Audacity Forum

An "Options" menu provides convenient access to options that a user may frequently change. It is far more convenient than having to go digging in "Edit > Preferences".

Examples could include:

Amplitude Envelope: Exponential (default) | Linear
Show name in track: No (default) | Black | White | Red | Yellow | Green |Purple
Spectrogram Window Size: ___
Length of preview: ___
Show advanced features: No (default) | Yes

"Show advanced features" would enable switching between simple and advanced GUI controls in effects, so that complex effects can be simplified for novices and advanced features enabled for experienced users.

I can see the extended discussion of what to put in that list.

a user may frequently change.

What kind of user? I've never changed anything on that list other than Log/Lin and then only to find out I didn't like the change.

Koz

I think Steve is pulling our leg or dreaming with the first two.

Does the user decide what goes in "Options" so that it becomes "Favorite Preferences"?

It seems that Options menu is esoteric, so a strange place to put an option to simplify effects. That's a completely different idea, and any simplified interface would probably simplify Preferences as well.


Gale

Some preferences have already been put in more convenient places. The device preferences are now duplicated in the device toolbar.
Do we really need the duplication?
Why only these 4 options and not others?

I would prefer that the envelope tool created linear envelopes. I am able to modify Audacity so that it gives my preferred type of envelope. When I raised this subject previously there was, not surprisingly, an objection that such a change would cause old projects with envelopes to sound slightly different. The obvious solution would be to make the the type of envelope a user option. Users that would prefer linear envelopes are currently denied that choice.

Several users have posted in the forum that they would prefer "Track name in waveform display" in a different colour. It is probably easy to code that as an option, but again users are denied the choice.

In software there are two "types" of user options.
1) Customisations that allow the user to configure the application to suit the type of work that they do.
2) User choices that vary according to the specific job.

The first type are mostly, "set and forget". The second type are likely to need changing regularly.

An example of the first type is the language setting.
An example of the second type is the recording device setting.

My feature request has two parts:
1) That Audacity is more configurable to users needs.
2) That "type 2" options are more easily accessible.

steve wrote:Some preferences have already been put in more convenient places. The device preferences are now duplicated in the device toolbar.
Do we really need the duplication?

I think that's a fair question, but hopefully sometime we will have "Recording Profiles" for choosing which channels to record and what tracks to allocate them to, and audio to buffer/latency correction per device. The latter may well be easiest handled in Preferences.

Sound Activated Recording is another example of duplication in menu and Preferences. IIRC it was considered unfriendly to VI users to remove the Preference.

steve wrote:I would prefer that the envelope tool created linear envelopes.

Well, you've already had your vote counted, but I think it's a valid request. Where does the option go for easy access? Right-click over the icon in Tools Toolbar? Right-click over the waveform when in Envelope Tool? As so often with Audacity (IMO) insufficient use is made of right-click.

steve wrote:Several users have posted in the forum that they would prefer "Track name in waveform display" in a different colour. It is probably easy to code that as an option, but again users are denied the choice.

Again, you already had your vote counted, so it shouldn't be counted again. There are only eight votes including one from [email protected] that I have not yet added. Unless of course the requests you mention weren't counted as votes.

Ed already has this feature in some of his custom builds, but it's a preference.

steve wrote:My feature request has two parts:
1) That Audacity is more configurable to users needs.
2) That "type 2" options are more easily accessible.

I think those are too generalised to go on Wiki Feature Requests.

Part of the problem is that Audacity is pretty locked down now, so that people don't pop up and have their patches committed because it seems like a good idea. Everything is rigorously reviewed and ignored if there is no time to properly review it. But that has some benefits as a lot of the problem with 1.3 was too much committing without review.

Another example would be the patch for differently coloured clips which I spent time testing. I think the patch was too duplicative code-wise, but why doesn't a developer work with the original submitter to get it committed into the code? Probably because (a) none of the developers are especially interested it (b) there are not many "votes" behind it, so I can't pop up and say "50 votes on Wiki".

