Track Drop-down Menu commands

[waxcylinder]

I presume that the French post has been answered?

Where is the post? It isn't on the French forum.

I couldn't find it again today

Peter

[steve]

You could assign the free "U" for 'Move Track &Up'

That's a good idea.

and thus free the letter "P" for 'Move Track to To&P'.

except that characters with descenders should not really be used as access keys because the underscore is not visible.

A sub-menu for the move commands is not that attractive because the one step at the time commands have still to be applied several times in sequence to move a track to an arbitrary position

I'm aware of that, but I had an idea that might help.

Rather than "Move Track to Top / Bottom" creating just one "undo" event, I can make it create a "Move Track Up / Down" event for each step of the journey. The advantage of this is that, for example, if you have 10 tracks and you want to move the tenth track so that it becomes the second track, all that you need to do is:
1) 10th track drop-down menu. Select "Move Track to Top". The track is now the first track.
2) Ctrl+Z (Undo). This will undo the last "Move Track Up" action. The track is now the 2nd track in the project.

[Robert J. H.]

[Rather than "Move Track to Top / Bottom" creating just one "undo" event, I can make it create a "Move Track Up / Down" event for each step of the journey. The advantage of this is that, for example, if you have 10 tracks and you want to move the tenth track so that it becomes the second track, all that you need to do is:
1) 10th track drop-down menu. Select "Move Track to Top". The track is now the first track.
2) Ctrl+Z (Undo). This will undo the last "Move Track Up" action. The track is now the 2nd track in the project.

I am not so fond of little undo steps.
Imagine that I have created a copy of the original and applied a full wet reverb. I now try to find the perfect mixture by using gain up and down. Eventually, I realize that the reverb was too long. I have to undo all gain changes to finally arrive at the unprocessed duplicate (there are of course alternatives to this, like duplicating the original again or using the undo history).
It is the same with 10 times using (Move Track Up" or with your proposed command which simulates these keystrokes until you're at the top.
Another elegant solution:
- one additional sub-menu "Move Track Before"
- The sub-menu contains all track names of the current project.
- The last entry is something like "<empty slot>" or so.
- to move a track to the top, press enter on the first entry
- to move a track to the bottom, press arrow up (you're now on the "<empty slot>" and then enter

You can still do the repositioning by individual move up or down commands. You just have to compare the index of the track in focus with the one of the sub-menu to find the right direction and the number of steps.
To entries will do nothing, namely the track name in focus and the one just after it, one or both can therefore be omitted in the track listing.

[steve]

Another elegant solution:

Clever idea Robert, but that is much more complicated to code and may be beyond my limited abilities.

Imagine that I have created a copy of the original and applied a full wet reverb. I now try to find the perfect mixture by using gain up and down. Eventually, I realize that the reverb was too long. I have to undo all gain changes to finally arrive at the unprocessed duplicate (there are of course alternatives to this, like duplicating the original again or using the undo history).

I'd imagine that for users that do this very often, they would quickly think of one of the quicker ways to do it.
Similarly, for anyone that regularly moves tracks using the drop down menu, they would quickly realise that if they move a track from (say) the top to the bottom of a large project, that the quickest way to move it back to the top is to use the "Move Track to Top" command rather than multiple undo.

I've played with the Move Track commands in a sub-menu, and although it is easy to understand, it is significantly less convenient if it is being used regularly.
How many users use the Move Track commands regularly, and how often is "regularly"? Can we quantify this, even approximately?

As I see it, the options that we have are:

1. Don't add the new features. I think that this would be a shame as I think they would be useful.
2. Add the new commands, but use access keys more than once, as already occurs in translations.
3. Add the new commands, but don't have access keys for them.
4. Add the new commands and put the "Move to" commands into a "Move Track" sub-menu.
5. Add the new commands into the main drop-down menu and group some of the other commands into a sub-menu.
6. Add the new commands into the main drop-down menu and remove some of the other commands.
7. Try to do something more clever, which if I am not able to do, may take forever.

