@frenetic_friend
Was never fond of the idea of a Piano Roll inside Renoise, but as you’ve done it anyway, and others are liking the idea, here’s a suggestion (an important one).
Go vertical … I mean why are you using a horizontal scroller when Renoise is vertical by design?
Just because other DAW’s do it that way doesn’t mean you have to use the same bad design. Be inventive and make it ‘belong’ Renoise by making it a vertical Piano Roll to match the vertical tracker aspect of Renoise. Making it a vertical Piano Roll is not only better from a design integration aspect, it’s simply better by design cause it’s the right way up! Think about it, those horizontal Piano Rolls in the other DAWs are wrong, they are all wrong, because they all suffer from having the keyboard displayed on it’s side. Make a vertical Piano Roll, however, and that nonsese is removed cause it means you can have the keyboard the right way up, positioned at the bottom of the Piano Roll where it should be. It means you can line-up the notes scrolling from the top of all the keys, black or white, and all the right way up!
So personally, congrats and well done on for what you’ve achieved, but zero points for making the same mistake they all make.
Renoise is vertical by design, so it makes sense to take advantage of that and have a superior vertical Piano Roll.
I believe that the reason of the pianorroll done in vertical is to have the landscape view of the composition, because the monitors are wider than tall.On the other hand, there has always been the mania of making the pianoroll upright. The same for patterns view (the work area is horizontal).But the pianorroll horizontally (work area in vertical) would work very well with Renoise, for a concordance with the pattern editor.Will you also say that Renoise’s automation editor is badly made?
That being said, I have no problem with seeing things vertically or horizontally.My brain is accustomed to both situations. However, one tool may be designed to offer both UI, in vertical and horizontal.It is enough to design it for both cases and to add a button that says “rollover”, or “vertical” / “horizontal”.I suppose the programmer will be interested in leaving his tool stable. These are secondary things that can be added later;in this case, it is necessary to think to “leave it ready” for later.
The main problem with this tool is that it may take up a lot of horizontal space, and if you use only one monitor, you will have trouble seeing the pattern editor along with the tool at the same time.
I have been using a tool that has two virtual pianos, one horizontal and one vertical, by design theme / need, and there is no problem.Creating the GUI is not the most complicated. The difficult thing is that everything works as you would expect.
By the way, here is an example of building a horizontal piano. The same method can be used to construct it vertically:https://forum.renoise.com/t/build-a-perfect-virtual-piano-using-buttons-only/47819