Thank you Renoise people for what seem to have been a hard work.
Some preliminary thoughts - no criticism, just opinions.
I Do not like:
The wider clickable area in the Sequence Editor, for the loop toggle button (leftmost part).
you other opinions are almost a matter of taste, but about the point 6: this is plain wrong: TPL = 12 has been chosen because it can be divided by 2, 3, 4 and 6; the fact that you use speed 6 simply indicates that you don’t need so much subdivision, but people does, otherwise the whole LPB concept would have never born.
simply change your template song by setting TPL to 6, but remember that your automation curves will be evaluated only 6 times in a row.
Agree on this one.
‘Expand’ would make more sense to me. And the button shouldn’t just disappear in the maximized view, it should become:
- lit/enabled (white background, you know…)
or - replaced by some other button, like ‘Collapse’/‘Minimize’/‘Less’ (makes sense, since this is already used in the file browser)
“Expand” requires a larger button than “More”
Or perhaps we should insert a “>>” marker?
or maybe a “…” label like when you want to manually browse a file in an application
+1.
As I said earlier, at the first glance I thought I could hide them by dragging pattern editor’s left margin to the most left. It’s good if this can be done.
Makes sense. It is good to change it to renoise standards, a tiny icon with tooltips.
In contrary, I’ve fixed it on 16. As It-Alien mentioned, remember that TPL defines your automation curves’ resolution. I always want them to affect the DSP parameters very smoothly.
Or a ‘▼’ for expand and ‘▲’ for shrink? They are widely used and occupy little space.
I alsp tried dragging, but I think it will not be enough.
I usually have this section wide - to show the pattern names.
I want to see the names, but dont want to see these icons.
I think they should be checkboxed out in the preferences AND I think their design/location should change a little to be more consistent, less intrusive.
The arrow icons may not work - in one dialog, expanding means pushing it down (file browser), and in other dialogs it means pushing it up (effects) - so the arrows may be confusing.
For point 1), it’s been discussed here but i’ll repeat it again for good measure.
The first thing a lot of newbies ask when they fire up Renoise is “How do i make more than one pattern?” or “How do i sequence my patterns” and on a few ocasions i’ve read accounts of someone using a single pattern and never figuring out you can make more. This is not a joke. I was on YouTube yesterday looking at Renoise videos and saw it again i.e. “how do i make a song longer than 128 lines?” Which for the rest of us people born in the 1970’s is usually like WTF? Haven’t you used a tracker before? This new thing says “Hey, look over here, this column over here, You’ll need to look at it, it’s super important.”
Plus the top row was chopped, so you loose horizontal space but gain vertical space, and new computer monitor aspect ratios have a lot of horizontal space.
Furthermore, as Renoise evolves and eventually gets featurs like an Aranger and maybe even a Piano Roll, will you come back and post another opinion about realestate? Those are bound to take space, too… (EDIT: What I mean here is you should post a constructive suggestion, like a screenshot. Instead of an ambiguous “ME NO LIKE”)
Immediate gut reactions are fine and dandy, but not everything should be an option. In software it’s called deprecated. And GUI is always matter of taste. It’s like a new haircut. A week will go by and you get used to it.
Anyway, good opinions none the less. Personally, I disagree with most of them. But there’s nothing wrong with expressing yourself.
Thats a weak argument.
Imagine that all the features in renoise will shout “HEY LOOK OVER HERE”…
In GUI design this is called clutter.
If an important activity is not clear enough, make it clearer.
I am not against buttons that let you create patterns, I am totally against the implementation which is inconsistent, annoying and takes real estate beyond its physical size - since it makes a whole new empty column if you add the space above and below it.
Consistency is also an important GUI design aspect as you would agree I am sure.
Also, if Renoise attempts to target all audiences - ones that havent seen trackers, veteran IT/FT trackers and newbies who just want to make loops, it is bound to fail. You cannot satisfy all with one application so I guess you should decide who is your target audience - trackers, newbies to music or ex-cubase users.
The only way that I know that may allow satisfying more than one audience type, is to provide a high level of easily configurable customization. So beginners can have their huge buttons that call their name whenever Renoise starts up, and veterans can clear their workspace from unnecessary controls.
Satisfying too many audiences causes too many compromises.
So yes, adding new features to attract potential new audience thats good and nice, but it must be done carefully to avoid churning of veteran users. You never know which feature will be that tipping point.
I await you suggested mock-up/screenshot of a better solution because frankly It looks good to me now, and we are arguing the realm of personal taste, not facts.
Yes, I agree. But I disagree that the current design is inconsistent. For me, it’s the best I’ve seen yet.
I am open to better, where better is a variable subjective to personal taste divided by popular consensus.
These buttons do not serve me, and as you mentioned, are not intended for audience like me.
So I am probably not the best one to do the design.
If I am to design this, I will probably just add a checkbox in the preferences to make them go away…
Ok, well I agree to this! Simple, elegant. Sorry if I missed that the first time around? I tend to go into rant mode too quickly.
It’s true they are just buttons for shortcuts, and people using shortcuts (or the edit menu) won’t miss them.
Bump this thread with that suggestion so as to decouple it from your list here, and i will +1 you, then we await a response from people who actually make decisions here 
Isn’t it possible to design your own buttons & icons and then put them in the right folder to make them visible in renoise? I don’t have a problem with how they look now, just thought the arrows were/looked a little bit fiddly to select.
Bumped.
Yes, lots of buttons are in the images folder.
As a long time Renoise user, i think the new pattern sequencer buttons are the bomb, and necessary.
If 10 pixels horizontal real estate is a big deal to you, big whoop. Seriously. I don’t care.
Right now it’s immediatly obvious how to do what. That’s what’s important. I’m bored shitless with the constant right clicking and choosing in the sequencer because i could never be arsed with moving keyboard focus around.
Aside from this, yeah, “band stop” is a strange term. I was expecting “band reject”.
Pass and stop are actual terms when talking about filters.
What are you talking about? what right click?
To put a focus on a section, Alt-Click it
All the new annoying buttons were accessible before both by shortcuts and from the top section of the sequencer. So what was so bad there?
From the pattern editor (without changing any focus)
Ctrl-Ins = new pattern
Ctrl-Del = del pattern
Ctrl-Left/Right = Increase/Decrease pattern
And if you insist on using the mouse, the buttons are there in 1.9 also
The only difference, is that now the new buttons are too visible and take up more space.
They are now designed for total rookies who need help in getting started with a tracker.
So, about that checkbox… maybe that could not just make them go away, but switch between that column and having them on top of the sequencer? In a prefs section called newbies, which could also have things like “show tips and tricks on startup”, etc.
Or even better… couldn’t Renoise have a quick tutorial that pops up on the first start (until you tick “stop bothering me”) and is also accessible via the help menu??
In other words - explain the buttons, and then make the best GUI you can make, not the one the most people “intuitively” expect (it’s not intution, it’s just habits).
Thats not true. For example I don’t use these local sequencer shortcuts at all. I just use the patterneditor shortcuts and do copy/clone by Control+Shift mouse dragging only, so for me these buttons are essential.
Further the main reason why we`ve put the ins/del clone button on the right was that we wanted to have the arrows next to the current pattern. The old arrows on the top seemed to relate to nothing, while the new position makes sense for everyone without reading manuals or tooltips.