Oops, I forgot “Time” tracks, but they’re just a bit weird anyway
Just considering mono and stereo tracks for a moment.
That is only true in the *special case where there is just one section of audio in a track, and the audio begins at the beginning of the track.
though admittedly this would appear to be normal unless you are working with multi-track projects.
Double clicking on an audio clip in a track selects that audio clip.
Double clicking on an empty part of the track will select from the beginning of the first clip to the end of the last clip.
Here’s an example of a track that has two clips in a track, and the second clip (labelled “Section B”) has been double clicked.
What I am suggesting would be consistent behaviour is that double clicking on a non-empty part of a label track would produce the same result as clicking on a non-empty part of an audio track. So in the above example;
double clicking within the audio of Section B has selected the audio track region that is occupied by this bit of audio.
double clicking within the label “Section B” would select the label track region occupied by the label,
In terns of what is selected, I find the behaviour of clicking on label text is a bit strange, though it works well enough.
Moving this to another board would of course break the link on Proposal Label Enhancements but if it’s more normal to move a retained thread from this board to Audio Processing, please do that and change the link on the Wiki page accordingly.
This whole “between labels” thing has expanded my understanding of Audacity! I had never used “labeled regions” (I think what you call “clips”). After I had my “between labels” code “finished” (ha ha–to my needs at least–no error checking etc.) someone (I won’t mention names) brought up labeled regions. I went back into my code and added error checking to exclude labelled regions. Now I see that I would need to extend the code to include them if I were ever to offer the code as a “feature”. I will look at that the next rainy day (here in the Pacific Northwest the forecast is light rain out as far as the forecasts go!)
So given this color coded chart, let me see if I understand your desires:
Right now, let us limit the discussion to a single mono or stereo wave track and one label track. For the sake of discussion, let’s say I have six colors (green, blue, red, yellow, lavender and purple – left-to-right). The somewhat rectangular areas are in the label track, the ellipses are in the wave track (I am not limiting the wave track double-click region to the ellipses just using the area as an example).
The current behavior is dependent on linking (just talking about labeled regions).
If linking is ON and I double click on any of the colored rectangles or ellipses all the audio is selected and the entire wave track is selected. (Note that you may place labels beyond the end of the audio.) This may not alway be true–it also seems to depend on the first aside below.
If linking is OFF (see aside) double clicking in an ellipse always selects all audio but no label. Double clicking a rectangle usually results in all audio from the start to the end of the last labeled region being selected (however on rare occasions all audio from the beginning of the first labeled region to the end is selected–I cannot get it to do this reliably but it happens and may have something to do with the aside).
[aside–I see a bug here, some state variable is not always being kept up-to-date. I can reliably get some inconsistent behavior based on the order in which I toggle the “link” icon–if it is ON when Audacity launches and I turn it OFF to test double-clicking I get one behavior, If it is OFF when I launch and I turn it ON I get different when I turn it back ON. I will post a Bugzilla if I can boil the exact steps down.]
Now, what I think should happen (all selections are INCLUSIVE–they include the sample at the label start and label end point):
Linking ON or OFF exhibits the same behavior.
double click (DC) in wave track anywhere–all audio selected no label area selected (as it is now)
DC in LT inside label region–blue rect–audio between the labels is selected
DC in LT between audio start and first label–green rect (could be discrete or region)–audio from start to 1st label track is selected
DC in LT between audio end and end of last label–lavender rect (discrete or region)–audio from end of last label to end is selected
DC in LT between 2 labels (discrete or region) audio between labels is selected (may be a case for EXCLUSION here)
DC in LT after end of audio–purple rect–tough one, select all audio or select from end of last label to end of audio (last is my preference)
Did I miss any cases? Have I got reasonable logic?
Now, what happens with multiple audio and label tracks?
[aside 2 I see another bug–the draw refresh rectangle is not calculated correctly all the time when linking is on:]
What I was describing was of course for the case where at least one of the labels is a point label. We really do lack a “non-fiddly” way to select between point labels (assuming you regard dragging a region carefully to snap with another label as “fiddly”) - and we need an accessible way to do it without a mouse, hence Ed’s suggestion. If you think of a point label as being like a split line, between which we double-click to select, the analogy with current behaviour is I think very clear.
What double-click does when only region labels are involved certainly needs discussion. If there is nothing more useful for double-click inside a region label to do than select inside that region label, that would be fine and analagous as you say, though I think I would prefer it did “something else” given we have single-click in a region label to select inside it. For example, it could be a special case of multi-select that selects to adjacent labels either side (if there are any). I would envisage that double-clicking in the label track between region labels would select that space between them. Although that breaks the analogy with clicking in white space in the waveform which selects all of it, I think it’s much more useful. It gives you an easy way to select that white space (which there isn’t now) and to also make it a region label.
I think the cases presented are what I would expect though I think there are potentially better uses of double-click in the light blue rectangle than selecting inside it (I assume you mean this selects between the left and right boundaries of the region label)?
The other cases are where there are clips in the track, and all point labels or a mix of point and region labels. Double-clicking in the lavender regions should I think select from end of last label to end of the track (or the end of that clip if there are other clips). I assume that is what you mean. Similarly in the purple rectangle does your “end of audio” means the end of the white space after the end of the track? I would think DC in the purple rectangle should select end of track to end of white space.
How are you getting tiles in the lower audio track? The first label track should mean that the lower audio track is in its own group. Have you got a screen shot of the whole window?