Wouldn't coloured clips and different colours for waveform track names be more useful than Scientific (sorry, Classic) Filters?

I would turn on waveform track name by default, with the control in the View Menu. But if we want configurable colours, is a second menu item leading to a dialogue the correct approach?


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:hopefully sometime we will have "Recording Profiles" for choosing which channels to record and what tracks to allocate them to, and audio to buffer/latency correction per device. The latter may well be easiest handled in Preferences.

So at some point in the future there may be a need for settings in preferences, that will be different from the current device settings, and that is a justification for why we duplicate the device toolbar settings now?

Gale Andrews wrote:Sound Activated Recording is another example of duplication in menu and Preferences. IIRC it was considered unfriendly to VI users to remove the Preference.

In what way is it unfriendly for VI users? Is the Transport menu not accessible?

Gale Andrews wrote:Well, you've already had your vote counted, but I think it's a valid request. Where does the option go for easy access? Right-click over the icon in Tools Toolbar? Right-click over the waveform when in Envelope Tool? As so often with Audacity (IMO) insufficient use is made of right-click.

"Linear envelopes" is just an example, not a duplicate vote.
As to where it would go, that is the point of this topic.

Any time someone suggests adding a new preferences setting the feature request is rejected.
Any new feature that requires a "preference" or "option" is doomed from the outset.

Right click on the icon may have accessibility issues, and is not very discoverable unless we are making a lot of use of right click menus (though a tool-tip could help). Accessibility is probably not a big issue in this particular case as envelopes are not accessible anyway, but is a big issue if we start using right click on icons more generally.

I agree that we could make much more use of right click menus. An obvious use of right click over a wavetrack would be to cut/copy/paste/delete. I'm sure that many new users try doing that before they learn that it doesn't work.

Gale Andrews wrote:There are only eight votes including one from [email protected]

Votes on the wiki are useful for several reasons, but are not a good indication of how useful, how practical, how feasible, or how likely a feature is to be implemented.
Many features have been introduced with no votes on the wiki. Other long standing feature requests have a lot of votes with no effort to implement them. I have no doubt that there are still many very useful features that no-one has yet thought of, and that some of the existing feature requests would be highly unpopular if implemented (but we don't count votes against).

Gale Andrews wrote:Ed already has this feature in some of his custom builds, but it's a preference.

So here we have a feature that has not only been requested, but has been coded into a practical form and yet is still no nearer being released. I've tried Edgar's patches for this, and while I think that the implementation is too complicated I like the ability to change the text colour.
If an immaculately elegant and well coded patch were written for this feature, would it still be rejected because it added another preference setting?

Gale Andrews wrote:Part of the problem is that Audacity is pretty locked down now, so that people don't pop up and have their patches committed because it seems like a good idea. Everything is rigorously reviewed and ignored if there is no time to properly review it.

Hmm, not quite "everything". We have seen examples of new features that have appeared in Audacity with no QA testing at all.

The "approval process" seems to be a very grey area.
Who decided that adding new preferences is bad?

If we can't add new preferences, then how about adding "options"

steve wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:hopefully sometime we will have "Recording Profiles" for choosing which channels to record and what tracks to allocate them to, and audio to buffer/latency correction per device. The latter may well be easiest handled in Preferences.

So at some point in the future there may be a need for settings in preferences, that will be different from the current device settings, and that is a justification for why we duplicate the device toolbar settings now?

Gale Andrews wrote:Sound Activated Recording is another example of duplication in menu and Preferences. IIRC it was considered unfriendly to VI users to remove the Preference.

In what way is it unfriendly for VI users? Is the Transport menu not accessible?

You chose not to argue for removing the Preferences choices that were added to the Transport Menu. Why argue now? I think the point was that removing the Devices Preferences was thought more confusing for VI users than for sighted users, but please search for the exact reasons on -devel if you wish.

