I hope I’m just missing something very obvious as usual but I just can’t get used to the sample editor. Everytime I select something it seems a random choise if the selection is really ‘selected’ or if I’m still selecting the whole instrument or just something completely different.
I’ve deleted MANY complete instruments by accident (sure ctrl+z is as commonly used…) this way. Just by selecting a part of the sample, then hitting delete > everything gone.
Why, if you’re click+dragging a part of your sample isn’t it really selected? I have to double click the sample in the editor again, then the selection is gone and I have to select it a second time. I can’t see the logic behind this.
Whenever you press a key in Renoise, it will go to whichever area currently has the keyboard focus. If the instrument list has focus, then pressing delete will delete an entire instrument. If the sample editor waveform has focus, then pressing delete will delete the selection in the waveform. If the sample list has focus, then pressing delete will delete an entire sample within the instrument. Etc.
Please see the manual for more info on the keyboard focus concept:
http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Keyboard_Shortcuts
Is it possible that you simply have some other area of Renoise in focus when you press delete?
Maybe you could provide some screenshots and/or video capture of this strange behaviour in action?
Only annoyance I have sometimes is like, you have a selection, then right click for context menu - selection end or begin suddenly moves to mouse pointer instead of context menu is shown 
I understand the focus concept but it doesn’t always seem to work. I’ve made a simple example:
Check it out
Agree totally with the above post.
Can’t tell if im missing an obvious feature or doing something wrong.
Example : when selecting an area of the sample to highlight, you try to right-click somewhere (not sure wheres best) to bring up context menu and the selection is just extended to mouse cursor.
Sometimes the menu comes up , sometimes just extends selection… does it matter how long the click is for ?
confused too please help
Darren J
And that’s something I don’t recognise 
There’s really not much to it. It doesn’t matter where you right-click.
If you move the mouse cursor after you right-click, then the selection will be modified.
If you don’t move the mouse cursor after you right-click, then you’ll get the context menu.
Either you guys have rather shakey hands, or there’s some other bug that’s happening. If you really think it’s a bug, then please give us very detailed steps on how to recreate the bug. Otherwise, try to keep a more steady hand when you right-click 
That video you can clearly see the Focus is in the Instrument List when it deletes an Instrument.
The question is why hasn’t focus shifted to the Sample Editor. That centre frame should always take the Focus on a single left Click, no matter the Lock Focus setting…
EDIT: I can recreate this now!
If you make a selection be dragging from outside the sample window (which is possible to do to make it easy to select very beginning or end of sample with ease) then the Focus will not switch to the centre pane.
Yes I already guessed this. Though sometimes it still won’t focus after you selected like that and you drag the boundaries. I understand the whole concept but it bugs me that it doesn’t always work propperly (for me)
I think if clicking the few pixels to the left of the editor would also bring focus to the sample editor this problem would be solved 
Have you seen my edit additional above? Can you get it to do it when not starting your selection from the window edge, rather than on the actual waveform?
Yeah that’s pretty clear but most of the times you want to cut off from the start of the sample. It’s just a smooth movement, you don’t have to aim, just throw your mouse to the left of the screen, clickdragDELETE. I can’t believe nobody else has to do that
Yeah obviously, that’s why the ability to be able to exists. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to reset the Focus though. But now where and when the problem occurs hopefully it means a fix can be worked towards 
But personally I usually zoom in to the end point, mark that accurately, zoom out and then right click-drag to the edge and delete, rather than working from edge outwards, so not overly found it to affect me.
that’s probably it.
Alright, so my request: Please ad the little line of pixels left of the sample editor to the sample editor focus area.
Thanks for explaining how that works DBlue, 
I noticed this happens more often when working fast.
if that is the reason i am doing things wrong i must have either shaky hands , or the threshold where Renoise recognizes the mouse movement input to edit the selection is too sensitive.
I would suggest 2 or 3 pixels instead of 1 as sometimes the action of pushing the mouse button down can move the cursor 1 or 2 pixels and be quite frustrating when you have spent time getting the selection box accurately positioned.
I have a Razer Mamba mouse and is very sensitive to movement I may add…