I would normally use a mouse for this, so I'm probably not the best person to answer, but option 2 looks to me like the lesser evil,

[Robert J. H.]

Another elegant solution:

Clever idea Robert, but that is much more complicated to code and may be beyond my limited abilities.

You're much too modeste. We grow with our tasks...
It shouldn't be that hard to get the track names and gather them in a sub-menu.
In future, other commands could perhaps profit from this layout too, e.g. freeze tracks, show/hide tracks - only an afterthought.
However, you can start out implementing your proposed second option. Double assignements for access keys are frequently unavoidable for other languages, as mentioned before.

[steve]

You're much too modeste. We grow with our tasks...
It shouldn't be that hard to get the track names and gather them in a sub-menu.

Thanks for your vote of confidence but even the proper developers tend to shy away from custom widgets.
One of the few menus that has a variable number of menu items is the Effect menu, but even that has a problem that it can only update on launch. If effects are added or removed while Audacity is running, the menus fall out of sync. No solution has yet be found - it's not an easy problem.

Anyway, possibly good news.
I've been looking at the current access keys to see if they can be rearranged a little to accommodate the new commands.
The current list is:

A Name
B Waveform dB
C
D Move Track Down
E Set Rate
F Set Sample Format
G*
H Pitch (EAC)
I
J*
K Make Stereo Tracks
L Left Channel
M Mono
N Split Stereo to Mono
O Spectrogram log(f)
P* Move Track Up
Q*
R Right Channel
S Spectrogram
T Split Stereo Track
U
V Waveform
W
X
Y*
Z

Letters marked * have a descender in lower case, which is bad for an access key.

Proposed changes:

Split Stereo Track: t->i
Move Track Up: p->U
Waveform dB: B->W

This then allows the new commands to be:

B = Move Track to Bottom
T = Move Track to Top
C = Swap Channels

[steve]

This is the proposed new list of access keys:

A Name
B Move Track to Bottom
C Swap Channels
D Move Track Down
E Set Rate
F Set Sample Format
G*
H Pitch (EAC)
I Split Stereo Track
J*
K Make Stereo Tracks
L Left Channel
M Mono
N Split Stereo to Mono
O Spectrogram log(f)
P*
Q*
R Right Channel
S Spectrogram
T Move Track to Top
U Move Track Up
V Waveform
W Waveform dB
X
Y*
Z

* = "decender".

[Robert J. H.]

Seems reasonable.
And you still have "C" for a possible "Swap Stereo Channels" command.
How about calling up a dialog box for "Move Track Before" like those for selecting the host, input and so on?

[steve]

How about calling up a dialog box for "Move Track Before" like those for selecting the host, input and so on?

Is it a common task for VI users to move tracks around?
For sighted mouse users, these options are probably not used often as tracks can be dragged with the mouse (though the "Move Track to Top" option could be very useful when "sub-mixing" tracks in very large multi-track projects).

I'm just wondering, if there is a common user case for rearranging tracks, it might be worth taking quite a different approach that allows multiple tracks to be reordered simultaneously.

[Robert J. H.]

How about calling up a dialog box for "Move Track Before" like those for selecting the host, input and so on?

Is it a common task for VI users to move tracks around?
For sighted mouse users, these options are probably not used often as tracks can be dragged with the mouse (though the "Move Track to Top" option could be very useful when "sub-mixing" tracks in very large multi-track projects).

I'm just wondering, if there is a common user case for rearranging tracks, it might be worth taking quite a different approach that allows multiple tracks to be reordered simultaneously.

Well, at least for me It's a common task. A song can easily have 20 tracks. I do sometimes render a couple of tracks into one, which logically appears at the end of the list and I have to move it up to the right group (rhythm for example).
The same with audio dramas, where I import the takes of one voice actor and move it to the right position (top to bottom is equally to the time line).
I have not the faintest idea how many IV persons dedicate themselves in a similar fashion.
I fancy that exporting an audio collection (for burning) with multiple export needs a similar rearrangement (since labels aren't that useful for us).