As I understand it, VI users typically look in Preferences for settings, rather than menus, but the real problem is the devices choices probably should not have been a Preference in the first place.

steve wrote:Any time someone suggests adding a new preferences setting the feature request is rejected. Any new feature that requires a "preference" or "option" is doomed from the outset.

Even if we did not have a number of items duplicated in Preferences and menus, that will probably be the case, because of the fear of "Preferences creep" and "overcomplicating Audacity for novices". I suspect this will continue while there is no default "Simple" interface of Audacity and no "Simple/Advanced" choice of Preferences to display.

FWIW, I tend to the view that there are not enough Preferences given Audacity is quite a high-powered app, but I understand why the developers don't want to add more.

steve wrote:Votes on the wiki are useful for several reasons, but are not a good indication of how useful, how practical, how feasible, or how likely a feature is to be implemented.

I somewhat disagree about "not an indication of how useful", especially since new items that are added to feature requests are now pre-vetted.

Also if there are "many" votes in favour (more than 30) it does make a better case.

steve wrote:we don't count votes against

I see no generally practical way to do that for user votes against, which may be as "uneducated" as votes in favour.

We do have "devcomments" where we can advise in an "educated" way about "feasibility" and possibly better ways of meeting the same request.

steve wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:Ed already has this feature in some of his custom builds, but it's a preference.

So here we have a feature that has not only been requested, but has been coded into a practical form and yet is still no nearer being released. I've tried Edgar's patches for this, and while I think that the implementation is too complicated I like the ability to change the text colour.
If an immaculately elegant and well coded patch were written for this feature, would it still be rejected because it added another preference setting?

If you look on -devel I think you'll find I'm not against a colour choice for the track name, though I also think there are other solutions to make a single colour work in all cases. For example, the colour could have an alternative which displays when the name is over a light grey or white background.

I would be happy with the choice being either a Preference or menu-accessible, but I think the feature should be in the menus. This would be better for ease of toggling. Also if more people could find it, it would probably be a more popular feature than it is.

steve wrote:We have seen examples of new features that have appeared in Audacity with no QA testing at all.

I wonder what effect you might be talking about there...

steve wrote:Who decided that adding new preferences is bad?

See above for "why".

steve wrote:If we can't add new preferences, then how about adding "options"

In general I think (as you do?) that something that needs to be changed often on the fly should not be a Preference. The decision on making a setting a Preference or an option should be based on how often the setting needs to be changed, and both the Preferences and menus should be capable of being trimmed down using a control in the interface.

All that said, I think you're arguing in the wrong place/with the wrong people here.


Gale

I'm not a politician, I'm a musician. As such I reserve the right to change my mind at any time
The points I'm raising are not meant to attack but to question. Past decisions do not need to be defended. A decision made x years ago may have been the best decision at the time and may or may not be equally applicable today.
I think that the "avoidance of preference creep" is something that needs to be reviewed, given that it is a significant factor in rejecting a number of enhancements and new features.

Gale Andrews wrote:Even if we did not have a number of items duplicated in Preferences and menus, that will probably be the case, because of the fear of ... "overcomplicating Audacity for novices".

That is perhaps self defeating.
Ideally, novices should not need to go digging in preferences. Everything that a novice needs should be readily available and easy to access. Mostly this is the case. Where this is not the case I think we need to review whether Preferences is the best place for that option.

Making more use of preferences could allow us to make Audacity easier for novices. "Advanced" features could be off by default and enabled in preferences by users that are sufficiently accomplished to manage the complexity of more preferences.

I think this is drifting away from the subject "Options Menu". I don't like that idea very much if all "options" were there instead of in the menus they belong in.

Or is the idea that Options is the "Easy Preferences" (irrespective how often you want to change them) and only needs a tick mark in the menu, so it's off or on - then Edit > Preferences contains nothing from "Options" and only has more advanced preferences (but lots of them)?


Gale

BUMP

I suspect that this should be the subject of a proposal if it is to move forward.

Peter