Audacity Forum

Holding Shift down and moving the focus up or down with an arrow key appears to copy the selected status from the currently focused track to the next focused track, but may or may not first toggle the selected status of the currently focused track. What are the rules that determine this?

It appears that Enter toggles selection of a focused label track only if a label contained in it has just been deselected (and I'm not sure how to define "just been"). Shouldn't it toggle regardless of history provided no label is currently selected?

Edit added by Gale Andrews:
It now seems the ENTER behaviour may work correctly on Windows Vista/7 but not XP. Please look at http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 72#p182172 onwards.

Shift + arrow extends or contracts the selection from the currently-focused track to the adjacent track. Note that the Track Control Panel changes to a darker grey to indicate that the track is selected (and therefore will be operated upon).

Try this:
- 3 tracks (anything, even 3 mono generated tone tracks)
- make a selection in the first track: it is selected
- SHIFT + down arrow twice: all tracks are selected and focus is in the third track
- up arrow: all tracks remain selected and the second track has focus
- SHIFT + up arrow: the second track is deselected and focus moves to the first track.

If a label is open for editing, Enter will confirm the contents of the label and "close" it for editing. At that point Enter will toggle the selected status of the label track. Click anywhere in the label track outside a label: the label track will have focus and be selected. Press Enter: the label track is deselected but still has keyboard focus.

See: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Audacity_Selection

-- Bill

I was answering at the same time as Bill, so I am going to let my reply stand and make one comment.

DickN wrote:Holding Shift down and moving the focus up or down with an arrow key appears to copy the selected status from the currently focused track to the next focused track, but may or may not first toggle the selected status of the currently focused track. What are the rules that determine this?

Two tracks, none selected, bottom track has focus. SHIFT + UP selects the bottom track and moves focus to the top track. If I want to select the top track as well I have to press ENTER.

Two tracks, none selected, top track has focus. SHIFT + DOWN selects the top track and moves focus to the bottom track. If I want to select the bottom track as well I have to press ENTER.

I tend to feel intuitively that another UP or DOWN while holding SHIFT should select the last track in order of movement, as it has been adding selectedness to each track, but I can understand why it doesn't.

billw58 wrote: - 3 tracks (anything, even 3 mono generated tone tracks)
- make a selection in the first track: it is selected
- SHIFT + down arrow twice: all tracks are selected and focus is in the third track

This is the main reason why it "looks" if my example above should carry on to add selectedness to the last track.

Are there other cases where SHIFT + UP or SHIFT + DOWN doesn't first toggle selected status of the currently focused track?

DickN wrote:It appears that Enter toggles selection of a focused label track only if a label contained in it has just been deselected (and I'm not sure how to define "just been"). Shouldn't it toggle regardless of history provided no label is currently selected?

I concur with Bill's description. If you think ENTER doesn't toggle selectedness after using it to close a label for editing, please provide steps 1,2, 3...

If no label or region is selected in the label track, then the only indication of selectedness (if Sync-Lock Tracks is off) is the darker colour of Track Control Panel and Vertical Scale.



Gale

Ah, I see it now ...

As before, three tracks.
Case 1
- drag a selection in the second track
- press Enter: second track is deselected and the selection exists only in the timeline
- press SHIFT + down arrow: second track is selected, third track has focus.

Or:
Case 2
- drag a selection in the third track
- press up arrow twice
- press SHIFT + down arrow: first and third tracks are selected and second track has focus but is not selected.

Hold SHIFT while pressing UP or DOWN to extend or contract the selection up or down tracks.

Assume we are extending the selection.
After SHIFT + down arrow in the Case 1:
- track 2 is selected because the selection is "extended" from the timeline into track 2
- track 3 is not selected because there is no "selection" to extend from track 2

After SHIFT + down arrow in the Case 2:
- track 1 is selected because the selection is "extended" from the track 3 into track 1
- track 2 is not selected because there is no "selection" to extend from track 1

Is that logical? The concept of "extending or contracting the selection" is hard to grasp when beginning the operation in a deselected track.

Is the rule: "when doing SHIFT + up/down arrow from a deselected track, the track you are moving from is selected and the track you are moving into is deselected"?
No. Try this:
Case 3
- as before, three tracks
- drag a selection in track 3
- SHIFT + up arrow twice
- Enter: track 1 has focus and is not selected; tracks 2 and 3 are selected.
- SHIFT + down arrow: tracks 1 and 2 are deselected and track 2 has focus.

I think I'm getting a headache.

-- Bill

billw58 wrote:As before, three tracks.
Case 1
- drag a selection in the second track
- press Enter: second track is deselected and the selection exists only in the timeline
- press SHIFT + down arrow: second track is selected, third track has focus.

...

