Is it possible to write a plugin to alter the menu layout?

[solanus]

This is about the effect menu. I know I've written similar requests about this issue, but the threads tend to get sidetracked into other requests, like adding hotkeys for effects, or toolbars; and while perhaps a future version of Audacity may solve this problem in an elegant way, I'd like to know if it's possible for a non-developer to write a plugin to put in this particular interim solution:
In Windows, the Effects menu extends off-screen for quite a ways. To see the effects that are offscreen, you have to scroll; if you like experimenting with new effects plugins, that single scrolling list gets very very long.
In Linux, however, the menu behaves differently - items are not extended offscreen, but are automatically added into uncategorized submenus (they are broken down into numbered groups). I like this much better than the single scrolling list; it allows you to very quickly browse through the effects.

My question is this: Is it possible to write a plugin to make the Windows version's Effects Menu to behave like the Linux version's Effects Menu? I'm not looking to recompile Audacity into my own personal branch, and I really don't care about toolbars or hotkeys at this point. I'm not that familiar with the Nyquist language, or other ways of creating plugins, but I'd be willing to learn them if there's any hope to do this one thing.
Thanks.

[edgar-rft]

... items are not extended offscreen, but are automatically added into uncategorized submenus ...

This should also be the default behaviour of Audacity_2.0 on Windows. Maybe it's still Audacity 1.2.x you're working with? See "Help > About Audacity" for the Audacity version number. If this still happens with Audacity_2.0 then we would need more information about the Windows version.

Is it possible to write a plugin to make the Windows version's Effects Menu to behave like the Linux version's Effects Menu?

No, the only way is to change the Audacity C/C++ source code and then recompile Audacity.

- edgar

[solanus]

This should also be the default behaviour of Audacity_2.0 on Windows.

Actually, it has never been the default behavior of Audacity on Windows. I've been using the latest versions of Audacity as soon as they come out, through all the 1.3.x versions and I began using 2.0 the day it was released.* And in previous threads from just last year, both Steve and Gale agreed that the Windows menu is one long scroll.
In fact, Gale even said that the ONLY platform that has numerical grouping is Linux (from a post in Apr 2011):

Yes, menus cannot scroll on wxGTK which is used for Linux, so on that platform only, we force a numerical grouping. (Gale Andrews)

which kinda sounds like they would have rather have had the long scroll on Linux, too, if they could.
But IMHO, the Linux Menus are far superior.

* There was only ONE 1.3.x version (1.3.14, I think) that made an attempt to categorize Effects. I liked it, but too many other users complained, so they went back to the long scroll in the next ver.

[steve]

In Windows, the Effects menu extends off-screen for quite a ways.

It doesn't exactly "go off-screen" on Windows but as you say on Windows it is just one long list (with downward pointing triangle at the bottom if there are more effects below than will fit on-screen).

As edgar-rft wrote , this is not something that can be changed with a plug-in as it is written into the Audacity C/C++ source code.

[solanus]

Semantics, of course - and even out of box, there are effects that don't fit on-screen; and as I love to explore new effects, adding new effects means most of them don't fit onscreen.

I didn't have a lot of hope that a plug-in would work - just fishing for SOME way to make the Effects more navigable while I wait for the menu improvements in a future... version of Audacity. I guess I'll just have to learn to program in C++. Hopefully, if I do get it to work, it will be of some use to the main branch - I'll share it; don't wait up for me though, I'm a bit of a slow study.

[steve]

Semantics, of course

Sure, but not all of the forum users have English as a first language (for example Edgar-rft) so even trivial details can lead to misunderstanding in the translation.

I didn't have a lot of hope that a plug-in would work - just fishing for SOME way to make the Effects more navigable while I wait for the menu improvements in a future... version of Audacity. I guess I'll just have to learn to program in C++. Hopefully, if I do get it to work, it will be of some use to the main branch - I'll share it; don't wait up for me though, I'm a bit of a slow study.

The "effects categories" code still exists in the Audacity source code, so if you are able to just build Audacity from the source code, then you will be able to enable the old categories with little or no understanding of C/C++.

[DickN]

There are a few effects that I use many times in the course of a project. I've duplicated one with a slightly different name so I can recall the effect with two different parameter sets. (just gave myself an idea: preset the defaults in the two versions) I spend a lot of time scrolling through the effects menu just to get to a few "favorites".

One model that would be worth looking into is the font menu in Open Office. The most recently used fonts are replicated at the top of the menu for quick recall. Audacity does have "repeat <previous effect>" at the top of the list, but if that opened a list of, say, the last 5 effects used, it would be a real time saver.

Alternatively, when selecting an effect, using right-click could save it in the recently-used list regardless of how many were already in the list. Saving it in the list a second time could add a separate entry with the parameters used this time. I don't think I'd find that confusing, but adding a subscript to the entry should avoid that potential.

[waxcylinder]

One model that would be worth looking into is the font menu in Open Office. The most recently used fonts are replicated at the top of the menu for quick recall. Audacity does have "repeat <previous effect>" at the top of the list, but if that opened a list of, say, the last 5 effects used, it would be a real time saver.

+1

The other thing you may find useful he is an experimental feature under development for binding effects to hot-keys. It is in the latest alphas, which can be downloaded, but may not make it into 2.0.1 (yet to be decided). Currently it is a Windows-only implementation.

I have been testing it for the developer working on this and find it especially invaluable for all the fade-in/outs that I do with my LP transcriptions.

WC

[solanus]

Thanks waxycylinder and DickN, but if you look in my original post, I was hoping not to divert this to the "hotkey" solution, which, for my purposes, is not the solution.

Here's the philosophical reason why I want to have the menu like the Linux menus (or categorized):
Exploration and experimentation! I am an experimenter, and I want to have ALL possible tools laid out before me when I start to try new things. It's not about easy access to the 10 things I do all the time. It's about quickly being able to browse through and try effects that I haven't used much, so that I can compare and contrast and play.

Almost every other creative app that has a wide range of filters or effects has them categorized for this very reason.
When I use GIMP, for example, and I want to do some funky things to contrast or color or anything, it takes just a few clicks to try anything in the repertoire, and it's very easy to see all my options. If GIMP had all their effects uncategorized and listed instead in one long scroll, with the majority of effects not on-screen, it would be unusable.
Inkscape is another example of an app with a huge number of filters that are extremely manageable because they've categorized the menus.

Hotkeys ARE an answer to a different problem: quick access to favorite effects. But they don't make it any easier to explore and experiment with the whole range of effects. For that, we need submenus and categorization.

IN my dream version of Audacity, of course, we'd have full categorization, AND hotkey binding to any effect, AND fully customizable toolbars that would bind to any effect. And in this case, LibreOffice is an example to look at.

[waxcylinder]

Hotkeys ARE an answer to a different problem: quick access to favorite effects. But they don't make it any easier to explore and experiment with the whole range of effects. For that, we need submenus and categorization.

IN my dream version of Audacity, of course, we'd have full categorization, AND hotkey binding to any effect, AND fully customizable toolbars that would bind to any effect. And in this case, LibreOffice is an example to look at.

Hotkeys will be in v2.0.1 - they are inthe current rc2.

I think you will find that many of the folk who objected to effects categorization when it was first introduced in an earlier Beta release will object a lot less (if at all) when they have effects hotkeys available. BTW the code for effects categorization remains in the Audacity code AFAIK but it is commented out for now - so if you can compile Audacity then I think you can create a version with effects categorization quite easily.

Also note that in addition to hotkey shortcuts being available for effects the facility has also been extended to all the generator and analyze tools.

WC