Re: [Audacity-quality] [Audacity-manual] Inconsistent Nyquist effects

[Gale A. <ga...@au...>]

I'm keeping the Cc to -quality as there is a discussion near
the bottom of general interface consistency (units before 
or after sliders and text boxes).


| From Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...> 
| Sat, 16 Jun 2012 17:41:49 +0100
| Subject: [Audacity-manual] Inconsistent Nyquist effects
> On 16 June 2012 16:28, Peter Sampson <pet...@ya...> wrote:
> > I recently documented the High and Low Pass Filters
> > on the Effect menu page in the manual.
> > http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Effect_Menu
> >
> > Gale subsequently removed the now-redundant
> > "documentation" from the dialog screen - and changed
> > the use of square backets to round brackets for consistency.
> >
> > This leaves us with four Nyquist effects which still exhibit
> > inconsistencies:
> >
> > 1.  Delay and Vocal Remover are both documented adequately
> > in the Manual and therfore do not need the documentation
> > replicated in the effect dialog, which clutters it up.
> > Both use square brackets.
> > I do not have the skills to fix this.
> 
> Delay:
> "dB; negative value increases volume"
> That's a bit arse about face isn't it?
> Do we want positive values to increase the volume? 

Looks to me like it is an "explanation" that since a positive 
decay value reduces volume, a negative value increases it. 

I probably supported that text, and you could still argue a 
case for it unless you called the control "gain". The text
should be in the Manual if removed from the interface.


> Vocal Remover:
> ;info "by David R. Sky www.shellworld.net/~davidsky/
> That web address no longer exists so I presume that we want to remove it ?

+1
 

> "Frequency band lower and upper limit (Hz):\n Enter two values between
> 0 and 20000"
> 
> Do we want to retain that full text or remove the "documentation" part
> and reduce it to:
> 
> "Frequency band lower and upper limit (Hz)"

There is an error check on invalid positive values, nonetheless
how about remove [Hz] from line 1 and on line 2, "(0 - 20000 Hz)"?

But I'm jiggered if I can understand now why you have to enter
frequency band values in order to perform "simple" removal, 
although those values are ignored anyway. I would like to see 
that restriction removed if possible.   


> A broader consistency issue is that Nyquist effects have text fields
> before and after the control.
> The intention is that the control will be in the form:
> 
> "Name of control" <slider or input box> "Units"
> 
> However the second text field (units) is apparently not accessible -
> Jaws reader ignores it. (bug 33)
> So some plug-ins have:
> 
> "Name of control" <slider or input box> "Units"
> (as intended by the Nyquist plug-in GUI)
> 
> and some have:
> 
> "Name of control (Units)" <slider or input box>
> (so that the "units" can be read by screen readers)
> 
> Do we want to:
> A) "Correct" the plug-ins so that units are displayed in the second
> text field (and make them less accessible)?
> B) ignore this inconsistency until such time as this part of bug 33 is fixed?
> C) Raise a bug report for removing the second text field as it is (a)
> inconsistent with built-in effects (b) not accessible.
> 
> I'm -1 for anything that reduces the flexibility of the (very limited)
> Nyquist plug-in interface, so I'd not support option C unless there
> was a trade-off against other Nyquist plug-in interface enhancements
> (such as providing more flexible interface text and control
> placement).

Personally I dislike units after the end of the slider as it makes
it harder to see what the units are, so I would not want to
"regress" yet more Nyquist plug-ins by implementing (A) and 
increasing their inconsistency with built-in effects.  

But first of all, this screen reader issue with text after the slider is
not currently listed in bug 33. There was an issue that units to 
right of text boxes in Preferences were not read out, but that 
was fixed. Are you sure text after the slider is still an issue?

Even if it is, I see no burning need to implement (C) unless there
are "trade off" enhancements for text and control placement 
(which should also be on bugzilla if we want to do this). But we 
should probably move the units text in affected plug-ins meantime
if it cannot be read.   

And we should also decide whether "Spectrograms Preferences"
or "Amplify" (units before text box) or "Playback Preferences" 
or "Normalize" (units after text box) is correct. 


> > 2.  ClipFix and Tremolo both use square brackets. I do not have
>> the skills to fix this.


> > 3. Both ClipFix and Tremolo carry "documentation" in
> > their dialog boxes, but they are not fully documented in
> > the manual.
> >
> > 3.1  I therefore propose to document both of these effects
> > on their own pages linked to from the "Effect Menu" page.
> > Anybody disagree?

I'm OK with it. The square brackets can be fixed at the 
same time.



Gale 



> > 3.2  Once they are documented then the "documentation"
> > in the dialog boxes can be removed.I do not have the skills to fix this.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Peter.