Improvements of the pattern view!

Here are some feature requests, that could improve working with the pattern view.

1. Pixelwise scrolling in play and record mode

I suggested this one some years(?) ago, maybe would be more useful now.

Instead of line-wise pattern scrolling, I would love to see pixel-wise pattern scrolling as soft as butter. Why?

Because

  • You can then read pattern contents much better while scrolling (Take a look at Cubasis on iPad, then you will know what smooth scrolling is!)
  • It would also reflect the sample based parameter modulation
  • Renoise would look much more 21th-century-like and not such much like an stuttering Excel (besides of this, Renoise looks fantastic of course!)

This would require a pattern drawing engine with constant 60fps. The framerate sometimes drops a little bit at least on my machines (which have a good processor and graphics, Mac OSX).

On editing, stopping, using slider or if touching cursor keys, the scrolling will be line-wise again of course. So it seems I “just” talking about an animation transition while playing or recording the song.

2. Ability to scroll/edit directly to the next pattern using mousewheel or cursor / editing above pattern boundaries

If we scroll down to the end of the first pattern, the cursor should directly jump to the next pattern that is shown below while using mouse wheel or cursor keys…
This only if pattern loop and block loop are disabled of course.

It should be possible to mark pattern data from two following pattern at once. So you could select an area beyond the pattern boundaries.

It would probably feel much more like an endless scroller like in other DAWs…

Some additions…

Yep. Don’t understand why scrolling with mouse should be different than auto-scrolling while playback.

In some way this would also be more like editing in oldschool trackers* where pattern lenghts are defined per track.
Let’s say you have 64 lines standard: I.e. mark one renoise pattern to loop (64 lines): edit drums, then mark four renoise pattern to loop (256 lines): edit lead voice. Then copy drum pattern three times more in orderlist.

*at least the trackers I use on C64 - don’t know about Amiga trackers.

Jenoki thanks. When I wrote this, there was a bug in Renoise’s “scrolling with stepping” function, so it stopped at the end of the pattern (which was my default scrolling). This is now fixed in V3.

Jenoki: I know, buf afaik it ignores the loop settings made in orderlist.
That’s different behaviour than in playback.
Or am I still missing something?

Playback has nothing to do with navigation and i doubt that kind of functionality will ever be implemented (How i interpret your hint about the loop settings would mean that you would have to turn off / remove the order-loop or change the pattern number inside the loop to be capable of navigating to a pattern which is not inside the loop which is definitely very annoying).
If you want behavior that relates to playback behavior, it is not impossible to script this though.