#107 Data Editor enhancements/comments

[Craig Stuart Sapp]

In the Data Editor, it would be useful to have
these sort of features:

(1) Ability to hide Frame column in "Time instants"
data. This is because I don't care about the sample
rate position of the data. Not a problem to see
it, but being able to hide it would be nice.

(2) Currently the Time data is displayed in a
hybrid format. For times less than 60 seconds, the
time in seconds down to the nearest millisecond
is being displayed. Above one second the time
is converted into minutes:seconds.

It would be useful to (A) have a single format
for all time values, and (B) allow for the user
to switch which format the times are being displayed
in (with some option or button available on the
Data Editor window).

(3) It would be useful to be able to add time
analysis columns (after the label column for example).
These columns would display at the user's requiest
one of the data formats for which the time instant
data can be copy/pasted into other layers, such as:
pre-duration = duration in seconds between the
current row and the previous row.
post-duration = duration in second between the
current row and the next row.
pre-tempo = Beats per minute equivalent of pre-dur.
post-tempo = Beats per minute equivalent of
post-dur.

(4) It might be nice to have some audio navigation
keys such as control-leftarrow and control-rightarrow
allowed inside of the Data Editor window so playback
can be controlled in realtime while using the editor.
Those two keys are used already in the editor, but
they don't seem to be used in an important way.

(5) It might be nice for the playback highlighting
of the data row to be centered in the editor (when
the "Track Playback" button is on). In other words,
when the audio is playing back, it would probably
be useful for the currently active time region to
be highlighted in the center of the Data Editor.
Currently the bottom row is the active time region
when scrolling through the data in the editor.

(6) It might be nice to have two kinds of sorting
for the "labels" column. The standard one being
used for alphanumeric sorting, and another one for
numeric sorting. For example the current sorting
order for numbers is 1 10 2, with 2 coming after 10.
A numeric sort would take the numbers and sort them
according to the order: 1, 2, 10.

(7) When I change a label when sorting by label,
the labels are automatically sorted according to
that new label when I move to another cell or press
enter to commit the new label. It would be less
confusing if the sorting were not dynamic, and
only resorted again when I press the column heading
again. Not that I would know when this sort of
case would arise in actual use of the Data Editor...

(8) The "Insert New Item" is a star icon. It would
be more intuitive if the icon were a "+" sign instead,
with the colour of the plus being green or blue.

(9) I notice that I have to press "e" to open the
Data Editor, however, the Layer menu lists "E" as
the character to press. When I press "E" nothing
happens. If you are not going to use case-sensitive
keyboard shortcuts, then you might also want to
map the uppercase letters to the same menu shortcut.
If you are planning in using case-sensitive commands,
then it would be useful to change the keyboard short
cut for opening the data editor to "e" (likewise for
other single-letter commands of course).

(9) Copy/pasting of the data in the editor
out of SV would be useful, in case you haven't heard
of that feature request before ;-)