- Effects column should be realized through some visual interface that can give an opportunity to select an effect and set its properties. for example, there is a bar on column at each row. clicking on this bar shows available effects. you just choosing an effect and the bar replaces with a scroller or something that represents the value of an effect. In short, i think, writing an effects by letters and numbers in the column is not for 21th century
- Just an ability to select some part of the track in the pattern and specify the number or rows for it.
For example, you may select last 8 rows at the drum track (not at all tracks!) of the pattern and say that this part will be now splited into 32 subrows. and than you may realize there some complex drum composition this ability is much more convenient than the variation of the global speed.
A few links that could be of interest:
A Question Of Speed is about zooming in pattern editor and speed settings.
Note Envelopes are some ideas about alternative graphical way of showing pattern commands.
1 :If it were only for the specific sample related (or oldskool) tracker effects, it might work out. But the combined MIDI related commands (pitchslide etc.) blows your idea to pieces because that effect doesn’t really fit into the handling method. e.g.: Pitchslide and modwheel have values of four digits instead of two.
2:Assuming you don’t want to retrig the same percussion sample (retrig command does thi perfectly): you don’t need to variate your speed to play drums on different ticks, delaycommands perform this option good enough, they require extra notecolumns to play more different percussion samples in different tick-offsets on the same row.
If you require different commandeffects on the same row applied to different samples, yes, you have to use more tracks instead of subtracks unfortunately.
100,000 trackers would disagree 
I think the best way to do this would be to simply support automation of pattern effects. That way, you could draw them on a curve. Perhaps a metadevice that could link to a pattern effect would work for these purposes.
I would love to draw retrig effects in the automation device…
Good for my visual retrig computation algebra.
So lets remove visual interface for dynamic filters and add another one column to enter values numericaly 
I sure miss the times i composed my music in Turbo Assembler on the C64 where i had to wait longer to finish compilation, whenever the song got larger. (No Turbo Assembler was not a spin-off of Music Assembler 
)
My point was simply that Renoise is a tracker. People use it because it’s a tracker. As such, calling pattern effects, one of the basic features that makes Renoise a tracker, “archaic” might offend quite a few people. One of the reasons I use a tracker is because of the Pattern Effects. And, you can control any DSP or VST effect with pattern commands anyway. As a matter of fact, I quite often do 
The reason why i would like lots of effects actually see duped in automation is because automation performs the smooth transition on tick-base in NE and for certain effects this would be a welcome feature, plus with automation you could get rid of the 256 value limitation.
Hahahahahaha 
I’d still like to see the pattern effects stay though. Perhaps another solution to the 256 limit is to add another 2 more hex characters to the effect codes… one for the effect identifier, and one for the parameter? Just a though (f = effect … a= params): FFFAAA
More digits make Taktik scream… he already said multiple times not liking to add them.
If it were that easy he probably would have done it already.
Nah, the old effects may stay, extended effects may come in automation (if you can also get to specify the exact value of each node)