.3.0, running OSX 10.9.5 and PT12.4, by the way.
CURRENT ISSUES:
1) Scroll direction doesn't get saved... reverts to "regular" every time. Looks like a bug that a few people have noticed over the last year at least. SOLVED WITH FORTHCOMING UPDATE, APPARENTLY
(And BTW "regular/inverted" should be renamed something like "classic/natural"... since "regular" feels highly IRREGULAR for anyone used to using an iPad/iPhone, for example, which I'd think is pretty much everyone by now)
2) When zoomed in with pinch-to-zoom, click-and-drag finger movements get really unpredictable and jumpy…e.g. if I zoom in to finely move an automation node, while I'm clicking-and-holding, it will jump around the track from maximum to minimum and left to right… essentially unusable like that. I DON'T THINK THE PROPOSED SOLUTION IS RIGHT (CHANGING TO ZOOM WITH 4 FINGER SWIPE)... THE ISSUE ISN'T WITH ZOOMING, IT'S WITH MOVING AUTOMATION POINTS WHILE ZOOMED IN. VIDEO HERE SHOWING THE ISSUE:
3) In Batch Commander, there’s no way I can change the delay on each step of a command. They all default to 100ms, and I can’t lower it in any way (with mouse/keyboard/finger). If I highlight the number and type “1”, the delay changes to “1001”… i.e. there’s no way to get rid of the “100” first! SOLVED... INDEED YOU HAVE TO PRESS DELETE OR BACKSPACE FIRST! DOH!
4) About 30% of the time it doesn’t register me pressing modifier keys on the physical keyboard. Eg. holding ALT while dragging a clip to copy and move that clip, but when I let go it acts as if WASN’T holding ALT. (And yes I’m pressing and letting go at the right times, it works 100% of the time with a mouse instead of the finger. And no I don’t want to use the on-screen modifier keys… I use all the complex modifier-combos which I have in muscle memory and can’t translate to the screen, plus lots of them don’t work without clicking and holding then letting go at the right time, but the on-screen ones you can’t hold in the same way).
MAYBE THIS IS A BUG WITH ONLY MY SYSTEM? HERE'S A VIDEO SHOWING THE PROBLEM IN ACTION... EVERY TIME HERE, I'M FIRMLY PRESSING SHIFT+CTRL+OPTION+CMD, YET YOU CAN SEE ON THE RAVEN SCREEN (BY THE WHITE BORDERS FAILING TO LIGHT) THAT AROUND 30% OF THESE BUTTON PRESSES DO NOT REGISTER, AND ALSO SOMETIME THEY STICK ONCE I LET GO, BOTH OF THESE YOU CAN SEE IN THE VIDEO. THE MODIFIER KEYS ALWAYS REGISTER JUST FINE IF IT'S A MOUSE CLICK, BUT COMBINED WITH A SCREEN TAP THE SUCCESS RATE IS ONLY 70% (ISH). (AND IT'S NOT A PROBLEM WITH MY KEYBOARD... CHANGING TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE KEYBOARD OR THE KEYBOARD ON MY MACBOOK STILL HAS THE SAME ISSUE HAPPENING)
5) Arrow keys pallet doesn’t work as expected… surely it should function like the p & l & ; & ’ keys in terms of moving selections up and down? (I’ll stick to the physical keyboard on those too, but just saying…) I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN JAMEY ABOUT THE SIDEWAYS ARROW KEYS WORKING BETTER THIS WAY - I DEFINITELY AGREE
However, I was actually referring to the vertical arrows. I realised that the issue I noticed is actually with the SHIFT key not working IN COMBINATION with the arrow keys, to allow MULTIPLE selections. VIDEO BELOW, where I show what happens when I press: #1 - physical SHIFT + physical ";" --- it selects track below while maintaining initial selection
#2 - onscreen SHIFT + onscreen arrow (which apparently just does a ";" press) --- initial selection does not remain
#3 - physical SHIFT + onscreen arrow --- quite a stretch for my right hand while holding the phone in the left... effect is the same as #2, suggesting that vertical arrow keys are not equivalent to "P" and ";" OR that shift is failing both onscreen and physically.
