Re: [Audacity-quality] Snap To Units:

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

| From Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...> 
| Wed, 5 Sep 2012 20:54:19 +0100
| Subject: [Audacity-quality] Snap To Units:
> On 5 September 2012 20:34, Gale Andrews <ga...@au...> wrote:
> >
> > | From Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...>
> > | Wed, 5 Sep 2012 09:56:13 +0100
> > | Subject: [Audacity-quality] Snap To Units:
> >> A suggestion was made on the forum for adding the word "units" in the
> >> name/tool tip for "Snap To:"
> >> (http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?p=190586#p190586)
> >>
> >> The reasoning is that some novice users may be enabling Snap To in the
> >> belief that it will snap the cursor to the "time" that they enter in
> >> the Selection Toolbar (rather than it snapping to the "units" that are
> >> set).
> >>
> >> As this user error continues to occur (albeit a little less often now
> >> that we have the tool tip) I think this is worthy of consideration.
> >> It makes the name a little bit longer, but imho it makes the function
> >> a lot more clear;
> >>
> >> Name of control: "Snap to units:"
> >> Tool Tip: "Snap Click/Selections to units: ______"
> >
> > I'm not opposed but also I'm not very convinced by that argument -
> > at default zoom level, only the last millisecond digit of hh:mm:ss +
> > milliseconds fails to noticeably move the cursor.
> 
> but if they click the "Snap To" first and then adjust the time, the
> behaviour would seem to confirm what they though (all very
> hypothetical :=) 

It's very hard to get answers from users on why they enabled 
"Snap To", but I don't recall anyone admitting to purposely 
enabling it for any reason. 

Clearly if they do enable it they cannot find what they turned on 
to cause the issue, possibly because of the physical separation 
between the Timeline and Selection Toolbar. Also hypothesis, but 
it may have some relevance. One user told me he was clicking
on the Timeline to try and find out what he had done wrong.

Rethinking your/PGA's suggestion, I'm not even sure if the name 
of the control said "Snap to Units:" if that would help - does a 
novice associate units with those funny spinboxes? I don't think 
we would want to take more length for the extra word, so it would 
have to be on two lines. It makes a bit more sense in the tooltip.



Gale 


> > But I found an issue I had not noticed before which may partly
> > explain why users still trip up over this.
> >
> > 1 Quit Audacity.
> > 2 Initialise .cfg.
> > 3 Launch Audacity, hover over the Snap To checkbox. It just says
> >    "Snap Clicks/Selections to"
> > 4 Quit and restart Audacity. Tooltip says the same.
> > 5 Open the Selection Toolbar context menu and choose a format
> >    (it can be the hh:mm:ss + milliseconds already set)
> > 6 Tooltip now says "Snap Clicks/Selections to hh:mm:ss + milliseconds".
> >
> Confirmed on Linux (Debian).
> That would not be as bad (though still a bug) if it said "Snap
> Clicks/Selections to units:"
> 
> Steve
> 
> >
> >
> >
> > Gale