vV - I appreciate your response in all regards but one: I don’t have trouble adapting to new habits. Renoise is full of them and I embrace them so long as they’re worthwhile and efficient habits. I can perform the pattern-mask fandango as quickly and efficiently as it’s possible to perform it, but that doesn’t mean there’s not an even more efficient way of working.
S3M/IT references also appreciated, though while you make them to remind us that change is often necessary (with which argument I agree, but from the opposite direction in this case!), I say it reminds us that Renoise needs to cherry-pick only the best features of all its ancestors.
Like everyone else, I await with a drool-drenched chin the forthcoming scripting engine, but I really hope it doesn’t become a de facto response to feature requests - or, worse, a means of silencing fruitful discourse. I know you’re being helpful and suggesting that as a possible solution, and perhaps it will be, but I guess I’m just saying we should be careful not to nurture a forum-wide instinct to respond “bah, script it yourself when 2.6 is released!” (though I know that’s not what you’re saying!).
Sorry for yanking the thread off-topic. dblue’s kindly done what I should have done (but I don’t have Photoshop installed) in order to exemplify and reiterate this problem in a more widely-understandable way here: https://forum.renoise.com/t/improve-pattern-editor-selections/28619.