Combo Box

Combobox creates a drop-down list of items which users can choose from. Once the user selects an item, the index of their selection will be sent to Csound on a channel named by the channel string. The default value is 0. The first item in the combobox will be seen as a 1, while 0 refers to no current selection.

A combobox can also be set up a work with strings. In this case Csound will receive the currently selected string instead of the current index. Note that using a combobox in this way renders it useless in terms of host automation. Host automation can only be achieved when a combobox is sending the current index, rather than the current string.

combobox align("position"), channelType("type"), file("filename"), items("item1", "item2", ...), populate("filetype", "dir", ignoreVal), sort(val), active(val), alpha(val), align("position"), automatable(val), bounds(x, y, width, height), channel("chan"), colour("colour"), fontColour("colour"), identChannel("channel"), parent(val), popup(val), presetIgnore(val), protectedItems(val), rotate(radians, pivotx, pivoty), visible(val), toFront(), moveBehind("widgetName"), widgetArray("chan", number),

Specific Identifiers

align("position") Aligns the widget's text. "position" should be 'left', 'right' 'centre', or 'top'.

channelType("type") Specifies the type of channel. Default is "float". If you wish to send the text contained in the combobox, for examples the names of a set of audio samples, set type to "string". If type is not set to string the index of the selected item will be sent to Csound on the named channel.

file("filename") This identifier is used across a number of widgets.

combobox and listbox - will load lines from a file as selectable items.
gentable and soundfiler - will load a sound file to display
image - will load an iamge to display (PNG/JPG/SVG)
infobutton - sets the file to display when the button is clicked This can be a local html file, or a URL.
texteditor - sets the file to load, should be a text file.

If a full file path is not given, file() will search in the current directory, i.e., the directory that contains the csd file that is open. It is best to keep all files in the same directory as your csd file. If you wish to keep them in a separate folder use relative paths, i.e, ../../folder.

Avoid absolute path at all costs. Failure to do so will most likely problems with your instruments as soon as you share them.

items("item1", "item2", ...) list of items that will populate the combo box. Each item has a corresponding index value. The first item when selected will send a 1, the second item a 2, the third a 3 etc. If this identifier is left out default values of "Item 1", "Item 2", "Item 3", "Item 4" and "Item 5" will be used.

If you wish to use submenus in your combox box, you can use 'items:' followed by a number or a string. The first string you pass to item:..() will be the sub menu heading. For example, the following will create two sub menus called Strings and Woodwind:

combobox bounds(10, 10, 100, 50), items:1("Strings", "Violin", "Viola", "Cello", "Contrabass"), items:2("Woodwind", "Clarinet", "Oboe", "Bassoon")

The index of each item is always determined by where is appear in the widget declaration.

populate("filetype", "dir", ignoreVal) Sets the type of file to search for, and the initial directory to look in. If you wish to list all wave files from a set directory, use "*.wav" as the filetype string. If using the filebutton to record parameter snapshots, you must specify a filetype of "*.snaps", and a mode type of snapshot. If no directory is specified, the file browser will open in the current working directory. If the ignoreVal is set to 1 it will ignore the last known location and continue to open from the given directory. If set to 0, or left out completely, the filebutton will always open at the last directory the user browsed to. When used with a combobox, or listbox, it will load all files it finds as selectable items. When clicked, they will send the full file path to Csound.

If you want to query the widget's current file type or directory you can use fileType or currentDir with cabbageGet.

You can also set the name of the custom preset file. Instead of passing "*.snaps" as the file type, pass the full file name, i.e, "myPresets.snaps". Don't pass a full path here. Cabbage will automatically save and locate from the most suitable directory. Note that the same preset filename should be passed to all filebutton and combobox widgets involved in the management of the presets.

sort(val) Default is 1. Enables or disables sorting of preset combobox items. If you set this to 0, items will be based on numbers first, alphabetically sorted uppercase items followed by lowercase alphabetically sorted items.

Common Identifiers

active(val) Will deactivate a control if 0 is passed. Controls which are deactivate can still be updated from Csound.

alpha(val) A value between 0 and 1 will set the alpha blend value for the entire component. Can be useful if you need to fade widgets in and out.

align("position") Aligns the widget's text. "position" should be 'left', 'right' 'centre', or 'top'.

automatable(val) Default 1. Determines if a widget is automatable by a DAW host. Automatable widgets show up as plug-in parameters in the host. Non-automatable widgets still communicate with Csound but are not accessible by the host. Note that hosts don't allow this parameter to change dynamically -- the plugin will have to be reloaded for any changes to take effect.

bounds(x, y, width, height) integer values that set position and size on screen(in pixels).

channel("chan") or channel("chan1", "chan2") in the case of widgets that accept two channels such as xypad, soundfiler and range widgets. channel() accepts a string/s that names the channel/s that Cabbage will communicate with Csound on. The current value of this widget can be retrieved in Csound using a chnget, or a cabbageGetValue opcode. Its value can be set using the cabbageSet, or cabbageSetValue opcodes. hrange, vrange, xypad, and soundfiler all take two channels:

hrange, vrange : channel("min", "max") - min and max values

xypad : channel("x", "y") - x and y values

soundfiler : channel("start", "length") - start time and length of user selection, in samples

