Re: [Audacity-devel] Linking and the next "stable" version

[Al D. <bus...@gm...>]

On Tuesday 09 February 2010 11:04:58 ga...@au... wrote:
> If 2.0 proves to be some way off, can we make time to find a
>  reasonably safe way to re-enable limited linking? 1.2 supported
>  selecting a region in an audio track and label track, then have
>  cut or delete move back the labels ahead of the cut. This can't be
>  done in 1.3.11.
> 

Yeah, as it stands there's no way to move the labels without dragging 
them. I've always thought it would make more sense to have Cut, Clear, 
etc., move the labels after the selected region, as would happen with 
clips in a WaveTrack...

Maybe we should treat labels like clips in a WaveTrack. If "Editing a 
clip can move other clips" is enabled then we move them when you Cut, 
Clear, etc (you can still clear a label without affecting ones beyond 
it using Split Delete). It's more consistent that way, certainly.

> Not surprisingly we've seen quite a few comments from new users of
> current Beta that they will have to go back to a previous version
> because of this. I think there is some risk that 2.0 will be
>  undermined if it can't move labels in the obvious use case of
>  deleting audio. I know 2.1 will have linking on, but it would seem
>  odd to release 2.0 and then recommend a subset of users to go
>  straight to 2.1 Beta. I would also assume that realistically it
>  will take some time before full linking is good enough for 2.0.x.
> 

When we thought 2.0 was coming soon we disabled label linking because 
(a) it was buggy, (b) the UI was confusing (people don't expect group 
behavior in some cases)

(a) The first problem is that TrackGroupIterator and 
TrackAndGroupIterator never actually implemented the definition of 
track groups agreed upon. The second is that grouping iteration is re-
implemented almost every place groups are used -- we need to use the 
iterators instead of re-implementing them (I'll consider a few effects 
I've worked on recently as templates). I know how to fix both of these 
problems, but it will take some time. I'm going to be fairly busy 
through the remainder of February, but since I know basically what 
needs to happen I could probably bang out all the code and test it by 
mid-March (there are lots of effects -- perhaps a new base class is 
appropriate, copy and paste are sort of complicated, etc).

(b) I think the big issue here is that there's no visual indication 
that tracks are part of a group. When you start with two WaveTracks 
there are no groups and no linking. Then you add a label track and the 
relationship between the WaveTracks changes with no visual change. 
When you make a selection in one track it's not reflected in the other 
group tracks. I think these problems MUST be solved before linking 
goes into a stable release. Linking behavior is perfectly logical but 
it's not obvious. A few proposals (non-exclusive -- I'd do all of 
them, personally):

 - Consider WaveTracks with no LabelTracks below them a group.
 - When a selection is made, draw the selection boundaries with a 
dotted line in non-selected group tracks.
 - Some sort of bracketing graphic to the left of the tracks enclosing 
each group.

None of these would be hard to implement. What will be hard is getting 
a consensus.

 ---

I am strongly opposed to doing some kind of "limited linking" if it's 
going to require the kind of hacky special-case code that makes 
linking the mess it is now. Something like "When clearing a region in 
a label track, if there's also a WaveTrack selected, shift the future 
labels" is the wrong way -- defining little exceptions to the way tools 
work is insanity. I'd rather make Clear/Cut semantics more similar 
between WaveTrack and LabelTrack generally.

 - Al

> I have been suggesting that users can work round the problem in 1.3
> by applying an extreme positive speed change, say 10000000%.
> This works pretty well, but isn't ideal. I note that nine zeros
> (1000000000%) makes Audacity disappear without warning every
> time here on XP. I suggest we should probably disable OK on some
> suitably high positive change, as we did for extreme negative
>  changes which also crashed.
> 

(Was this paragraph related to the rest of the message somehow or was 
it just a copy-paste gone awry?)

> 
> 
> Gale
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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