Hey.
I have this idea about putting colors in the pattern editor, for easy organizing.
This would be awesome for those (and me included) that use Renoise for live playing, and a great complement to the new “Merge songs”-option. It’s pretty easy to get a mess with 10 merged songs. 
Here’s the idea illustrated:
I have been asking for this feature for AGES!!!
I agree 100% and I think it should be implemented straight away!
Glad to see someone agrees with me
Using different colors for different purposes in GUI adds a new dimension to renoise. I think it’s time to add this new dimension, not just in this case.
I dont see why anyone would disagree with this! This is MUCH needed! Obviously if you dont want to use it you dont have to!
you mean dofferent colours for different Instruments?
because i like but need mark instruments too
for example
00 is red
01 yelow
…
and in pattern will be marked in this colors?
this you mean?
I can perhaps see the need to give each track its own colour, so you could make all your percussion green, all your synths red, etc., but I’m not sure that I totally “get” this idea about colouring individual selections within the pattern. It seems like it could get very messy, very quickly. And what happens when copying/pasting selected parts of the pattern… do the colours also get copied? Potentially you could have a pattern full of rainbow colours all over the place?
Hmm.
.
It can be used for so many things. A “reminder” for example. Example the green color reminds me to do a specified thing on my synthesizers, red color reminds me to drink beer. What ever.
And as I said, ten merged songs in a live-set looks pretty messed up.
Argh! My eyes, Bantai! 
What Dblue said…
track-related colors make sense, colors for individual sections doesn’t if you ask me.
so i’m basically with dblue on this one and furthermore agree with bantai that there are way more crucial things to be focused on before adding such minor things.
I’m with dblue and keith for coloured tracks, as that would definetly be useful to me too. Perhaps instruments too, but then the little blocks of colour wouldn’t be as strikingly visible as when a whole track lights up. I usually separate my samples by track anyway, don’t most people? Judging by the thousands of tracks I’ve seen over the years, I mean.
Reminders you can also put up on a to-do list (like a to-do list in the song comments?)
If you need a colour to remind you to drink your beer i think you may want the book “Calendertraining for dummies”
Merging songs is always a thing that messes up a lot and shall always require manual cleanup and neatup.
I don’t think any of your arguments supply any power to submit colourizing regions.
Colourizing tracks is interesting in two ways:It allows you to give you a more object oriented overview of what is where and it enforces you to work structural.
I think that working structural (and being forced to…) is just the thing anyone needs regardless in whatever process the person is.
As I have said before (and as people have said in this thread)… There should be a feature to colour tracks. I am not bothered about colouring sections of a track as proposed by the original poster, but colouring tracks would make so much sense.
As dblue said, and many people have said before, we should be able to colour our percussion tracks in one colour, pads in another etc etc.
This would effectively be basic grouping, and when I am running 40+ tracks in a song, things get messy and confusing fast.
And Bantai… the world IS divided up into agree and disagree; even more so in the digital domain. Grey areas are just levels of subjectivity surrounding basic truths.
Colouring tracks would be handy. Colouring regions within tracks; personally couldn’t find a use for it.
The fact that you can re-order tracks is a total god-send for me, as I tend to organise my tracks so the percussion tracks are on the far left, followed by bass, and then I tend to use the “most complicated” track next so I don’t have to scroll so much. I don’t necessary track in that order, so re-ordering helps keep things organised.
Perhaps we should approach this topic from an entire track-workflow point of view - and treating track colouring as only one aspect of this discussion.
So … how do we improve tracking workflow?
… perhaps the better question is, what is most difficult about managing the actual tracking work-flow?
I personally believe we should compile a list, and then go from there.
From a personal point of view, I find no frustration with the renoise tracker interface. My wishlist has always remain tiny, although I never hesitate using new features. 
However, I would love to group tracks so I can minimise/restore sections as I see fit. Doing that feature first, and applying track colouring as a sub-option could be the better way to go.
I have just thought of an excellent easy solution!
How about the ability to stick an extra thick bar between certain tracks and colour code the tops (very much like in Cubase)
This way you could keep things as they are on the actual track, and still have colour coding.
Example…
I think this is the way forward. It is subtle enough not to annoy any of the purists too. The colours used could be locked to something in the theme so everything matches nicely, and there could also be the ability to input text in, just like in the Track names and the Pattern Arranger.
please no. but an option would be to set the background of the tracknames to a colour. should be about the same. this colour could also be used in the scopes (as background for the track names there). If you can’t imagine what I mean I can do a little graphic. This would mean we don’t have to add something new to the gui, especially as this suggestions of yours takes up precious space.
on the other hand, what I actually could imagine is a color-option for drumtracks, so that every note has a different colour there … would make it easier to to spot the basic rhythm of your drums late at night and when being tired.
btw mick, great idea about collapsing tracks … would make it easier to work on two tracks that are currently far apart (track 1 and 8 maybe), I know I can drag tracks around but somehow I am a) always afraid I will break something or renoise will crash on me (no idea why) and 
the scopes change too and I need to remember which rectangle to click to solo/mute a track. If we could just collapse “not-needed-in-view”-tracks to something like 10px width, that would be really useful.
well i will let you all work it out amongst your selves. The general attitudes on this forums have definitely taken a turn for the worst. Obviously, if you dont like an idea, you are free to say, but i feel that a lot of people are being pretty blunt with their dislike.
Shame, as this used to be a really nice place to pool ideas.
Oh well. I will just wait for the updates.
Sorry, but I am just giving my opinion here which is that I don’t want bars of colour introduced which take up screen-space and do not offer much use. So why not combine the already existing tracknames with your color-idea ? Anyone not wanting to use colors just leaves them alone and everyone who wants to use colors can use them as backgroundcolor for the space taken by the name of a track.
I know discussions might seem abit rude here from time to time but afterall be assured that this is nothing personal, if you came knocking at my door this moment (or ever) I would cheerfully greet you and go out to have a drink and a fun night, no matter if we disagree here or not.
I had some ideas of mine turned down the same way in the past and I did get over it, but I definately agree to anyone complaining that discussions of could-be-features are very chaotic, harsh and sometimes fruitless because the majority does agree but nothing happens later.
I will write a post later proposing some ideas of mine to make this fun and useful again.
niiiice, this would work for me, plus it looks pretty slick and doesn’t take much screen space yet it will do it’s job. if it would be a option nobody is getting hurt (oh the pain baaaaby !! 
)
personally i think all the coding power should go the arranger and audio track… but if this is ‘easy’ to do then pls do so.
edit btw, pls don’t do any track icons !!! lolz
to visusalize what I meant with background here is a quick and dirty example.
Another way for the scope would be to colorize the oscilloscope-line itself.
