Renaming Instruments

Hello all,

I have a very simple problem - I’m trying to figure out how to rename instruments using just a shortcut key.

I pick up the mouse, click on say, “Recorded Sample 11”, and then I hit ctrl-R to rename. I get no response. It works as expected when I click on the instrument with the right mouse button and select “rename instrument”…

I’m just trying to establish if it’s a bug or I’m retarded (… more likely I’m retarded)

Regards,
Mick :)

PS. Is there a way to arrange the instrument list so there are no blank slots? Sometimes I have instruments at slot 00, 14,15,57,58,59 (as a result of removing a lot of obsolete instruments).

[Alphabetical sorting might be handy too, as I can prefix my instruments by category!]

1 Like

The instrument list must be in focus, it’s not a global shortcut

I am confused by your answer, and I’ll explain why …

Clicking on the instrument list still “focuses” the middle pane as all keyboard shortcuts associated with that pane still work.

Examples:

  1. When I click on an instrument while the “Instrument Editor” is up, CTRL-R will randomize the Volume envelope.

  2. When I click on an instrument while in the Pattern editor, shortcuts like CTRL-A will still work in the pattern editor.

What I’ve discovered, is that the middle pane is never actually de-focused until Renoise awaits keyboard input. (like for example the Diskop, DSP parameters, Pattern Naming, etc) …Therefore is seems to ‘route’ CTRL-R to whatever is associated with the middle pane functionality, regards of what you think is in ‘focus’.

Middle mouse click to get the focus. (or ctrl+tab)
Focused window have red border on corners.

Thankyou thankyou :) I never knew that … always satisfying to learn something new about Renoise!

probably you have enabled the “keep focus on pattern editor” mode. try if pressing F8 changes the bahaviour to what you need; if not, you can press F8 again to get back to the original behaviour

Our mighty focus topic is back.

I’d say we should finally trash that “keep focus on pattern editor” mode, so that the only way to set focus outside the pattern editor is a middle click or alt+mouse click.
Right now it seems that people only use it accidentally; which is just confusing.

Also we should add a “(when focused)” tag for all context menu entries which are not global, just like we do for the shortcut descriptions in the tooltips? This way people will at least know this has something to do with focus and start crawling the tutorials&help pages for “focus”? The only reason I’d left that out was that it takes so much space, but heck, less space is better than more confusion?

By removing the option I meant to make it the default. The the pattern editor should have by default the focus and you have to do something “special” (Alt/Middle click) to override this.

And yes, thats NOT how exel & co works, that why we first thought this loose focus thing is a good idea. At the end it its now clear that this doesn’t work for Renoise?
Renoise has a main view for keyboard input. Thats the pattern editor. Its very very likely that you want to edit your song there with the keys, and not use the keyboard keys to change / rename instruments without holding down modifiers?

It can be difficult one because it’s so personal. (The fact that people actually think Modplug Tracker has the best interface is testament to this. MPT’s focusing methods works like a normal windows app, and I end up yelling at the screen.)

Pretty much the reason for this post is because I wasn’t aware that the focusing worked the way it did. I took it all for granted. (I don’t surf the Renoise forums as much as I should :P)

When I modified this behaviour as It-Alien suggested, I tracked with it for a little while. I found this behaviour a little awkward. I found myself selecting an instrument with the mouse and trying to track without refocusing the pattern editor. I found myself adjusting a DSP parameter and doing the same thing. It drove me crazy, I hit F8 and it all made sense again.

The way I see it, the fundamental reason why “pane focusing” should be turned off is because the pattern editor is geared towards the keyboard, and the other editors (Sample/Instrument/DSP/Diskop) is geared towards the mouse.

There are moments where keyboard control is nice outside the pattern editor (like CTRL-R to rename a sample), but these are exceptions.

For the greater good I reckon focusing should only happen with the middle mouse button, (or perhaps even a double click?).

You can still use the ctrl-tab ctrl-shift-tab to move the focus by keys and you can still save your layout preset underneath a function key with focus, so you could save the current layout seven times in each time having the focus in a different area. (meaning you can swap focus by using the function keys)