How To Program Renoise Tools

hello,

i would like to try out programming renoise tools. i allready had a look at the code of some smal tools and i have seen that they call certain funktions?
so i am wondering about a reference in this terms and also if there is any handy tutorial or a point of start.

thanks

i believe all the info can be found on this page

Almost everyone who has programmed, or is in the process of programming, a renoise tool will tell you that in order to have success in doing so, one would need the knowledge of Lua and a good knack of problem solving skills. I say, to hell with all of that. Throw your lua book away into a recycling bin and just be one with your machine with renoise running on it. You’ll be amazed that the tool you desire the most will one day pop up in the tools section and you can thank yourself for radiating the psychic energies that were needed to inspire that tool to exist. It hasn’t failed me yet. Best wishes.

There is a change that the tool wizards get tired of these requests and say “Suck it, learn to code yourself for once” :P

well put, also, why the hell do guys get +1s with stupid comments like that :P

I started by setting myself a really simple challenge like adding a note to a pattern or create a keymap for a sample. The live terminal in the Renoise scripting tools is very useful for experimenting with commands and seeing what they do in realtime. Once you have managed to make Renoise do something via Lua then add a bit more complexity and so on.

I wouldn’t recommend building a tool straight off, just get your head around how Lua works and what commands are available. Once you are comfortable with that, think of the simplest version of the tool you want to make and have a go at programming it. I found it much easier to keep things as simple as possible and add complexity in an incremental way. Reading other peoples released code can help but can also be confusing as you don’t get to see how things have developed.

Also read the posts in the Beginners Lua forum and ask questions about Lua there, there is help out there if you ask.

Good Luck!

If you want some beginners tutorials to get you started on Lua please see my sig below:

Patience is required but I never coded anything before renoise scripts and managed to get the hang of it eventually (though still constantly learning). I know some others on here have a similar experience from scratch too. It can be pretty rewarding when you write your own features/ helpers after the hard work :)

to start out, as some already said, launch renoise with --scripting-dev and open up the terminal. in this case, two monitors can come in handy, but you can just make the windows smaller or sth to see what happens when you throw commands like

renoise.song().transport.playing = false -- stops renoise from playing?  
``` or  

renoise.song().selected_track_index = #renoise.song().tracks – selects last (send or master) track

  
what also helps is of course to study other tools that you see and use and find great. don't start with something like duplex, start with something like the smallest simplest nicest tools, and go more advanced from there. try to understand what every line does to the program, and, like others already said too, use the documentation, you can download it at the google code site but you can also (!) open it in the scripting terminal always, it's right there at the top of the tree on the left hand side of the window (Documentation folder). the longer you use this scripting terminal the quicker you'll learn where to find what.. for now know that most things you'll need are in Renoise.Song.API.lua (sth like that).