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