I realized this morning that I posted this to MaxMSP, which I didn't mean to do... duh. It hasn't yet been moved by a moderator, so I'm re-posting the same basic question here.

I've been working on a design, and some basic implementation, of a music notation-based UI for MaxMSP. I want to use this for an interactive composition patch I've been developing. So far, I've been working in Processing, and I'm getting totally baffled by the task of trying to keep objects "connected" to one another - basically just managing the positions of things.

I'm wondering whether building a canvas-like UI in Jitter would be any simpler. And primarily, whether the geometry stuff is any easier to take care of. As an example, one of the big problems I'm having is in keeping staves "attached" to the same page, notes "attached" to the staves, and so on. That is, when panning the score, making sure all the staves move together, and having the notes and so on all "stick" to the staves properly. I didn't expect this to be a problem in something like java, as I just thought the object orientation would take care of that, but I haven't been able to do things so simply, thus far. I found a good java library from Geosoft that can manage these sorts of problems, but it's a full rendering system, so it won't work under Processing (and thus lacks some of the ease-of-use that Processing is great for).

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated, as I seem to be getting more confused the longer I work on this... If it's simpler in Jitter to, for example, make a "staff" object, which can take notes, and other items, then render that on a "score" object, move it around, move around notes on the staff, and drag/translate the entire score position, etc., then I'll probably give Jitter a try.

I've been working on a design, and some basic implementation, of a music notation-based UI for MaxMSP. I want to use this for an interactive composition patch I've been developing. So far, I've been working in Processing, and I'm getting totally baffled by the task of trying to keep objects "connected" to one another - basically just managing the positions of things.
I'm wondering whether building a canvas-like UI in Jitter would be any simpler. And primarily, whether the geometry stuff is any easier to take care of. As an example, one of the big problems I'm having is in keeping staves "attached" to the same page, notes "attached" to the staves, and so on. That is, when panning the score, making sure all the staves move together, and having the notes and so on all "stick" to the staves properly. I didn't expect this to be a problem in something like java, as I just thought the object orientation would take care of that, but I haven't been able to do things so simply, thus far. I found a good java library from Geosoft that can manage these sorts of problems, but it's a full rendering system, so it won't work under Processing (and thus lacks some of the ease-of-use that Processing is great for).

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated, as I seem to be getting more confused the longer I work on this... If it's simpler in Jitter to, for example, make a "staff" object, which can take notes, and other items, then render that on a "score" object, move it around, move around notes on the staff, and drag/translate the entire score position, etc., then I'll probably give Jitter a try. 

moved-canvas-based-gui

okay, I downloaded Jitter and had a look through some of the docs and examples and it looks as though the mxj-jitter java (or even js) stuff could really do the trick!

moved: canvas-based GUI