Edit > Labelled Regions

[steve]

I'd like "Edit > Labelled Regions" to act on all selected labels individually even if they touch or overlap.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Edit_Menu#labeled

[Gale Andrews]

I'd like "Edit > Labelled Regions" to act on all selected labels individually even if they touch or overlap.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Edit_Menu#labeled

-1 without a choice.

And better IMO to make labels properly accessible and allow multiple selection of labels including missing some labels out of the selection. Would probably be done with Labels Editor for visually impaired users.


Gale

[steve]

Here's a dance tune that I'm working on:

tracks000.png (28.62 KiB) Viewed 3176 times

It is made up of different sections, which are each labelled.

I want to split the track according to the label positions so that I can rearrange some sections and substitute different sections in different places.
Edit > Labelled Regions > Split (Alt + I)
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/ed ... ml#labeled

Does not work!
I think I'm being generous calling this a feature request and not a bug.

-1 without a choice.

Because?

[Gale Andrews]

When we had the hoo-hah about "Retain labels if selection snaps to a label edge", you argued I think that if a selection touched a label, then the label should be included in the selection. Is this not somewhat analogous? You can never please everyone; if I am labelling words and then want to split the sentence, I can't under your idea.


Gale

[steve]

you argued I think that if a selection touched a label, then the label should be included in the selection.

I argued for:
an entirely consistent behaviour with one option in Preferences for "Retain Labels when they define an edge of a selection"

I'm arguing for consistent behaviour here also.
If I select the menu option to split labelled regions, then I want it to "split labelled regions".
I don't just want it to split "some" labelled regions.

if I am labelling words and then want to split the sentence, I can't under your idea.

If you want to split sentences by using labelled regions, create a label track and label the sentences.
If you want to split the words, select a label track that has the words labelled.

The proposed feature request would allow this to work for words or sentences. As currently implemented it will not work for either.

tracks000.png (19.32 KiB) Viewed 3171 times

[Gale Andrews]

But you joined the labels.

With the current behaviour I don't need a separate label and label track for the sentence. That's why I joined the words.

Of course I see your use case. Yours and mine are incompatible.


Gale

[steve]

But you joined the labels.

What relevance is that? Why should that make a difference?

I don't need a separate label and label track for the sentence. That's why I joined the words.

From the code it is pretty clear that it is an unintended behaviour (a "bug") but you have found a way that the behaviour can be useful in one particular situation.
What if you then decide that you want to split the words as well as the sentences?

The only way that you can discover that "Labelled Regions > Split" actually means "Split labelled regions unless they are touching or overlapping, in which case split the outer pair of touching or overlapping labels" is if you either have psychic powers or you try splitting up a labelled track with two or more touching labels and you find that it doesn't work.

Of course we could explain this peculiar behaviour in the manual, but why should we have to?
All I'm requesting is that "Labelled Regions > Split" should "split each labelled region". That must surely be the expected / intuitive / logical / sensible behaviour, and from looking at the code I it looks like the only reason that it does not do that is due to an oversight.

Would you prefer that I logged this as a bug report?

[billw58]

I'm with Steve on this one.
-- Bill

[Gale Andrews]

But you joined the labels.

What relevance is that? Why should that make a difference?

Because the labels are touching, they affect each other, just like you argued that if a region touched a label, the label should be affected.

I don't need a separate label and label track for the sentence. That's why I joined the words.

From the code it is pretty clear that it is an unintended behaviour (a "bug")

I don't read what you said as "pretty clear" ( http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/foru ... ty-quality ):

The "Region Labels > operation" feature originally provided options for Delete, Split Delete, Silence, Join and "Disjoin". "Disjoin" was later renamed as "Detach at Silences" and the other options were added.

The problem appears to arise from the fact that the original code was not designed to handle "Split Copy" or "Split" so there was no need to retain the positions of touching or overlapping regions. For the supported functions it was easier to "remove unnecessary regions" so as to avoid applying the same operation twice to the same region (the relevant code is in Project.cpp around line 4114).

It looks to me like this was overlooked when "Split" and "Split Copy" were added.

Well, that is supposition I guess if the person who wrote the code cannot be contacted.

And do you mean "Split Cut" rather than "Split Copy"? Does "Split Cut" need to be changed? When the audio you split cut is pasted, you want split lines pasted for all the labels?

No developers have supported your arguments. James (as far as I understand) doesn't want menu proliferation, so if you just want the existing behaviour changed we then have a regression on our hands. It's exactly the same problem as with "retain labels". Logically, the current behaviour seems consistent with what the other Labeled Region commands do. Useful in all cases? Definitely not, but neither is what you want.

If you can live with just adding an alternative behaviour for "Split" to Edit > Labeled Regions, that's fine by me (as I said ages ago when you started this). My longer term preference is to rip Edit > Labeled Regions out in favour or a more powerful way of selecting multiple adjacent or non-adjacent labels.

I already added a ToDo-2 to the Manual a while ago, so I suggest the behaviour is documented as I don't suppose (as a P4 enhancement - or even bug ) that anyone will change it soon. Unless of course you have a patch prepared?



Gale

[steve]

And do you mean "Split Cut" rather than "Split Copy"? Does "Split Cut" need to be changed? When the audio you split cut is pasted, you want split lines pasted for all the labels?

I would want the behaviour to be consistent for all variations.