Renoise’s disk browser already features a ‘preview of samples’. My suggestion is that the user has this option also in regard to songs.
Maybe something like (somewhere in the Preferences menu):
We can already do this today, by unfolding the [+] to the left on the song’s name and then clicking on the samples. This is just a more convenient way to let the user quickly browse his songs and preview them (given that he has saved a rendered selection as a sample, and placed it on the first or the last instrument slot before saving the .xrns, of course).
Why not let Renoise do the preview sample saving?
So the user will only have to select “Last 64 Rows” or “First 64 Rows” in prefs, and from now on when saving a song, it will save a specially named instrument (so it can recognize it and not “resave” it) and this is the instrument that will be played on preview.
I am using Rows and not Patterns in order to prevent these “preview” samples from being too big.
But since Renoise is so clean and all the features are right on the money, I am sure that such feature needs to be much more accurately designed in order for it to make it in.