Channels named should start with a letter and cannot have any white spaces. Note that all widgets should have a unique channel name.

colour("colour") This sets the main colour. Any CSS or HTML colour string can be passed to this identifier. The colour identifier can also be passed an RBG, or RGBA value. All channel values must be between 0 and 255. For instance colour(0, 0, 255) will create a blue, while colour(0, 255, 0, 255) will create a green with an alpha channel set to full.

fontColour("colour") Sets the colour of the font. In the case of slider this sets teh colour of the font in the value textBox if it is shown.

identChannel("channel") [!!! DEPRECATED !!!] Although identifier channels still work, they are no longer supported. Please use the new guiMode("queue") system and the cabbageGet and cabbageSet opcodes instead. They are far more efficient then identifiers channel.

parent(val) This identifier is can be to set a widget's parent. It should only be used when creating widgets dynamically using the cabbageCreate opcode. See plants for more details.

popup(val) This identifier, used with an image or groupbox will convert the plant into a popup plant. The plant will not be shown on the instrument's main interface, but will instead appear when the user sets visible to 1. < DAWs treat popup dialogue windows in different ways. As a result, you may notice inconsistent behaviour when running your instruments as plugins across a variety of different hosts.

presetIgnore(val) Defaults to 0. Set this to 1 to ignore this widget's value when a preset is taken.

protectedItems(val) Defaults to 0. Sets the number of read-only presets. Use this to protect certain presets from being overwritten. For example, a value of 3 will prevent users from overwritting the first three presets.

rotate(radians, pivotx, pivoty) Rotates the widget by a number of radians(2xPI=full rotation). pivotx and pivoty will determine the rotation pivot points, where 0, 0 represents the component's top-left position.

value(val) value sets the initial state of the widget. In the case of a keyboard widget, it sets the leftmost ky to appear. Comboboxes indices start at 1, not 0. If you set the initial value to 0 the combobox will not show any items.

visible(val) A value of 0 will cause the widget to become invisible. Widgets have their visibility set to 1 by default.

toFront() Brings a widget to the front of the z order. This identifier takes no arguments and is only intended for use within the Csound orchestra. it makes no sense to call it when declaring the widget.

moveBehind("widgetName") Moves a widget directly behind another. This identifier should only ever be called from your Csound orchestra using a cabbageSet opcode.

This only works with widgets or plants that have the same parent.

widgetArray("chan", number) [!!! DEPRECATED !!!] Deprecated. Please see the section on Managing large numbers of widgets

Example

<Cabbage>
form caption("Combobox Example") size(380, 500), guiMode("queue"), colour(2, 145, 209) pluginId("def1")

rslider bounds(12, 9, 86, 90), channel("att"), range(0, 1, 0.01, 1, 0.001), text("Att.")
rslider bounds(99, 9, 86, 90), channel("dec"), range(0, 1, 0.4, 1, 0.001), text("Dec.")
rslider bounds(187, 9, 86, 90), channel("sus"), range(0, 1, 0.7, 1, 0.001), text("Sus.")
rslider bounds(274, 9, 86, 90), channel("rel"), range(0, 1, 0.8, 1, 0.001), text("Rel.")

texteditor bounds(18, 256, 341, 208) channel("infoText"), readOnly(1), wrap(1), scrollbars(1)
keyboard bounds(12, 104, 348, 80) channel("keyboard")
combobox bounds(260, 188, 100, 30) channel("waveform"), colour:0(147, 210, 0), corners(5), items("Saw", "Square", "Triangle")
</Cabbage>
<CsoundSynthesizer>
<CsOptions>
-n -d -+rtmidi=NULL -M0 -m0d --midi-key=4 --midi-velocity-amp=5
</CsOptions>e
<CsInstruments>
; Initialize the global variables. 
ksmps = 32
nchnls = 2
0dbfs = 1


; Rory Walsh 2021 
;
; License: CC0 1.0 Universal
; You can copy, modify, and distribute this file, 
; even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. 

instr 99

    SText  = "An combobox used to toggle through different items. The widget will send its current index to is associated channel, starting from 1*.\n\nIn this example an combobox can be used to select a given waveform. We can't just pass these indices to the vco2 opcode. Instead we use them as indices to simple array that hold the appropriate vco2 waveform modes.\n\n [A combobox always start with index 1, not 0]"
    cabbageSet "infoText", "text", SText

endin

instr 1

    iVcoModes[] fillarray 0, 10, 12    
    iAtt cabbageGetValue "att"
    iDec cabbageGetValue "dec"
    iSus cabbageGetValue "sus"
    iRel cabbageGetValue "rel"
    kEnv madsr iAtt, iDec, iSus, iRel
    aVco vco2 kEnv*p5, cpsmidinn(p4), iVcoModes[cabbageGetValue:i("waveform")-1]
    outs aVco, aVco    

endin


</CsInstruments>
<CsScore>
;causes Csound to run for about 7000 years...
f0 z
i99 0 z
</CsScore>
</CsoundSynthesizer>