6) Can't get mix window to display properly with 24 tracks. Red line won't disappear so the faders won't line up, and also MIX 24 button should also hide the track-list, no? SOLVED, I WAS JUST MISTAKEN ABOUT HOW TO USE THIS (THOUGH COULDN'T IT HIDE/SHOW THE TRACK-LIST AS WELL AS TOGGLE THE FADER NUMBER?)
7) When in “MIX 22" mode surely the BANK buttons should change from BANK 24 to BANK 22? Also, can’t we have somewhere in between... an additional BANK 8 option would be ideal… moving by 1 at a time is infuriatingly slow. HUI LIMITATION - CAN'T BE SOLVED CURRENTLY. WORKAROUND: FINGER SCROLLING ISNT TOO BAD. FOLLOWUP: Any potential to add a button that sends 8 "BANK 1" commands in quick succession? Can't find a way to do that in batch commander.
8) Hitting BANK 24 when there are less tracks offscreen than 24, it should logically just move to the last track. Pretty ridiculous that if your session has 50 tracks, you can’t get to the last few using 2 taps of the BANK 24 button. HUI LIMITATION - CAN'T BE SOLVED CURRENTLY.
9) Why can’t the Raven mixers (internal and external) show more characters for the track names… at least as many as Pro Tools itself does? It’s very confusing having the names displayed differently to how they’re named in PT. HUI LIMITATION - CAN'T BE SOLVED CURRENTLY.
10) The track icons should ideally colour their backgrounds to the correct track colours instead of staying black. HUI LIMITATION Or at least you could include solid colour “track icons" as well as the instrument pics, so we can do that manually (I can make these myself of course with a bit of work, but should definitely come included with the software). WORKAROUND... SET THE TRACK SATURATION ON HIGH, SO THE WHOLE TRACK IS BRIGHTLY COLOURED INSTEAD OF JUST THE TOP PART. BTW you're missing some obvious icons for popular instruments, eg acoustic guitar… very unimportant but just that missing stuff like that makes the software feel a little unfinished I guess. VERY MINOR ISSUE THOUGH
FOLLOWUP: Sure, I figured that Pro Tools wasn't sending colour info via HUI, but you guys managed to make the faders map to the right colour on the internal mixer. So if the software can already do that, can't it then copy that info into the "icons" as solid colours like I described. Then those same colour "icons" would be shown in the external mixer too right? You'd have to bank through the whole session once to make them populate I guess, but it might be possible? Personally I could work almost entirely without track names as long as the colours are shown in the right places... for now I'll stick to the internal mixer anyway. I think if the pan knobs were indeed added to the internal mixer, the external one would pretty much become redundant anyway...
11) The quick list in batch commander is a bit of a mess - stuff is named inconsistently (e.g. “audiosuite/audio-suite/audio suite”) which makes searching harder. Also very annoying when something like 'do for 10 tracks’ is available but ‘do for 1 track’ is not (e.g. split into mono and delete extra is available for 10 tracks but not for 1?). Also would be nice to show instructions for anywhere it’s necessary to have the setup a certain way… a little “info” icon that will bring up info on how to use that quicklist command properly without it failing. FOLLOWUP: Could you solve this by having a "hide legacy commands from search" option (that's turned on by default)? Then all the old mislabelled commands can just be duplicated with new ones that are consistently labelled, but without everyone having to see both when searching. Also if you did add something like in point 17, then all commands with a specific number would become unnecessary and could also be "hidden" to reduce clutter. Eg Name tracks x4, names tracks x8 etc, would all be covered by a "name tracks" command that asks "how many?". VERY MINOR ISSUE THOUGH
12) Lots of the preinstalled batch commands simply do not work for me. Usually appears that the mouse clicks it’s trying to do are not aligned in the right place, e.g. the ones for Vocalign. This would be ok if I could edit them manually once loaded to fix problems, but that seems impossible currently (as the preloaded commands appear as single actions instead of as a list of actions). WORKAROUND... SAVE AS A USER PRESET, THEN RELOAD AND COMMANDS ARE LISTED STEP BY STEP... THEN POSSIBLE TO FIX ANY SINGLE STEP.
