I am probably not the first one to ask about this, but anyway. There is an option in song settings to highlight every beat (every 4th line in most cases) but it seems to me that double highlighting every 16th (ever bar) should make sense in many cases, since that is where important things tend to happen, like chord changes.
Another thing is not really that necessary but which I find it annoying when I have the whole pattern open fully on the screen, seeing all the parts of it (like on the pic) and all the beats and the notes locations. What happens is, when you place the cursor anywhere on it, the whole pattern centers the edit cursor vertically, moving parts of the pattern away from the screen. When you move the cursor with the mouse here and there, the pattern keeps jumping up and down which really gets me disorientated and ending up constantly figuring out where I have to place the cursor now.
If it was possible to switch cursor centering off when not needed, I think that would help the tracker stay within the editing flow.
This picture shows the whole pattern in edit mode with the top row focused. Notice how the bottom part of the pattern is below the visible area while there is still plenty of space on the screen.
The thing why people are asking about it is probably because these features have been used by other trackers for some time now and proved to be useful, not just a matter of habit.
This feature is exactly why I came to the forums–I was hoping I was just being an idiot not knowing how to change it. The odd thing is, in the thread you linked to, Kazakore replied saying:
He seems to be implying that moving the edit cursor freely (not force-centered) is impossible unless you have a short pattern or a big monitor. That’s just silly–I’ve used other trackers for nearly 15 years, most especially ModPlug/OpenMPT, and this feature is pretty much standard on all of them. It’s the same as navigating a spreadsheet in Excel–you click the cell you want to edit, wherever it is on the screen (it doesn’t suddenly jump itself to the middle of the screen for you), and if you can’t see all of the rows at one time, you just scroll down until you see the row you want to edit and then click on it. It’s simple, and I’m not sure why this isn’t a feature of Renoise.
I think what Kazakore said, is that unless your screen is HUGE so that the whole pattern can remain on screen even when the very top, or the very bottom row is selected (or indeed the pattern is half size) you are out of luck. Even in the case that your screen is big enough to fit the pattern at any time, it still does not get rid us of the issue of it constantly jumping up and down, forcing the eyes to constantly recalibrate at the locations of the pattern elements.
I think your comparison with cell editing in Excel is quite valid, it would be damn annoying, when you had to see all the entered data and the spreadsheet was constantly moving chaotically.
I also spent several days looking for a way to turn this feature off at some stage, as it seemed to me fairly natural. Not having found it, I thought that I will probably get used to it, and I did, but it still did not get any less annoying really.
i’ve asked for this too some years ago. no luck the way it is, is just confusing and it wastes screen space. it makes me scroll the pattern up and down to see all the 64 lines when everyhing fits perfectly in just one screen. this is prolly my most wanted feature and it will most likely never be implemented.
I’m pretty used to the cursor centering. I have a background in IT and MPT before Renoise. With IT I don’t even remember anymore how this was. And I never quite got to the mobility level I had with IT when I was using MPT. The whole mouse thing kind of threw me off a bit there. But as I said, for now I’m fine with the behavior as it is.
I’m totally NOT opposed to adding this as a feature, though. If so, I’d hope it would come simply as a setting such as ‘Number of visible rows above/below cursor’. This would ensure maximum flexibility IMO. Want a centered cursor? Set this to 999. Want a free cursor? Set it to 0.
maybe because most of us dont “click” for navigating throu pattern.
otherwise, like said already, it was requested a few times in the past.
lets wait and see…
Ideally, well-made software should work for a number of different types of workflows, and the two most obvious and widely-used would be being keyboard-based and mouse-based. This is why virtually all modern software of any kind allows for both mouse-based commands (clicking on tools, clicking to perform actions with tools, right-clicking to access secondary menus with additional actions, etc.) as well as keyboard-based commands (keyboard shortcuts that can be customized to fit the user’s needs).
This one feature is actually what’s keeping me on the fence about whether to buy the full version of Renoise or not. I’ve been playing around with the trial version for a few weeks now, and the issue with the bar being centered and everything else jumping around it is killing me.
If you continuously enter or edit notes in a channel, that is indeed not a real problem. But when you need to edit certain values in different channels here and there after the pattern has been mostly entered, it is more convenient to use the mouse and then you start getting thrown around by the pattern view,
An option for modplug/jeskola buzz style cursor scrolling would make me the happiest renoise user ever…it’s literally my only real complaint about this nearly perfect tracker. I’ve never really understood why they chose to make it scroll the way it currently does.
the scrolling thing comes from the early 90s (fasttracker), when screen resolutions were too low to be able to show the 64 lines. it doesn’t make any sense with nowadays available screen resolutions
hehe, maybe, but many people have widescreens. so they would have to rotate the screen 90° to be able to see 64 lines and more.
btw: you mean 40 hex = 64 dec?!
even if you use the smallest font size, set lpb = 8 bpm = ~ 140 ↔ 170 and the pattern is too short (for me).
so lets talk about 128 or 256 lines (dec).
64 lines are 64 lines. when humans talk about numbers you should always assume decimal
i have a 1920 for 1080 wide screen. i can see 64 lines at once with no problem at all. even with my 10 year old CRT i can see 64 lines at once with no problems at all.
The question about how many lines one can see at once is moot, really.
I was using ModPlug in around 1999, when my monitor resolution was 800x600. ModPlug lets you choose which type of scrolling you prefer–keeping the active row centered and moving everything else around it (like Renoise), or keeping the pattern stationary and moving the active row within it, either by clicking a row or using the arrow keys. I never used the option of keeping the active row centered (I found it just as distracting and disorienting then as I do now). I’ve always used the option of keeping the pattern stationary and allowing the active row to move anywhere on the screen; if the pattern was too long to fit all at once on my monitor resolution, I simply utilized the scroll bar to the side of the pattern and scrolled the pattern down so I could see the row I wanted (I could also have used the arrow keys to arrow down the the row I wanted; the pattern would automatically scroll itself once I reached the bottom of the screen, so the active row never got “lost” off-screen or anything).
This is the same way an Excel spreadsheet works–Excel doesn’t bump the row you’re in to the center of the screen, and if the cell you want to edit is off-screen, you just scroll down until you see it, and then click on it (or, if you’re using your keyboard, you just hold the down arrow until you see it). It’s simple, it works just fine, and I’ve been using the exact same method since my monitor was a fraction of the size it is today. This just shouldn’t be a problem.
I do use the mousewheel. The problem is that if my active row is row 8, for example, and I want to edit a note in row 32, my natural inclination (and probably the natural inclination of most computer users in the last 15 years) is to move my mouse pointer to the note I want to edit and click it. But in doing this, the entire pattern suddenly jumps so that row 32 is in the center (where row 8 was just a second ago), and I have to re-orient myself in my pattern all over again (and the same with the next click, and the next, which is distracting and slows my working speed to a crawl).
I could use the mousewheel to scroll the cursor down to row 32, but not only is that less efficient for my personal workflow than a single click on the note I want to edit in row 32, but it also still moves the pattern around and is completely counter-intuitive to simply clicking directly on the note I’m editing.
In other words, I don’t think it should be necessary to move the whole pattern around while the “cursor” stays in one place–imagine if editing a Word document was like that, so that the blinking I-beam cursor stayed right in the middle of the screen and anytime you clicked into a different line or paragraph to make a change, the whole document moved itself around but left the cursor stationary in the middle. That might get a bit distracting, I’d think.
the way it is, is just confusing and it wastes screen space. it makes me scroll the pattern up and down to see all the 64 lines when everyhing fits perfectly in just one screen. this is prolly my most wanted feature and it will most likely never be implemented.