Yep. The mini pattern idea (assuming it’s the idea from the Rni future thread) has many, many uses.
You could enter volume, effects, speed (supposing a mini pattern would have it’s own local speed, BPM and length, and the ability to change global speed and BPM), global and local pattern breaks, and it would probably work great, but having to manually write down all the values, it’s not as easy to change back and forth between ideas.
But, like I think you’re saying (correct me if I’m wrong), it is the perfect place to create a meta device, or the basis for one.
The perfect syngergy would be with something like Larion mentioned, where you’d be able to make your own meta devices with scripting (conditions) and mini patterns (hard coded).
I’m assuming that scripting and pattern editing would really equate to the same thing in the end, even if scripting is interactive and has extended logic, whereas a mini pattern is basically unanimated.
Hubs versus switches and routers all over again.
I.e. they’d both be using readily availible pattern commands to non-destructively alter or read the pattern data of the actual track they were inserted on.
So let’s say I want to make a groove meta device. I’ll do as follows:
Go to Advanced Edit, select New… from Meta Devices.
In the Meta Device’s panel, open a Mini Pattern and enter some speed and volume values.
Write a script that creates controls for the values I have just entered.
Maybe a few new effect commands could be introduced, like forward/backwards beat displacement and exchanging one beat for another, etc.
Just for the sake of it, here’s a few feature suggestions that could be solved with this:
https://forum.renoise.com/t/groove-settings-shuffle-idea/17659
https://forum.renoise.com/t/adopting-logic-transform/14005
https://forum.renoise.com/t/selected-patterns/16059
Something like this could be done as a 3rd party tool when the next edition comes out. Won’t have the same immediate effect as having it inside Renoise, but it’s a lot better than nothing.