New Tool (3.0, 3.1): Track Comments

Hi there,

here is a little new tool I made.
It adds a feature to make comments to each track. All data will be saved in the global song comments.

Right click on a track --> Track --> Track Comments will open a popup window in which you can write your comments. When closing this window the data will be saved and written to the global song comments (at the correct position).

Please give me feedback on this one! If you have ideas, let me know. For instance, you might have a better idea for the syntax in the global song comments.

Also, if anyone knows how to have the multiline text field get focus automatically, please let me know.

Updates:
0.2: Works via track names (must be unique). Renaming and moving tracks should work. Sorting comments when saving song.
0.3: Works via indices again. Renaming, inserting, removing, swapping should all work now. Sorting comments when necessary.
0.4: Compatible with Renoise 2.7.
0.5: Compatible with Renoise 2.8.

Now available at the tools page:
http://www.renoise.com/tools/track-comments

Have fun!

Great idea, I had this on my personal wishlist. Thanks!

Note: Track comment is cleared when moving the track. I don’t know if this is possible to fix, just wanted to mention it. Still very useful tool IMHO.

great idea, just experimented with it a bit and it works nice.
feature request: if possible, use the actual name of the track. so for example, if my Track 1 is called ‘KICKS’, make it so in the song comments it says something like ‘Track 1 (KICKS)’. same goes for the tool menu, when going to track > track comments, the title of the window could use the trackname as well, for clarity.

a problem with this would be a way to do the above when the user changes tracknames after making track comments. don’t know if that would be possible too. otherwise you could make it so that you have to open the tool once more (meaning: edit the track comments), after which the tool could detect the trackname automatically.

the way it is displayed in the song comments: i wondered why you chose to use ‘…’ instead of the (maybe) more obvious ‘—’

Some great ideas here! :)

Okay guys, I have an update already!

This now works only with unique track names. Renaming tracks and moving tracks around seems to work now. Even the order of the track comments in the global song comments is now sorted according to the track list (this happens when the song is saved).

See first post for the xrnx.

Nice script!

As for suggestions, any chance of per pattern notes? I would find that pretty useful.

You mean like per pattern per track? Or just per pattern, but for all tracks?

I really don’t know. I was playing around with some things and I had the impression that ‘…’ is visually the best option, when it comes to read track comments in the global song comments. But that is probably a very subjective thing :)

As in

Pattern 1 = “1 comment box”
Pattern 2 = “1 comment box”
Pattern 3 = “1 comment box”

…etc

Well, if it is irrespective of tracks, then it should probably be a tool in its own right. Don’t you think?

thanks, that was quite fast! looks great, and works nicely while there is already a comment and renaming a track after that, updates the comments perfectly.
i have one gripe left. this is what is now in my song comments:

why would you add the trackname to a seperate line, instead of just doing the same thing you do in the context menu? i’d suggest you make it like this:

unless you did it the way you did because of programming troubles, which i would not know about.

Well, yes, I did that mainly due to the fact that it is easier to parse whole lines.
If this is really a big problem, then I might change it in the future.

Yes, could be, or expand the scope of the current tool to advanced comments or something?

well, i guess it goes without saying this does not qualify as a ‘really big problem’. it just looks nicer, and takes a line less space.
if you ever find the time, and decide to tackle a couple little things or something, think about implementing this. if not, so be it.

Fun tool!

First off, great tool, having fun taking some of my paper notes and digitizing them inside all my Renoise files.

Now on to the possible bug, I don’t know yet what’s causing it but I uninstalled the Track Comments xrnx and the bug is gone.

1 open song.xrns
2 edit, save
3 load a different xrns or new xrns
4 Renoise keeps asking if I should save changes

The song.xrns does get saved but somehow Renoise thinks there are edits made after saving the xrns.

nice one

I will look into that in the weekend.

Okay, new version is in the first post!

Most bugs should be fixed now. Renaming, inserting, removing, swapping should all work now, even with the default track names!
The code is probably pretty unefficient, but this is due to the fact that I could not figure out how to have a track refer to itself (or to know its own position in tracks[]), thus, all tracks will be renamed in the song comments, if the name of one track changes.

Something I could/should still do in the future is some error checking: I you mess around with the track comments part in the global song comments things might go wrong!

Has anyone experienced any problems so far?
If not, I would probably put it up on the tools page.

So far so good. I’ve got a lot of notes, but most of it is separated track by track to avoid scrolling.

There is one little thing, although maybe its not a bug.

If I select all and cut a note from one track, then paste it on another track, then click “X” to exit, not all of it gets pasted, a couple of lines from the end are missing.

But if I hit Enter after I have pasted, all is well.