Exactly! And it is impossible to have a line with a height over 256 pixels, regardless of how big it looks to you.
What? Last time I checked, Renoise didn’t support adding custom fonts. Correct me if I’m wrong, though. I think that you might want to spend some time in the GUI preferences menu.
:edit: So I lied, Renoise does let you use your own fonts. I suppose that if you wanted to track on an unimaginably large screen at unmanageably slow tempos, smooth scrolling based on the built-in timing system might look a tad choppy. :/edit:
The height of a line in the pattern editor is the height of the font, depending on the size setting of which there are four… so what are you going on about 256 pixels?..
I don’t even care whether we get smooth scrolling or not, so I’ll let someone else argue with you about why 1/256th line resolution should and will have to be good enough.
This is of course assuming that Renoise’s timing engine works the way that I think that it does. If it doesn’t, I still don’t care, but good for you.
I’d say the cursor (the horizontal line when pattern follow is enabled) would scroll along smoothly and when you’d stop it would stop exactly on the line as it does now.
Yeah, why not eh? I can’t see any real disadvantages, and the juddery speccy-like line ‘switching’ that Renoise currently uses is a bit harsh on the eyes after a while. It may also confuse beginners who don’t see the jerky scrolling as actual scrolling at all.
I agree with Twinbee, I’m sure it’ll take a small number of CPU cycles, and I’m willing to bet that the majority of GFX hardware will be able do most of the work nowadays. It should still be an optional thing though (although I’m not sure the devs would even bother with something that’s so aestetic and that would probably mean another checkbox in the options).
As for how much it moves - I think it can be solved by simple mathematics:
Each line has a height of (for example) 16 pixels. (PPL)
And you run the tune at 8 ticks per line. (TPL)
So for every tick, it would move along 2 pixels (PPL / TPL)
For any combination that result in fractions of pixels, I’m pretty certain that GPUs can work quckly enough in 2D to provide a nice, slick looking anti-aliased version of those sub-pixels giving us faultless smoothness.
And as for scrolling, keep it as it is for the arrow keys / mouse wheel, and I was thinking middle mouse button + wheel motion /arrow keys could provide sub-line scrolling.
Perhaps even a counter displaying pp.ll.tt (pattern, line, tick), not too disimilar from Ableton would be nice, particularly whilst scrolling through ticks.
Still the majority of this is purely cosmetic and not vital, but it might give it a nice polished look & feel. I can’t say if it would actually look or feel any better until I see it though! Besides all this, I’m guessing a lot is going to change with regards to sub-tick editing anyway, so a lot of this will probably be rendered useless!
I think this would make pattern data actually harder to read. As it is now, by staring at a fixed point you have a chance to see the notes/data ‘step’ through your vision, snapping along as the lines progress.
With smooth scrolling your eyes would be doing so much more work, you’d get dizzy.
It must be very subjective, because I believe it makes the data so much easier to read. I always look around the whole pattern and looking ahead, not just watching a fixed point, a fluid motion is easier to read in my mind… Imagine if the star wars scroller worked this jerky way
I did a mockup of this in flash long time ago, but looks like I’ve deleted it when I moved server
It will give datasette an idea of whether or not smooth scrolling is harder to keep track of for his eyes than something jumping 10 pixels at a time, yes.
Computersette’s example is kind of irrefutable evidence. If you watch the current line, in pattern follow mode, if your latency is decent (ASIO or sub 100ms anyway), a note hitting the highlighted line immediatly “pops” in view; There is simply no doubt which note triggered what. This is particularly useful for drums.
If you want another example, try following text as it scrolls by the point you are focusing at. Hell, mock it up in notepad or something. It’s fucking terrible.
I think what it really boils down to is clarity. Trackers are, sorry to say dudes, step sequencers. Messing with what a step constitutes is a bad idea. You can smooth scroll a piano roll all you want, but what matters in a piano roll is the instant the playhead crosses the beginning of a note, and it’s not that clear when you are dealing with “note entry points” the height of a line tick.
To be honest with you, i’d be appalled if i was forced to use a tracker with smooth scrolling. I’d turn it off, or look for an alternative package in a heartbeat. It’s that fundamental a conceit.
Funny discussion, I wonder if the views on this would be the same if Ultimate Soundtracker had smooth scrolling patterns.
Personally I’m not sure if I would use it or not, but on the other hand I do think there are improvement to be made in the pattern editor to gain clarity of what is going on, this might or could be helpful. Then again, maybe not.
Why? You wouldn’t want others to have an option you wouldn’t use?
Meh.
Yep, this would make you dizzy trying to read data while it is scrolling - but guess what, this feature is not for that purpose. I don’t read data much when playing back, I just appreciate the general feeling of “some notes here, some effects over there”. I mainly pay attention to the beats, so a smoother impression of how fast the song is (and smooth scrolling would undisputably give that) is more important to me than “data” I cannot “read” anyway, smooth scrolling or not.
Yeah. Sure. That must be the reason EVERY lister I use a lot that has smooth scrolling is a lot easier to use quickly (for me), and is probably also the reason why smooth scrolling was there first, until better computers came along and discrete step “scrolling” was invented…
So maybe it’s really not that hot a suggestion for the pattern editor (I’d still love to see it), but it’s a must have for long lists (hey - Disk Op?)
(there is a reason why DSP’s slide around when you enable GUI fx - it makes it much easier to see what goes where… so really, don’t just dismiss this because you can’t imagine it…)
Here’s a quick and dirty flash mockup (flash is not super good at smooth scrolling)
I wouldn’t get more dizzy with this, than trying to follow a jerky note just to read it.