I would tend to go with useful over consistent, providing that it’s not going to fall over when linking (or some other feature) has been developed further.
Unfortunately I think it is necessary to also throw into the equation “what happen when you click on a labels text”.
When there are multiple tracks, there are multiple scenarios depending on which (if any) tracks are selected and whether linking is on or off.
For example, with this arrangement,
if you click on audio track 1, then click in the label text, with linking on, then audio tracks 1 and the label track are selected and track 2 is linked.
If you click on audio track 3, and then click in the text label, with linking on, audio track 3 and the label track are selected and audio tracks 1, 2 and 4 are linked.
If no audio tracks are selected and you click on the label text, then the region in all 4 audio tracks and the label track are selected whether linking is on or off.
Sorry, I only kept the snippet. I think it has to do with starting with linking OFF and turning it on during the process. I fell out of a tree onto a barbwire fence a few minutes ago and sitting here is uncomfortable–I’m headed for the hottub and will try to recreate this later tonight or tomorrow. I think part of the problem is that currently there is no code to handle double clicks in label tracks. The eventual default handler might not be aware of linking.
BTW, just to clarify, just before I started all this test reporting I deleted my SVN directory and did a completely new checkout and build (Unicode Debug)–all these tests and screenshots are based on that.
I hope there isn’t a problem with that. Actually I think your image showing tiling in the lower audio track is OK. I get the same if I have a selected label track below your lower audio track (or of course a selected audio track below it).
The sync-locked (tiled) selection over a waveform currently covers the same area as the full (untiled) selection. Do you think a selection region should always be drawn over white space? I’d concede that might seem logical if you consider space between labels in a label track as analogous to white space (where we do draw a region over that inter-label space). I think it’s currently OK though.
I wasn’t sure of the point you were making with your two-audio-one-label-two-audio-tracks image. I assume if you select between labels, that selection would obey the same rules for display of that selection in audio tracks as a selection inside a region label or any arbitrary region in the label track would?
Tried sending PM as this is of little general interest but could see no easy way to attach a pic.
The following were the steps I had made before getting the imaged (sorry for the size wanted an unedited screengrab) result:
full screen conditions
linking OFF(OFF) at launch
gen tone
make 2 labeled regions (LR)
DoubleClick (DC) everywhere
linkin ON (ON)
DC everywhere (DCe)
gen noise
DCe
OFF
DCe
make 1 LR
DCe
ON
DCe
resize both wave (not label) tracks smaller
select region (note DO NOT make into LR)
resize both wave (not label) tracks larger
select region (note DO NOT make into LR)
resize both wave (not label) tracks smaller
BINGO
I doubt all the above steps are necessary. I will play around and see if I can pare it down and if so will post to Bugzilla. I suspect it is some intermingled combo of turning linking on/off and resizing.
In the same launch as above I tried some more things. I can now see that it is selecting a region in the LT that puts the link chains in the wave track (WT), and it happens on any LT/WT pair:
In fact, try this: ON at launch, gen noise, use menu to create an LT–WT has chains all over.
OK, after playing around with this I think I see my problem–I think the drawing of the chains in the wave are generally correct but there is one case where they are wrong and that is the case I see most often as it is the only condition I was testing with for the initial discussion (which had nothing to do with drawing chains). The problem is that after creating a labeled region (with linking ON) the chains in the WT are NOT drawn so I never expected them to be drawn. when they were I thought it was a problem!
Isn’t that because the chains are not shown within a selected region?
I think it would be less confusing if the chain background was visible on selected regions as well as unselected regions. (perhaps using a negative of the chain image).
The rules when clicking in the label text area are already quite complex, so I think that there needs to be consistency between what happens with double clicking and what happens with clicking in label text.
Yes, definitely.
In the following example, the tracks do not indicate linking, though if the selection is deleted (DEL key) then you can see that the tracks obviously are linked.
In fact I think it would be most useful if selections showed up on white space as well as on audio, since white space can be deleted, time stretched, linked, cut … just as if it were silence.
I’ve turned on attachments in PMs. If it gets abused we can turn it off again.
I think all your images are working correctly as Al intends, Ed.
I think there’s pros and cons, depending if you see a selected track with sync-lock on as “different” to the same track if you turn sync-lock off. You could argue functionally that particular track itself is identical with sync-lock on or off. If we went for that idea I guess there would be off-white tiles which would turn off and on exactly when the icon in the track panel does.
Yes, though the sync-lock icon in the Track Panel tells you those unselected tracks are sync-locked. I suppose it depends more if people object to white space appearing selected when sync-lock is off.
I guess you could put either or both points to the -quality list. Maybe drawing selections in white space has the stronger case?
I know that - but it still catches me out repeatedly and I’m sure I’ll not be the only one.
When I’m busy working on a creation, I want it to be obvious what is going to happen when I press this button. I don’t want to have to stop and check “now did I select sync-lock or not?”. This is why they put LEDs on mixing desks - so you don’t need to stop and examine if a button is pressed down, or still up.
The board attachment quota has been reached so I’ll start a new topic about this.
Good idea. It’ll be interesting and useful to get a range of views.
Well that was an interesting learning. I duly moved this thread to the Audio Processing section today - but surprisingly this does not appear to break the link or require an edit to the Wiki.
Thanks, Peter. Seems the Forum software is clever enough, once you move the topic, to store the old url and redirect it to the new board “Audio Processing” (even though it shows the old “Adding Features” URL in the address bar). Certainly makes life a bit easier.
