I don’t have a Renoise license, so I can’t check myself to see if this has been added as a feature, but I asked the question in the Renoise 3 Beta announcement thread in the General forum and it sounds like this still isn’t possible, so I’m requesting it here.
Currently, the active row (that is, the row you’re adding notes to) is fixed to the center of the pattern window and remains stationary, while the pattern itself scrolls when you use the scroll wheel or arrow keys to move up or down, and also when you manually click into a new row. This drives me absolutely batty because I’m used to clicking into a new row when I want to add or edit a note, and that means the whole pattern suddenly jumps so that the row I clicked is in the middle (I find this extremely disorienting when I’m involved in laying down new tracks or editing note data). I come from 15 years of using ModPlug/OpenMPT, and it allows you the option to either keep the active row centered (like Renoise functions currently) or to freely move the active row, leaving the pattern itself stationary until the active row reaches the bottom of the pattern window. I find this issue in Renoise so off-putting it’s actually the only reason I haven’t gone ahead and bought a license.
I know this isn’t a highly-requested option, but it has been requested before (see this thread for one discussion of it). It seems like such a simple option to include, but I have no idea what kind of potential difficulties the coding might involve. For the devs reading this, is this an option that could reasonably be implemented, or would it require too much programming gymnastics to justify it?
To me it’s a nice feature, but i’m used to it. Don’t see why there couldn’t be a switch for this though?
So you say here that you have refused to buy a licence for a couple of years because of this?
The behavior I’m used to (milkytracker) is that the pattern only scrolls when the edit cursor is hitting the top or bottom of what is being displayed. Ideally I can then fit 64 rows on one screen and keep everything stationary all the time.
Not for quite that long (I only discovered Renoise about a year or so ago). Keep in mind, though, that music is a hobby for me, something I do in the not particularly copious amount of free time I have, so anything that slows me down and disorients me as much as this problem does results in me not getting anything accomplished in the time I have to work on music (and not inclined to put money toward software that makes the time I spend on music less productive and less enjoyable). It’s obviously different for people who make music for a living or who have more free time to work with a given piece of software.
That bothers me, too–so much unnecessary empty space contrived simply to keep the active row in the middle of the window. :-/
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add this feature, this is literally my #1 complaint about Renoise…the centered cursor is so damn annoying. I also almost didn’t purchase a license for the exact same reason as OP.
This isn’t something I ever really thought about, but now that it’s been drawn to my attention I’d have to agree. Seems like a simple option like “Enable/Disable cursor focus” should be doable? Sometimes the cursor focus is kind of useful, other times it can be a bit annoying because I can’t see the full pattern. Sometimes when I want to utilize a specific note, but can’t remember what it is I have to keep scrolling back up to remember what the note is. Doesn’t break Renoise for me, but could be better implemented. Would increase workflow for sure.
+1 from me (again!). I must admit that after a year or more of using Renoise the scrolling nausea has subsided to some extent, but still an option I’d very much like to see!
dblue responded in the old thread I linked to in my original post, but it was only to acknowledge that he understood the problem, not that it was or was not something that was likely to ever be implemented, or whether it would be relatively simple to code, or an absolute nightmare.
I’d like to hear from a dev at least about how difficult this would be to do–it seems like a really small thing that ought to be easy, but the programming required might be disproportionately complicated.
I suspect if it was easy, they would have done it and added a checkbox in the preferences to allow toggling between new and old behavior.
But i consider this button a nice toggle button for that behavior…
Pattern follow mode off then also means no pattern scrolling and pattern follow mode on, means centered edit position.
In that regard, they don’t need to change much GUI wise and perhaps with Pattern follow mode off, this is also a much easier option to implement.
I don’t mind to see this added, but don’t wait for it. Better start getting accustomed to Renoises workflow, or else you’re always going to find (psychological) roadblocks .
Yes, I would love to see this option because of this too. Although I don’t mind the scrolling pattern when recording, there are many times when the possibility of fixed view over the whole pattern would be great. Definitely +1!
Just wanted to put down my +1 for this feature. Like the OP, this is the one thing that seriously impedes my overall workflow. I just can’t wrap my head around it as it is now… I’m relatively new to renoise, but have used Impulse Tracker for several years back in the days, and nothing I’ve tried since, apart from renoise, comes close to the speed I worked with then, except for this one thing. If at all possible, please, please, please add this feature.
In lieu of having this native I’ve wondered if a tool could manage it. As a “maybe good enough” approach I was imagining a floating window with a read-only view of the current pattern state. It would update as the pattern was edited. Then you could edit on the centered line but still see the full pattern.
I prefer to see this feature as part of the main program in regards to the editing/tracking behaviour (e.g. as in Jeskola Buzz). At least it would be nice to have the option.
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