Assume we are extending the selection.
After SHIFT + down arrow in the Case 1:
- track 2 is selected because the selection is "extended" from the timeline into track 2
- track 3 is not selected because there is no "selection" to extend from track 2

But if I Deselect All (Ctrl+Shift+a) while track 2 has focus (now no selection even in the timeline),
- press Shift + down arrow: second track is selected, third track has focus, i.e., same as above.

Well, there was still a cursor in the timeline after Deselect All. Is that a selection for this purpose?

Shift+(up or down arrow) appears to work the same for label tracks as for audio tracks.

Enter, however, does not. I just discovered the rule for Enter while experimenting as I was posting: Enter toggles the selectedness of a label track only if the current time selection exactly matches a label on that track . Now, what are the odds of that happening if you didn't just have a label selected? What's the rationale for this rule?

DickN wrote: But if I Deselect All (Ctrl+Shift+a) while track 2 has focus (now no selection even in the timeline),
- press Shift + down arrow: second track is selected, third track has focus, i.e., same as above.

Well, there was still a cursor in the timeline after Deselect All. Is that a selection for this purpose?

I have no idea

Like I said, the general rule that SHIFT + up/down arrow "expands or contracts" the selection doesn't make sense if there is no selection to expand or contract.

-- Bill

billw58 wrote:The general rule that SHIFT + up/down arrow "expands or contracts" the selection doesn't make sense if there is no selection to expand or contract.

Who wrote that? I always thought it was tenuous though I tend to agree it would be useful if it did what was written. Neither does it always toggle the selection in the track the focus is leaving.

It "looks" as if it is trying to extend the selected or unselected state into the new track (if it does not have that state already) but is defeated when it runs out of tracks for the focus to go into.

The SHIFT + UP/ DOWN with the editing cursor is simpler to understand because the cursor must be in the track it it has focus.

DickN wrote:I just discovered the rule for Enter while experimenting as I was posting: Enter toggles the selectedness of a label track only if the current time selection exactly matches a label on that track . Now, what are the odds of that happening if you didn't just have a label selected? What's the rationale for this rule?

I don't agree, or please give exact steps.

Drag a selection from 5s to 10s seconds in the third of three 20-second tracks. CTRL + B to add and close the label. Drag from 7s to 8s in the third track. Down Arrow. Now ENTER will toggle a selection of 7s to 8s in the label track.


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:

billw58 wrote:The general rule that SHIFT + up/down arrow "expands or contracts" the selection doesn't make sense if there is no selection to expand or contract.

Who wrote that?

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Auda ... n#keyboard

Hold SHIFT while pressing UP or DOWN to extend or contract the selection up or down tracks.

As to who, exactly, wrote that sentence in the manual, we'd have to check the history of the page!

-- Bill

Gale Andrews wrote:Drag a selection from 5s to 10s seconds in the third of three 20-second tracks. CTRL + B to add and close the label. Drag from 7s to 8s in the third track. Down Arrow. Now ENTER will toggle a selection of 7s to 8s in the label track.

Tried it, didn't work! Shift+Click in the Track Control Panel does it, but Enter doesn't. I'm using 2.0.0 under XP (SP3). I have hh:mm:ss+CDDA frames selected as time unit and Snap To enabled.

My experiment:
1-Drag a selection from 5s to 10s seconds in an audio track.
2-CTRL + B to add a label track.
3-Close the label.
4-Click at 2 sec in the audio track.
5-CTRL + B to add a label.
6-Close the label.
7-Drag any selection in the audio track except one matching a label.
8-Arrow Down (to label track).
9-Enter (does nothing).
10-Drag a selection in the audio track matching the 5-10 sec range label (per the yellow vertical lines indicating match).
11-Arrow Down (to label track).
12-Enter now toggles selection in label track.
13-Click at the 2 sec point in audio track (yellow match line should appear confirming match to point label).
14-Arrow Down (to label track).
15-Enter now toggles selection in label track.
16-Stay in label track; Right Arrow to move cursor.
17-Enter now does nothing.
18-Left Arrow (returns cursor to match point label).
19-Enter now toggles selection.

billw58 wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:

billw58 wrote:The general rule that SHIFT + up/down arrow "expands or contracts" the selection doesn't make sense if there is no selection to expand or contract.

Who wrote that?

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Auda ... n#keyboard

Hold SHIFT while pressing UP or DOWN to extend or contract the selection up or down tracks.

As to who, exactly, wrote that sentence in the manual, we'd have to check the history of the page!

Dominic wrote it originally as

Press Shift+UpArrow, Shift+DownArrow, Control+Shift+UpArrow, and Control+Shift+DownArrow to extend or contract the selection up or down tracks.

Then someone removed the "CTRL + SHIFT's" because they have no effect.



Gale