sometimes i have a hard time finding what a given function/widget/button is called according to the keyboard config screen.
an example is:
Helptext:
“Toggle Disk Browser Visibility”
Key Config:
“Show/Hide Disk Browser”
another example:
Helptext:
“Open sample FX editor tab”
Key Config:
“Focus/Show Sample Effects”
these are obviously not impossible, but would it be beneficial if it were easier? some of them are a little more cryptic. i wanted to pitch the idea that the mouseover/helptext could just use the exact same text string description as the key config UI?
in other words, to change them, you have to know what they’re called in the key config UI, but if you don’t know that name, you have to scroll and guess and hunt and search if the mouseover text doesn’t match [enough].
my REAL issue is that, it sometimes difficult to find them in the keyconfig editor. so another solution such as “right clicking on a widget tells you what it’s called or takes you to the keymap editor” or whatever, is totally fine. i’m not married to my suggestion, but it feels like the kind of enhancement that might make things a lot nicer.
This actually shows a little inexperience from your part which is perfectly fine btw. However if you ever used older software like Logic in the Windows era times, most of the legend was a little text blurb and the keycommands and shortcuts page on Logic was as detailed and arcane looking like an accountants log book. In Logic for advanced users you could turn of all legend too which removed all over the button titles and mouse over help where users firmly foucssed on the visual glyphs and memorized shortcuts. I remember coming from school one fine day after a month of learning Logic and not having to remember anything cos I new things by rote by then. Now if Logic (which was notorious for its depth of material and doing things in cryptic and roundabout fashion) can be done I am sure Renoise has a wayyy better UI and workflow design.
When looking for keyboard shortcuts in Renoise the first thing to look for in the search browser are the categories like Pattern, Browser, Editor and so on. Apriori, just go over these categories casually and get a feel for the language used and the kind of shortcut types you have. Then just open the XML file from the dialogue and study it for better detail later on. When looking for shortcuts to change look for the key ‘verbs’ like ‘show’ or ‘focus’ and just type the key verbs in the search box. That will narrow down the list. For instance you need to search for a particular increment or decrement shortcut, just search for these verbs first and then add further by naming the category you think most relevant from the results and then zero out on the most logical shortcut text or description you see.
Another reason for using synonyms or similar meaning words like ‘toggle’ in the UI help text is because the user can immediately understand what to ‘do’(verb) with the visual control on the screen, which is that he can toggle it by pressing it again and again. Keyboard shortcuts on the other hand can be in general mapped to totally different functions of the same feature by using a modifier or another combination hence being more specific certainly helps. It’s all about context here. ‘Show/hide’ could also be written as ‘appear/disappear’ but unless it’s a cheap Chinese knockoff you would not expect such blunders in English from an European company. I personally have spent some quality time with the shortcuts and you only need to know the very essential ones first to get around the software completely, change focus from window to window and change views and use the transport. Pattern editor is where you need to do you bulk of your research becos the pattern matrix sequencer is even easier to use. For extensive sampling activity learn the Waveform and Sampler window commands. That is all you need to get 90 percent of the work done…so brother where are you actually struggling?
Spend more time in Renoise, it’s also medical research now that concious learning daily meaning learning with a clear goal and with concious will to do so makes learning exponentially deeper and faster, your brain picks up way faster than if just spend time haphazardly and mostly meander from window to window ‘looking’ for answers. Also learn it bite sized (byte sized?) and get the small stuff under your fingers perfectly and build upon the foundations and not the other way around…have fun.
Semantics, it’s not an unreasonable thing to expect
Fortunately, there’s a little trick - most tooltips will list the keyboard shortcut, and this can be used for deducing the actual name in keyboard prefs.
Head into the keyboard prefs, pick any shortcut and try re-assigning with the shortcut you just saw.
If it’s assigned (which it would be) then the dialog will display the current shortcut, including the name that you were looking for.
jrrs has a point. There’s been times where I had to assume that a certain action wasn’t key-mappable, because I couldn’t find it … only to run into the same “hey a shortcut for this would be nice” moment a few weeks later, I go look again and it’s there But that is me, I can be fuzzy at times. But now I know the lua-code for tying a shortcut to some API actions, so next time it’s going to be FUN
But that is me, I can be fuzzy at times. But now I know the lua-code for tying a shortcut to some API actions, so next time it’s going to be FUN