i mean, old trackers did it well.
more commands would be great!
this is an old story. It is a choice by the team which I personally disagree on. The main idea of who favours this limitation is that overcoming the 0-F hexadecimal range would confuse people, expecially beginners.
This topic gets ridiscussed from time to time and it is not impossible that the decision will change in the future
Yeah, there’s no reason why the choice of effect needs to be specified with a hexadecimal number. Why not just use the alphabet and map each letter to an individual effect, the connection between a number and an effect is irrelevant anyway, apart from when you control the parameter of a DSP effect.
As for setting the value, I guess base 16 is mainly helpful to keep the number of digits smaller (and it’s actually really helpful for setting sample offsets that are in sync with the music). However, it’s very unintuitive for beginners, I’ve tried to teach some renoise, and the hexadecimal numbers is the main thing that causes a problem. They don’t understand the purpose, and it makes renoise look like a music program for hackers and not normal human beings.
That’s why i rather favor to ditch the characters at all and go for symbols. They don’t have limitations->you can make as many as you want and if you need more, simply add another symbol.
+1
I am can just about cope with hex now…its probably the only feature in Renoise i would take issue with, I initially thought it was pointless…I m sure there is a reason for it, or is there?(I mean a reason besides the fact that multiples of 8/16 work well with music).
I can only see that the 8/16 thing is relevant for tempo-synced “set sample offset” effects. I guess with larger values it can save one digit. Most of the time it’s inconvenient as VSTi’s as well as DSP effects often uses decimal numbers in the range of 0-127, so to read what the effects does, you have to convert hexadecimal to decimal in your head instead of just reading the numbers.
I think this is something of a relic from the past. Remember when people were jumping from FT2 to new trackers and complained that Ctrl+X/C/V was the shortcuts for copying, instead of the old Alt+F3/F4/F5? A lot of people are persistent against change, even when it’s an improvement in every way.
Impulse tracker supported A-Z characters, its also a relic from the past. And IT wasn’t the only tracker supporting 36 pattern effect commando’s.
I never said that every solution that was used in the past is wrong, just that some cases they can be and that people can be persistent when it needs to change. This is why I vote for decimal numbers, just so the product can be more intuitive for regular human beings and not everyone I try to teach the program to gets all confused about how to think in base 16. Also, I think it makes more sense if letters are used for things that doesn’t have a numerical connection. If there are more effects than the number of letters in the alphabet, then go for two letters.
I’m leaning towards agreeing to some kind of painful optimization.
Maybe use a pulldown menu here and there. Imagine if the FX column works as an pulldown menu, where when you type P it jumps to [P]itchbend down and if you like to pitchbend up you just scroll it down once.
These days most ppl use widescreen monitors or high resolutions, so it doesn’t make much sense to cramp it all together anymore.
I’m all for getting rid of hex. I was used to that 15 years ago but I’d prefer some more intuitive scale like 000-127 (or 255) these days…
(or at least a global option switch that gives you a choice)
+1 for global switch option
As much as I would prefer and think a decimal system is more intuitive, I know some old school guys are probably quite used to it and get good results from it, thusly I think a complete ditching of the system may not be fair.
Blasphemes!
0-FFh IS 0-255dec.
The easy halving/doubling by one having to change one number is very useful.
C-4 80
c-4 40
C-4 20
C-4 10
Compared to:
C-4 128
C-4 64
C-4 32
C-4 16
Although I wouldn’t actually oppose an option but Hex really does make sense in more than just reducing used screen real estate. I prefer to have my Lines numbered in Hex, over Decimal, which is already a user option. Although when working at 12/24 LPB sometimes decimal can be a little easier…
And how do you want to translate these symbols to the keyboard?
I’m all for this to change, It’s easy to adapt by excising users.
they will get used to other things that do the same.
For new users it might get less intimidating to see more defined stuff on their screen.
To try to make things tens times more complicated because it’s cool.
I hate the FF or what ever for velocity.
Ridiculous and stone age.
I’m making music here not reinventing the theory of relativity FFS.
Why do DAWS speak in their own language instead of ours?
Waiting for all DAWS to step out of the mathematicians lab and embrace the year 2011 not the 90s.
Time for DAWS to be simple and speak to us like humans instead of being as hard as C+ programming.
The first company or person that makes a DAW with every feature but speaks to us in a language we understand,will be a trillionaire.
Garf´s quicksearchable puuldown menu would do the trick, but then keys reflect the symbols description ofcourse.
+1
Get rid of the hex as default.
It might fit some old trackers and some coders but for the rest of the world its just yet another weird obstacle to get into the program and it limits the nr of effect.
A dropdown with symbols or letters (each symbols having a letter connected to it?) would make it easier to use,
easier to read (better overview) and give it more possible effect comands.
Come on guys hex is really wonderful and easy!
Yes that’s right, but put yourself into the position of a new user.
It could lower the threshold for those who don’t say 0E14= re trigger where 1 is volume slide down and 4 is tick count so easily.
Anything is easy for someone who knows how to do it, but it’s kind of obvious that it’ll be tricky for a beginner to figure out why 37 should be written as 25.
If you weren’t at least vaguely technically minded you wouldn’t of chosen a composing software than looks like the Matrix over something fluffy like Music2000 
Every body has instant access to something that will very quickly change between decimal and hexadecimal at their fingertips. All OSes come with a calculator built in with this function!