How to Fix Track Selection View?

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machineghost
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2018 5:00 pm
Operating System: Linux *buntu

How to Fix Track Selection View?

Post by machineghost » Sat Jul 27, 2019 4:32 pm

I opened up Audacity today and was shocked to see that the selection of tracks now only selects a weird band of space above/below the track, instead of highlighting the track itself.

I thought maybe it was a bug since the new view just seems worse all around (it makes it significantly harder to tell exactly where a selection starts/stops, and it reduces the "resolution" of the track info because it wastes a bunch of space above and below that could be used to provide that resolution). Also, I couldn't find any mention of it in the notes (I'm on the latest, 2.3.2, on Linux Mint, and I'm not sure what repo I'm using for it but I think a normal one, as it says the package maintainer is "Debian Multimedia Maintainers ").

However, even after restarting I'm still having this bug, so I'm thinking/fearing it might actually be a "feature" :( Either way, is there any way to fix it and return to the normal (usable) view ... without rolling back versions? As someone affected by http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=276 I was really looking forward to seeing if it helped, but obviously if I go back to an old version I won't get it.

P.S. This is only in waveform view; spectrogram view is (thankfully) unaffected.

machineghost
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2018 5:00 pm
Operating System: Linux *buntu

Re: How to Fix Track Selection View?

Post by machineghost » Sat Jul 27, 2019 4:39 pm

Please disregard. I figured out that I'd somehow accidentally clicked the "Multi Tool", and (for reasons which I'm sure are vaid, but I certainly don't understand) this tool let's you make it harder to see your selection :oops:

I would just delete my original post, but since someone else might make the same stupid mistake I did (and Audacity does not give you any kind of warning when you do this, it just gives you the rope to hang yourself) I figured I might as well leave it around.

waxcylinder
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Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:03 am
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Re: How to Fix Track Selection View?

Post by waxcylinder » Sat Jul 27, 2019 5:02 pm

A common "bear-trap" way of stumbling into this is to accidentally press the F6 shortcut

F1 shortcut will get you quickly back to the selection tool.

WC
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machineghost
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2018 5:00 pm
Operating System: Linux *buntu

Re: How to Fix Track Selection View?

Post by machineghost » Sat Jul 27, 2019 9:19 pm

Good to know, thanks!

Yeah, the keyboard shortcuts are truly a double-edged sword. On the one hand it drives me nuts that there's no keyboard shortcut for switching between waveform and spectrogram view (since you have to do it so often when fixing clicks) ... but then in this instance you're very likely right, and I very likely convinced myself Audacity was broken because of a single errant keypress.

I guess in general more options for keyboard shortcuts, and less built-in/pre-set shortcuts maybe are the way to go, but since one man's "bear trap" shortcut is another person's essential functionality, it's a hard needle to thread.

waxcylinder
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Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:03 am
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Re: How to Fix Track Selection View?

Post by waxcylinder » Sun Jul 28, 2019 9:52 pm

You could always customize by removing the shortcuts for tool changes (F2 through F6) - see: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/key ... tml#change

WC
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