Multiple Small Wishes

I’ve been using renoise on and off for the better part of a year and it’s a fantastic tracker, destined to be one of the best ever conceived! However, there are some small issues that keep on nagging me in a way that can only be described as “Mona Lisa with a mustache” :ph34r: … Masterpiece of a software, but with tiny things that I wish were added to it so that the ultimate experience is restored ----> mona lisa without mustache. :)

Well, here’s the list I’ve compiled over the course of the year (PS, I know that most of these have already been mentioned in the forums, as I’ve scanned through them exhaustively… but they keep on getting ignored or forgotten):

  • option to not jump playback to a pattern when navigating through them during playback.

  • free-form “middle-bar” option, or option to remove it completely so that the majority
    of the time you see your cursor moving instead of the whole screen (to avoid getting dizZzZy).

  • Ability to override all keys in keyboard layout preferences, including notes.
    Laptops can have severely crippled keyboards, and the more keys the better esp.
    when you have a midi keyboard plugged in there anyway.

  • option to not wrap around patterns vertically and/or horizontally.

  • A second highlight bar increment with its own color scheme, etc, so that you can clearly see
    not just one repeating beat mark but two separate ones with their individual tick increments.

  • Ability to jump to the diskop sample section by pressing “enter”
    (or some other key) from the instrument or sample list. Forgive me if that is already possible!

  • Ability to “keyjazz” samples and instruments in the diskop without having to select them
    (kind of like that new right-arrow feature, except you can play more than just the C-2).

Notice how the new features I propose are not attempts at hijacking renoise for all of you who are perfectly comfortable with it as it currently is – I’m only suggesting some new optional preferences that I personally find semi-indispensable (and I cannot possibly be alone).

Deepest respect to Taktik and the whole renoise team for a great tracker. Keep up the good work - and I definitely look forward to the new version 1.8! Excellent mixer view. :yeah:

If I understand you correctly, you want to turn off “Pattern Follow”. In version 1.8, it’s in the transport bar, 2nd button from the right. Or, just hit the “scroll lock” key.

All keys are freely assignable. In 1.8, go to edit->preferences->keys. In earlier versions, it’s under Configs->Keyboard/Mouse

In 1.8, it’s in the transport bar in the upper left, first button on the right. Same thing for 1.5. Shortcut for this option is shift-scroll.

I add something to what sonus has written:
you can also assign a key combination to “jump to master track” and “jump to first track” (in version 1.8, they are under PatternSequencer=>Navigation category). I assigned them to LCTRL+LSHIFT+END and LCTRL+LSHIFT+HOME

Well, that is very helpful for playback, but I would like to have no “page movement” when i’m composing, more importantly. Just a cursor that I move (and of course once I’m on the last line the page moves accordingly… That way there is a lot less movement in the page and it’s easier (for me) to track. Right now, no matter what you want, you have your cursor in the same place, your page is the thing that’s moving.

I’ve gone in Edit and redefined the keys to an insane level to make this amazing application work better for me, but some keys are hard-coded. I humbly respect the coders’ decicion if this hard-coding is unavoidable for some reasons but you can’t assign some keys because if you do, it will also perform the hard-coded operation in the same stroke (see my example with the note keys).

Notice how even the tooltip for this indicates that it’ll wrap no matter what it’s set to, whether that means in the current pattern or the next.

Yes! I love those keys and use them all the time to navigate more quickly.

zon

Hmmm. It seems that there’s a “Computer Keyboard Piano” assignment that doesn’t exist anywhere in the available assignable shortcuts. It only shows up as a conflict …

I never noticed that! I always assumed EVERY key is assignable.

They still are assignable.
Just ignore the conflict message.
Though…you have to clear the new function you have assigned to go back to default ‘Computer Keyboard Piano’.

Yes, you can assign it, but it doesn’t work, it’s overridden by the hard-coded ‘Computer Keyboard Piano’ anyway when it’s used. Have you tried an action after assigning it to a “CKP” key ? Maybe I’m doing it wrong…

zon

It seems that both your new assignment AND “Computer Keyboard Piano” work at the same time … ie, you will hear notes being played if you have an instrument selected AND your assigned action will perform.

Really?

hm…
It works here.
Or…
I get notes if I hold the button in pattern editor with Edit on.

Guess you should report both these issues (hold button and conflict message) in the bug forum, and see what happens :)

Edit:
Oh… this seems to depend on what kinda action you assign.

Just don’t assign keyshorts to hardcoded keymappings if you don’t want that behaviour, doing bug reports about that is useless and will end up as a [cantfix] or [wontfix]
If you have a laptop, the only thing to fix your crippled keyboard layout is by attaching an external keyboard (either ps/2 if it has the port or use an usb port) and do everything on that one.
Keyboards are replacable.

or remap
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/input/w2kscan-map.mspx

Possibly might not overrule DirectInput, and for the Mac user it ain’t a solution at all.

well… I’m just curious what the boss thinks about this.
And a point is that the behavior are different if you assign different kind of things on these so-called hard-coded keys.
That could also lead to other strange things/bugs?
And why is it possible to assign anything at all if these keys are supposed to be hard-coded?

anyway, I can understand a few hard-coded modifier keys. But hard-coding 30-40 other normal keys will cripple the key-mapping too much I think.
Not everyone need two octaves of ‘Keyboard Piano’ (and even overlapping keys). I like to assign some of these keys to other things.
So yes… I would very much like these ‘bugs’ to be removed.
Just MHO B)

vvoois is right, scan map doesn’t work for directinput…forget about it…

Quite frankly, the only “Virtual Keyboard Piano” key that I ever use is ‘Z’, which is “middle” C, or whatever the octave is set to.

I guess I’m not an old-skool-enough of a tracker to be used to keyboard input of any more complex melodies. My first tracker of choice was ModPlug, which supported MIDI, and I already had a MIDI keyboard at my disposal.

I would like it if all those hard-assignments to be removable or editable. Having 2 actions for the same key is a little annoying. I see no reason why all those keys should be hard-assigned to the virtual keyboard piano.

I agree… would be really useful for people who prefer midi keyboard. Would be nice to assign some functions to one single key instead of the usual ctrl+shift+something+something… Even those who use the virtual keyboard piano might be happy to use only one octave to make some more buttons available.

A second highlight colour would also be really nice, I remeber that I liked that feature in ModPlug.

btw…
is it possible asign ‘block copy’ to rcontrol + insert? (any r* + *) couldn’t get any keybinding like this, tried it also with editing the xml

found a post of martinal saying rcontrol is hard coded like the virtual piano keys…
i’m totaly used to the rcontrol + insert, rshift + insert, windows uses them as alternate to ctrl + c, ctrl + v…

another thing: where’s the default xml for the keybindings? i remember editing a keybindings.xml in renoise 1.5 without creating one at first, but today i couldn’t find any xml with keybindings until i created one in renoise, i wondered where renoise could save the keybindings as i edited them without touching any xml file…i must be doing something wrong…