Audacity Forum

Using 2.1.3-alpha-Apr 28 2016 with Vista Home Premium SP2:

Audio track selected;
Focus on Label track, but Label track not selected;
Tab to a range label;
Select any part of label text via cursor keys;

Now, Ctrl-X cuts only the selected audio, but DEL deletes only the selected text.

Seems inconsistent to me. If I had a choice, I'd prefer both to operate on only the label text. Ctrl-X shouldn't do anything if cursor is in a label with no text selected.
Ctrl-C also doesn't copy selected label text unless the label track is selected. Same preference here from my perspective - if text is selected in a label track which has focus, then commands applicable to text should operate on only the selected text.

Not sure whether to call this a feature request or not.

DickN wrote:If I had a choice, I'd prefer both to operate on only the label text.

But you have selected audio don't you? The "Cut" command correctly cuts the selected audio (and Ctrl+C copies the selected audio).
Cutting audio does not require that the audio track has focus, and should not require that (otherwise it would not be possible to cut from multiple tracks.

The thing that is "peculiar" is that you can have two types of selection at the same time - an audio track selection and a text selection. To make the behaviour completely consistent I think we would need to make the audio unselected when there is text selected, but I think that would be less useful than what we have now.

If you want CTRL + X to cut the selected text, select the label track as well as the audio track (assuming you want the audio track selected).

If you only have the audio track selected what you want to do is rather ambiguous. It is probably more likely that you want to cut the text and not the audio, but Audacity gives you a way to cut the audio if you want to by using CTRL + X rather than DEL.

Or you can cut text (whether the label track is selected or not) by right-click in the label > Cut. If you want to paste that text as a label, use Edit > Paste Text to New Label.


Gale

Thanks, Gale. I didn't know about the context menu.