Auto Export-Selected

[kozikowski]

This burns me every couple of months.

I carefully select a small portion of a show and Export it. No, that's not what happens. Audacity insists on exporting the whole show unless I explicitly select Export-Selected.

Since I'm usually in a hurry, it takes a couple of passes before I wake up.

"My export is huge. What the frog is going on...?"

Sometimes the difference is small and I don't catch it.

I know mind reading is a Mac thing, but really. How much mind reading could this take?

Koz

[steve]

I carefully select a small portion of a show and Export it.

How do you do that?

• "File menu > Export..."
• Command+Shift+E

Audacity insists on exporting the whole show unless I explicitly select Export-Selected.

(In the voice of jean-luc)
"Computer, save my work.....
NO! Not all of it!"

How about setting a keyboard shortcut for "Export Selection..." and removing the shortcut for "Export...", then as long as you use the keyboard shortcut it will be impossible to accidentally select "Export..."

[kozikowski]

File > Export.

Remember when we had that kerfuffle about Applying an Effect to everything as a default unless you had something selected.

Do that here.

Koz

[steve]

Remember when we had that kerfuffle about Applying an Effect to everything as a default unless you had something selected.

Do that here.

If we counted votes against, I would definitely vote -1

It may be the Mac way to do what Apple thinks the user is thinking, but the Linux way is to do what the user tells the program to do. If I want to export only the selected part then I'll choose to "Export Selected". I don't expect the program to Export Selected unless I've told it to do that.

If we did have that option, then I'd anticipate a huge wave of complaints that "Audacity only exported a small part of my project".

[kozikowski]

If we counted votes against, I would definitely vote -1

That means you're for it.

I did tell it. I carefully selected a portion of the show. Why else would I do that?

Koz

[kozikowski]

Maybe Export and Export-All.

Koz

[Gale Andrews]

I carefully selected a portion of the show. Why else would I do that?

Because you selected the last portion to do a fade out and now you want to export the whole song, not just the fade.


Gale

[waxcylinder]

Im with Steve in being -1 on this.

The two commands are quite clear, certainly in 2.0.6 where they have been clarified to Export Audio and Export Selected Audio

And as Steve has already pointed out - if Export Selected Audio is your preferred MO then you can set a shortcut for it or even re-assign the Ctrl+E to it.

Peter.

[steve]

Maybe Export and Export-All.

So "Export" is a renamed "Export Selected Audio" and "Export-All" is a renamed "Export"?
Doesn't that have exactly the same "problem" of clicking the wrong one?
(with the added confusion that it is non-standard terminology that conflicts with every other application).

[Gale Andrews]

Im with Steve in being -1 on this.

In case it's not clear I am -1 also. I think there are lots of cases where you want to export all (Export) but preserve the current selection.

I could perhaps see a Preference to hide Export Selected Audio, so that Export exported the selection (if any) or all (if no selection). But given the reluctance to add preferences, I think the Gods would not smile on it. It would be one for our plain text audacity.cfg editor that we don't have yet.


Gale