So I just realized yesterday that Renoise 2.8 now automatically renumbers the patterns in the sequence ANY time you add a pattern. This is ESPECIALLY annoying for me, because one of the things I do quite often is make patterns for use later in the song, and keep them hidden from the sequence. Then I make my song from the beginning, and use those hidden patterns later. Well, with this auto-renumber feature, it deletes all of my hidden patterns! I’d really enjoy the ability to be able to turn this off. It would make my life so much easier.
Bring up the context menu (right-click) on any of the pattern sequence blocks, then disable “Keep Sequence Sorted”.
so, if i make&save a default song with that toggled off, i will never have to encounter this feature again? 
I actually noticed it seems to be saved per-song, so yeah save it in your Template and every new song will start like that 
While it’s no issue saving it to template and forgetting about it, I did go through Preferences to try and see if it had a tickbox of it’s own - it didn’t.
I’d like to weigh in on this too. This feature being on by default fooled me into thinking I was seeing a bug: http://www.renoise.c…ylist-workflow/
I still think deleting the pattern data seems a bit “buggy” or at the very least not very ideal.
Personally I would suggest that new features that break previous workflows in older versions be off by default to avoid confusion like this except for all but the most justifiable cases. What was the justification for making this the default behavior/workflow? This seems like something you would want to apply from time-to-time after you’ve created a handful of patterns and have started to sequence them in the playlist.
By making this the default behavior it makes the pattern number feel like it is trying to be both the unique/sequential ID of the pattern in the pattern list AND indicate the sequential order of the pattern in the playlist at the same time. I kind of understand the desire for this but it also feels awkward, especially when it has to delete pattern data not currently referenced in the playlist to accomplish this goal. I think the main discrepancy is that there is no such thing as “hidden” playlist data, but there is such thing as “hidden” pattern data (patterns created in the pattern list that are not currently referenced by the playlist data). So the question then becomes: what to do with the unreferenced/hidden pattern data when resequencing? My vote is not to delete it. Maybe reorder it and stick it at the beginning/end of the first/last pattern referenced by the playlist.
Also a lot of this could be solved if we could just “insert” a new pattern in the pattern list which would essentially just increment all pattern numbers beyond that point. Then we could insert a new pattern at the pattern number we wanted and copy and paste anything into it we desired. Better yet, maybe the issue is coming from the fact that we can visualize the entire list of playlist data at once and edit it, but you can only ever view one pattern in the pattern list at a time. Perhaps if we could also view the pattern list this way, and “drag” things around to change their position (and therefore pattern number), we wouldn’t need the “keep sequence ordered” in quite the way it exists now. The only way to “resequence” pattern numbers outside of “keep sequence ordered” is to use 3 patterns: If I have patterns #1 (with data), #2 (with data), and #3 (empty), I can copy the pattern data from #1 to #3, copy the data from #2 to #1, and then finally copy the data from #3 to #2 - effectively swapping pattern numbers #1 and #2. If I could visualize all of the patterns in the pattern list at once and drag their positions around I wouldn’t have to deal with such an awkward workflow of having to use a temp “buffer” pattern and 3 copy and paste operations to achieve the desired goal.
Well anyways with that said 2.8 is a totally killer update and as usual the Renoise team never ceases to amaze me or make me happy 
Edit: OK well after a reply in the bug thread from taktik it seems as though I didn’t understand the intention of the new feature. See the link to the bug topic for details.
You know very well this does not solve this major pain in the ass. It still makes a lot of trouble when adding patterns, copying patterns, moving patterns etc. The new pattern numberfuckup is so wrong on so many levels. If I want pattern nr 9 to be pattern nr 9, well then, I want pattern nr 9 to be pattern nr 9. Not blody 63!
agree !
as long as you disable this option at the beginning of your song’s creation, the behaviour will be exactly the same as it was in the previous versions.
I’m totally with people saying that this option should be disabled by default (I was one of the alpha testers who actually convinced the others to make it optional in the first place, after a long struggle, otherwise the old behaviour would have been gone), but disabling it totally solves the problem