[1.5] Mouse Behaviour Improvements

Ideas & suggestions
1

The new pattern editor is what I like the most in Renoise 1.5 - the continuous pattern mode and the ability to do block editing with the mouse really speed up editing. Still, there are some improvements that could made in editing at the pattern borders.

(In the description below I will refer to a currently edited (highlighted) pattern as an active pattern and to it’s neighbour (dimmed) pattern as an inactive pattern)

1. A double-click anywhere in the active or inactive pattern should move the cursor to the clicked position - it’s faster and/or more accurate than a couple of keypresses (or a mouse scroll).

2. The alt+drag move and alt+ctrl+drag copy are great, but without the capability of dragging blocks over the pattern borders, some of the potential of the continuous mode is wasted. Even worse, cause the current behaviour makes no sense - a block dragged from active to inactive pattern disappears, or, to be more precise, is moved to a position beyond the actual length of the active pattern - you will find the dragged block contents when you make the pattern longer.

3. A possibility of marking a block in the inactive pattern and drag-moving or drag-copying it to the active pattern would be another big improvement. This could require making selection blocks unique within a song.

4. It would be easier to see the boundaries of a dragged block if it was surrounded with a bright frame, for the time of dragging. (as the meaning of “bright” depends on the actual colour theme, the pattern editor highlight font colour would probably do best)

5. At the moment, the active pattern gets a highlight and inactive is dim, which makes it more difficult to read (and if marking blocks in the inactive pattern is made available, this will become a serious problem). In my opinion, in continuous mode, all patterns (active/inactive) should be printed using the same (brighter) set of colours. The pattern border will be visible on row numbers anyway - or could be made even easier to spot by changing the row number format to pattern number:row number, like:

  
00:60 | A#4 00 .. ----  
00:61 | --- 00 .. ----  
00:62 | --- 00 .. ----  
00:63 | --- 00 .. ----  
01:00 | A#4 00 .. ----  
01:01 | --- 00 .. ----  
01:02 | --- 00 .. ----  
01:03 | --- 00 .. ----

or by printing the inactive pattern without highlights every n-th row. Anything, but make inactive pattern as visible as active pattern.

What do you think?

Taktik, any chance of seeing any of those in 1.5 final? Would add a nice final touch to the new GUI :rolleyes:

2

I agree, the new ability to see the following pattern is great. But I don’t like that it is dimmed.

It might look fancy and show people how good you coders are, and you have probably spent time on making it dimmed, but fact is that it is far from as useful as just a simple red line.

There is a saying that goes, sometimes you have to kill your darlings. I think this would be such a case.

A thin read line would also in the future easier allow such things as moving blocks between the patterns…

I really hope you will remove the dimmed pattern an replace it with a line or something.

3

There’s an easy solution to this. Make the inactive pattern’s colors editable in the config.

4

Hmm, I have been thinking about that solution, and I don’t like it because if you would still end up with the inactive and the active pattern swapping colors which would look weird, as weird as when the inactive pattern becomes not dimmed.

And if you chose the same colours you would have a hard time reading which pattern is which.

5

Well I was also thinking that something more has to be done to separate the patterns.

6

If this is to be changed you should also consider that all the ‘empty symbols’ (dash, dotts and zeros) should be dimmed in the active pattern as well, making entered data stand out.

Maybe both a small frame, and just slightly dimmed colours on next/prev pattern would be the best?

Its kinda hard to tell, as you probably need to see this with your own eyes before deciding which is best.

Another suggestion is to use two slightly different fixed colours on every second pattern. This could make the scroll more pleasent for the eyes during a pattern change?