Re: [Audacity-quality] Gain Slider/Mouse speed WAS Re: Mixer Board issues

[Steve t. F. <ste...@gm...>]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 5:41 AM, Gale Andrews <ga...@au...> wrote:
>
> | From Bill Wharrie <bi...@go...>
> | Mon, 8 Nov 2010 18:27:49 -0500
> | Subject: [Audacity-quality] Mixer Board issues
>> On 8-Nov-10, at 6:23 PM, Vaughan Johnson wrote:
>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> >>
>> >> NEW ISSUE
>> >> On Mixer Board, gain slider desynchronizes from pointer during a
>> >> drag.
>> >> The slider handle appears to move about half the distance that the
>> >> pointer moves.
>> >>
>> >
>> > It's not specific to Mixer Board, it happens in the TrackPanel gain
>> > sliders, too. And on the velocity sliders for Note Tracks (if
>> > EXPERIMENTAL_MIDI_OUT is on). It's more noticeable in Mixer Board than
>> > TrackPanel because the slider is so much bigger.
>> >
>> > It's intentional. Not sure of the history, but it's moderated by a
>> > "speed" factor, and lets you get fine adjustments even moving the
>> > mouse
>> > quickly.
>> >
>>
>> Vaughn:
>> Thanks for the info. Yes, I just yesterday noticed the same thing on
>> the TrackPanel gain sliders.
>>
>> It may be intentional, and it may give "finer" control, but it is
>> disconcerting.
>
> Here's a couple of threads where it was discussed on -devel:
> http://audacity.238276.n2.nabble.com/Current-CVS-td2553807.html#a2554008
> http://audacity.238276.n2.nabble.com/UI-small-usability-add-default-shortcuts-for-sliders-td2550171.html#a2572191
>
> As you see from the second thread, there were alternative ideas to
> have a fake cursor or magnified slider when you precision-drag.
> There wasn't any consensus about those ideas, but I think more
> people wanted to just remove the special "slider travels half as fast
> as the mouse" code for gain than keep it.
>
> I especially don't like gain and pan behaving differently. If people
> want finer drag they can hold SHIFT while dragging either gain or
> pan, or double-click the slider  (both of which solutions will also
> have the mouse cursor pull apart from from the slider).

+1 for Gain, Pan and Mixer Board working the same way.
+1 for SHIFT+drag for fine adjustment rather than the weird "elastic"
dragging for "normal" dragging. (suggest that if it is to be this way
then it needs to be prominent in the manual).

Steve

>
> I think the way dragging the gain slider looks on the Mixer Board
> now is so silly that we could take another vote on removing the
> "half-speed" code when dragging without SHIFT. On Ubuntu
> 800 x 600 with this code in place it's impossible to drag the Mixer
> Board gain slider from bottom to top in one continuous movement -
> the mouse cursor gets to the top of the screen before the slider
> gets to the top, and it ends up taking three drags.
>
> +1 here on mouse always stays with slider unless you SHIFT - drag
> or double-click (but document SHIFT-drag in the Manual which I'll
> fix).
>
>
>
>
> Gale
>