Export options visibility

[steve]

Though it seems easy afterwards, I don't think I would have found it on my own because I didn't even notice the Options button.

I don't know how he missed it either, but this issue seems rather too common.
This feature request is to somehow make the export format options more visible (not necessarily like this, but 'somehow')

options.gif (17.2 KiB) Viewed 1858 times

[Gale Andrews]

For info, Vaughan and I discussed this in http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=551:

It's a derived class from one of the standard dialog classes. It's not
difficult to rearrange, but it might be a lot more coding. And where would you
put the Cancel button? Would be weird to have a button between OK and Cancel.

How about putting "Options" button under the pull-down? Or under "Save as
Type"?

Also, its current location violates the convention of Cancel at lower right.

Another suggestion, for both single and multiple export: Rename it "Quality
Options" or "Format Options".

And another: Tooltip?

then later ("both" means he changed the equivalent button in Export Multiple too):

Changed both to "Format Options", but then button in the wx base class override
for Export single is not wide enough to show it, on Windows. And as it's not a
problem on "Export Multiple", did not commit either change, so they remain
consistent.

I was hoping wx 3.x would solve this by giving us more flexibility to make a custom Export single dialogue without our own lib-src/FileDialog, but apparently not.


Gale

[steve]

It seems that a custom dialog will be a lot of work even with wx3, so probably better to leave it 'till after wx3 than tackle it now and then again after we update wx.

[steve]

Post wx3, perhaps something like this, where the options button changes according to the selected format, so "WAV Options..." for WAV, "MP3 Options..." for MP3, and so on.
If there are no options for that format (as is currently the case for WAV), then the options button should be greyed out.
The options could be either menu items, or a pop-up dialog as appropriate for the selected format.

options2.png (33.92 KiB) Viewed 1856 times

[Gale Andrews]

Post wx3, perhaps something like this, where the options button changes according to the selected format, so "WAV Options..." for WAV, "MP3 Options..." for MP3, and so on.
If there are no options for that format (as is currently the case for WAV), then the options button should be greyed out.
The options could be either menu items, or a pop-up dialog as appropriate for the selected format.

The most intuitive thing would be if that new control in your image was a dropdown that changed with the format selected to contain the options for that format. That would work well if e.g. for Other uncompressed files we were able to add both Header and Encoding menus.

However some of the controls in the options are sliders, so would have to be a popup, on the assumption we can't just embed the current options dialogues in the export dialogue. Obviously we would not want to embed the Custom FFmpeg options as it would be too big.

If we can't embed then your new control is really just a button and should not have a downwards-pointing triangle.

I don't know if Vaughan would accept a button the width of the dropdown above, given he does not like the full width button on Linux. If he does accept it, the button text could say "Click to set MP3 options..." or whatever the format is. That doesn't look any more ridiculous than "Click to Start Monitoring" in the recording meter, IMHO.


Gale

[waxcylinder]

That doesn't look any more ridiculous than "Click to Start Monitoring" in the recording meter, IMHO.

Just goes to show that you can't please everyone ...

Personally I find that message in the inactive recording meter far from "ridiculous" - it's informative and a good label "on the tin"

Remember all the folk over the years who didn't "discover" how to turn monitoring on and write to the Forum - and I was one of those back in the day

One of the key problem statements in the proposal http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Propo ... Toolbar_UI
"It is far from intuitively obvious in the GUI how you turn monitoring on or off. Many new users of Audacity are totally foxed by this. Evidenced by many forum postings on this topic."
James responded to that with a very effective solution IMVHO

Peter.

[Gale Andrews]

That doesn't look any more ridiculous than "Click to Start Monitoring" in the recording meter, IMHO.

Just goes to show that you can't please everyone ...

Personally I find that message in the inactive recording meter far from "ridiculous" - it's informative and a good label "on the tin"

I meant I'm surprised Vaughan accepted something as "gross" as that.

Hopefully then you'll support a button the size of a dropdown (or perhaps a link if that is possible) if all we can do is provide a way to open the current per-format options dialogues.


Gale

[waxcylinder]

...
I meant I'm surprised Vaughan accepted something as "gross" as that.

Hahahaha

[steve]

The most intuitive thing would be if that new control in your image was a dropdown that changed with the format selected to contain the options for that format. That would work well if e.g. for Other uncompressed files we were able to add both Header and Encoding menus.

However some of the controls in the options are sliders, so would have to be a popup, on the assumption we can't just embed the current options dialogues in the export dialogue. Obviously we would not want to embed the Custom FFmpeg options as it would be too big.

The "menu" could show the currently selected format options, with a checkbox item for whether to use those settings or not.
If "not", then the appropriate dialogue would pop up before the export is performed.

This picture is just to give a general idea of one way that it might look. The details shown do not fit with how export options currently work, but are for illustration purposes only.

options3.png (36.22 KiB) Viewed 1832 times

[Edgar]

For my Windows-only clients on Vista SP2 and newer I long ago switched to the new file dialog:

dialog.png (57.47 KiB) Viewed 1827 times

I also exposed all of the Format Settings in Preferences:

panel.png (88.26 KiB) Viewed 1827 times

Now, when my clients press the Export Formats Settings button in the file dialog it opens the preferences panel but it could be made to open the dialog directly.