Allow configuring mouse wheel to scroll horizontally

[ginobean]

• Mouse scroll wheel

Have mouse scroll wheel directly scroll the current track, instead of requiring a shift to also be pressed. Also, whatever the previous mouse scroll wheel behavior was should now be swapped with the Shift-mouse scroll wheel behavior.

This gesture is already used in Audacity to scroll up and down on the window when you have more tracks than can fit in the window - replicates use of the vertical scroll bar.

So if you now use this gesture for scrolling the current track - then perhaps you need to add Shify+moues-wheel-scroll to scroll up and down in the window.

Peter.

It looks like I swapped the two functionalities. So that you can use the scroll wheel to directly scroll the current track(s) and use shift-scroll wheel to scroll up down the window, when you have more tracks than can fit on the window.

Gino

[ginobean]

• Export and UndoManager’s save state

After a successful export, tell UndoManager that we have no unsaved changes (save state of the UndoManager determines whether Audacity asks us if we want to save the project, when we close the project window).

I know why you want this - to avoid the naggogram.

BUT consider that just making an Export does not of itself necessarily remove the need to save the project:

a) the user may have only exported a selection from the project

b) Exports ignore muted tracks on export - but they can form a valuable part of the project (which could then be irretrievably lost)

c) the Export may have been to a compressed format like MP3 or AAC/M4A - and thus re-importing those for further editing would involve quality loss.

Peter.

Those are good points. But I like to think of Audacity as a sharp knife. If you know what you’re doing, then these changes to UndoManager’s saved states, allow you to do them with less interruption.

For my workflow, which involves editing wav files directly, once I’ve exported the wav file, the aforementioned change allows me to simply close the project without being nagged, by Audacity, about whether I want to save the project before closing.

Also, suppose you did export a selection from a project, wouldn’t you typically remember anyways that you haven’t saved the project yet?

And if you don’t remember whether you’ve recently saved the latest version of the project, you can simply save the project again, to make sure.

Personally, as I am editing audio files, I am usually pretty cognizant of the edit state of my changes, without even trying to be.

That being said, this should probably be a user configurable option, defaulted to the previous behavior.

[ginobean]

• Default Directories - default to import path

If default directories are NOT specified (i.e. left blank) for “Open”, “Save”, “Import”, “Export”, “Macro Output”, instead of defaulting to last used, default to the initial import path directory. So, if you imported /home/gino/work/chapter-03/foobar.wav , and you then want to export as an mp3, the export file dialog will use /home/gino/work/chapter-03 as the default directory, for the export. etc… Note that if you DO specify a directory for any of the above types (“Open”, “Save”, “Import”, “Export”, “Macro Output”), that directory will TAKE PRECEDENCE over the initial import path, for that type.

That’s fine if you say just import one audio file, work on it and then want to export or save it to the location it came from.

BUT what happens if you make several imports of audio files all from different locations:

a) does the first one dominate, or the last,

b) should this be a user-settable preference?

Peter.

I just did some tests and it looks like, if you select File->Import Audio, to import additional tracks, it defaults to using the last used import directory. Which is probably what it was doing, prior to my changes.

[ginobean]

BTW, for those of you who might be interested, I’ve been able to build and run my modified version of Audacity for MacOS. Looking for file: CUSTOM-BUILD.md, in my custom branch, ‘custom-release-3.0.5’, for instructions.

Strangely, when I built it using the instructions from ‘BUILDING.md’, I ended up getting wxWidget assertion errors, that made the resulting Audacity app unusable.

I had to build the release version, by running cmake, to generate the build files, with the following options:

$ cmake -GXcode -T buildsystem=1 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES=Release ..

[ginobean]

I ended up customizing the audacity source code. You can get my changes via:

These are important changes - thank you for taking this initiative

Please separate them out and submit pull requests as Steve suggests. Thank you.

The changes themselves were fairly straightforward and didn’t take a whole lot of time to implement. Any half decent programmer would be able to implement/re-implement any of them in a few hours.

It’s really more of a decision(s) that needs to be made by the product managers for Audacity, of whether any of these changes are desirable for the main line branch of Audacity.

[ginobean]

Interestingly, even though I branched it off release-3.0.5, the Help->About dialog shows it as 3.1.0-alpha…

Normally it should be sufficient to use the -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release option to specify a release build, but due to a minor error in 3.0.5 you need to also use -DAUDACITY_BUILD_LEVEL=2.
This has been fixed for the next release.

Ok. I’ve just updated my CUSTOM-BUILD.md instructions, per your recommendation.

Gino

[waxcylinder]

It’s really more of a decision(s) that needs to be made by the product managers for Audacity, of whether any of these changes are desirable for the main line branch of Audacity.

But the Muse folk who now own and manage Audacity seldom, if ever, read the Forum.

That is why jademann was suggesting GitHub

But rather than pull requests you might want to post enhancement requests in the issues section - (or maybe enhancements plus pull requests)

Peter.

[steve]

It’s really more of a decision(s) that needs to be made by the product managers for Audacity, of whether any of these changes are desirable for the main line branch of Audacity.

I’m not sold on “all” of your proposals, but (a) it’s not my decision (b) I think they are worth serious consideration for the main branch of Audacity.
(I do think that “Update title of project,using ‘**’ to denote it has unsaved changes” is an excellent idea).

or maybe enhancements plus pull requests

I think that’s a good idea, but of course it’s entirely up to ginobean.

But I like to think of Audacity as a sharp knife. If you know what you’re doing, then these changes to UndoManager’s saved states, allow you to do them with less interruption.

My concern is that while some Audacity users will have no problem handling a sharp knife, others will cut themselves (even if the manual clearly says “BE CAREFUL WITH THE SHARP KNIFE!”). Having been on this forum for a long time, I’ve seen lots of unwary Audacity users shoot themselves in the foot in one way or another, and it can be quite heartbreaking when someone inadvertently destroys a never to be repeated recording that has great personal value to them. I think it’s right that we avoid making it too easy to shoot yourself in the foot, but that has to be weighed against the needs of more “advanced” users.

[GordonDelgado]

Hi, this is an old thread but I’d like to chime in:

I have a key binding for “Zoom Toggle” of Shift+Z (forget if this is default or no). This is for horizontal zoom and is immensely useful.
Unfortunately there is no such option for vertical zoom. Would LOVE to see it!

I do a lot of waveform zooming in/out in my workflow, and have found that the mouse target area (the left-hand scale) is somewhat small. Missing it (trying to work fast here) results in a horizontal scroll/zoom. Would be fantastic to have the same possibility for zoom toggle key binding on the vertical axis!

Cheers