An array of data structure rectangles doesn't sound that bad. Why are you looking for another way?
Because if I have a spectrogram of 400 pixels by 200 pixels, the struct drawing was taxing the machine quite a lot. Actually 100 smaller than that it was taxing the machine…
But maybe I got it wrong. Obviously I’m not aiming at parity of features, but just having a spectrogram layer I could tap would be ace.
Do you have a Pd patch somewhere to have a look at?
Just to throw some ideas:
- if the spectrogram + audio aren't triggered that often, one way would
be to use a background of canvas objects, each with 1x1 pixels. This sounds very exotic, I did it in jmmmp/pix2canvas to "copy-paste" pictures into a Pd patch. Not sure how practicable it is in your dimensions.
- since the problem with structuts is only in the drawing, you can use your current patch to calculate the values
- If you want mouse interaction with the background it might work only with externals.
- for the pitch+confidence lines, jmmmp/multiarray already allows for
several arrays with different colors, thickness, etc. Pd's latest version also added features similar to that - but I'm not sure you can combine a new array with the background mentioned above in a canvas of your choice.
jmmmp