13) Can’t clicks be referenced from the corner of an open window instead of from the corner of the screen? It seems like some of your built-in commands must do this (e.g. "preview audiosuite”), but I can’t seem to do it manually, eg if I want to automate a click on a specific button in the same audiosuite window. (If I record a mouse click it never seems to play back in the right place). SOLVED, BUT THE SOLUTION IS APPLESCRIPTS, WHICH IS QUITE TECHNICALLY INVLOVING. I'LL PROBABLY REQUEST A FEW PLUGIN-SPECIFIC CLICKS IN THE FUTURE
MORE IDEAS:
Also here are some ideas for how the functionality of the system could be improved even further in the future. I’m happy to provide much more detail on these if that’s of interest… e.g. I’d love to be involved in the design and/or testing phase if you do consider adding these features!
14) Selectable grid size for the batch command palettes would be nice. Eg if you have a 2-command palette and you think of a 3rd and 4th to add in the same category, instead of having to manually copy these commands to a new 4-command palette, it’d be better to be able to change the width (2/4/6/8) the same way as you change the name and colour. (Obviously it’d have to throw an error if there were other buttons in the way, preventing it from getting wider). VERY SMALL ISSUE, TOO HARD TO PROGRAM SO IGNORE.
15) Include a new separate floating panel like the floating mixer but with just a single fader plus a single knob… make this so it controls whatever is under the mouse cursor (by simulating mouse click-and-drag without moving the cursor from the original spot). That would be AMAZING for accurately changing any small fiddly controls in the edit window or on many plugins. (BTW I think it’d be best for the fader to simulate a vertical click-and-drag, and the knob to simulate a horizontal click-and-drag, ideally with an option of whether you want the knob to work linearly on radially. And I guess the fader would have to snap back to the middle each time you let go, since it can’t actually read levels/automation if it’s only simulating mouse clicks.) WISH LIST ITEM #1!
16) Pan modes in the external mixer would be way better done like the pans in Addictive Drums (overall L&R, plus width control) instead of separately controlling L & R. Also would be nice if the internal mixer overlaid a similar pan control above the faders and over the PT pan knobs (including a graphic similar to the one in AD as well for stereo tracks). Best way might be horizontal click and drag for width, vertical for overall L&R… then you don’t need pan toggle buttons at all and you’d have full control of the whole stereo field with just one finger! (Though obviously include a "classic mode” option for people who prefer it the way it currently is) WISH LIST ITEM #2
17) An “ask for input” stage in Batch Commander, so the software can pause and wait for a text input or mouse-click on a specific item, so commands can be customised on the fly each time they’re used. Eg. ask how many times to repeat an action. WISH LIST ITEM #3 (+ THE EASIEST OF THESE TO PROGRAM, I ASSUME)
18) Alternatively to 15, some sort of plugin zoom function would be good… a toggle in the overlay that can zoom the screen just the right amount so the plugin is maximised in size for easy clickability without having to pinch zoom in and then back out. Maybe if plugins can be streamed via a screen-sharing protocol from Pro Tools to the Raven app, they’d be much more custom-ly controllable with batch commander as well… any weirdly non-touch-friendly controls could be remapped to soft knobs displayed below, labelled and colour coordinated. TOO HARD TO PROGRAM AND WOULD BE SOLVED BETTER BY #15
19) Definitely more long term, but adding a very small and basic amount of image recognition A.I. (which I’m sure you could license rather than develop) would let you do way more awesome stuff (in all DAWs)... eg. if the software could “SEE” what tracks are selected or what plugins are open and WHERE they are on the screen, it could dynamically adjust and self-confirm that each action had been successful before moving to the next, which would keep everything running more reliably. TOO HARD TO PROGRAM FOR NOW
Sorry to leave such an essay! I’m passionate about this now I have one… currently it’s very good software that comes with the hardware, but I think these tweaks would make it a dream come true. Hopefully some are forthcoming, and hopefully you guys will consider the rest too.
