Re: [Audacity-quality] TCP revised dropdown menu

[Paul L. <pau...@gm...>]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 11:45 AM, Peter Sampson <pet...@ya...>
wrote:

> Hi Paul,
>
> no I don't build - never have, never intend to ...
>
> I rely on the nightlies for Win that Gale builds and partly this is
> to simulate for QA a closer experience to the average user
>
> So no I haven't seen your other fork with the even shorter menu
>
>
Then perhaps I should submit it to master, let people try it, and revert it
if there is outcry against it.

Have you also tried the right-click context menu for the vertical ruler,
which is in Master?  Steve objects however to repurposing right-click, even
if you can still get the same effect as before with shift-left-click.


> >Right-click does nothing else in TCP yet, I think.
> AFAIK & AFAICT no it doesn't - so the door's open for you
>
> >How do you like the idea of TCP changing appearance as the mouse moves
> over -- showing and hiding the triangle next to the name?
> Not sure about that - what I would like is hover-help
>

That was just an idea that I have not attempted.


>
> >As it is I provide you two ways to switch view type instead of one!
> Yebbut, I don't like the alternative switch made from the View Settings
> dialog ;-)
>

Well does it hurt you if you just ignore the other pages in the dialog?

Do you like the Apply button?  There is the small advantage that you might
switch among waveform and spectrum views with Apply without closing and
reopening the dialog, just as within one view type, you can try out various
settings without closing the dialog.


>
> >What you you think of the name "View Settings..." or is "Appearance..."
> better?
> "View Settings" is fine for me, seems clear enough - much prefer it to
> "Appearance"
>
> >Steve thought it was not clear enough that this means, whatever is in the
> Preferences dialog.  Some rewording?
> In which case I'm confused too - I thought it meant Audacity's OOTB
> factory default settings (that is how Leland uses the term with the Effects
> with his Manage Button which offer "Factory Presets").  Maybe you could do
> with two checkable options: "Factory presets" and "User Presets" which
> would get its settings from what the user set in Prefs.
>
> @Paul, did you get my other review of the Vertical Ruler stuff- It hasn't
> appeared back in my inbox so may well be stuck in my sent/outbox
>

Peter, for some odd reason your mails, only, out of all the team, go to my
spam sometimes... but not this one, no I don't see it yet.

PRL


>
> Cheers,
> Peter.
>
>
> Peter Sampson
> Tel: +44 (0)1625 524 780
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Paul Licameli <pau...@gm...>
> *To:* Peter Sampson <pet...@ya...>
> *Sent:* Friday, July 31, 2015 3:14 PM
> *Subject:* Re: TCP revised dropdown menu
>
> Reducing the seven view types to two is done in master, but in my fork I
> go farther and shorten other things.  Have you tried it?
>
>
> https://github.com/Paul-Licameli/audacity/commit/701f25ac1cb9259f00606c5f10a2afbc010f5560
>
> Notice what I have done with the "Channels" sub-menu which is now
> appropriate to the kind of track, mono or stereo.  The Move items are also
> in a cascading sub-menu.  The menu for wave tracks now has only eight
> items, compared with nineteen in 2.1.1.  I did not put this in master
> because I was warned that there might be strong opinions against it.  I
> await other opinions about it.
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 9:50 AM, Peter Sampson <pet...@ya...>
> wrote:
>
> On the whole I think I'm quite liking the revised, shorter, Track Control
> Panel dropdown menu that Paul has provided.
>
> 1) I'd *really*like to see the menu also available as a right-click option
> in
> the TCP.
>
>
> Right-click does nothing else in TCP yet, I think.
>
> How do you like the idea of TCP changing appearance as the mouse moves
> over -- showing and hiding the triangle next to the name?
>
> This could make the menu a bit easier to discover.
>
>
>
> 2) I would prefer the View Settings menu to be context dependent so that
> when you are in Waveform you *only* see the Waveform settings without
> the option to toggle to Spectrogram settings and vice versa.
> This would have the advantage that the Waveform Settings dialog could
> be appropriately smaller (there's a lot of empty real-estate in it right
> now).
>
>
> As it is I provide you two ways to switch view type instead of one!
>
> What you you think of the name "View Settings..." or is "Appearance..."
> better?
>
>
>
> 3) I really like the fact that the user can easily select "Defaults" in
> the view
> settings.
>
>
> Steve thought it was not clear enough that this means, whatever is in the
> Preferences dialog.  Some rewording?
>
>
>
> 4) If we are going to have the settings for Spectrogram view in the
> Spectrogram's
> view settings then I think we should  the Spectrograms entry in
> Preferences.
>
> I'm guessing that Paul has done it this way so that Prefs can be a global
> setting while the TCP setting is local to that track.  If that is the case
> then
>
>
> Exactly.
>
>
> I would prefer to still remove the Prefs>Spectrograms - and add a
> local/global
> switch in the Spectrogram's View Settings - as this means it can all be
> managed by the user in one place and they don't have to flit from Prefs to
> view
> stings.
>
>
> Steve has strong opinions to the contrary, that a context menu should not
> affect global settings.
>
> I wrote this to work as Peter suggested, but added a few lines of code
> disabled the changing of globals, to satisfy that objection.
>
>
>
> 5) As you might imagine, I *love* the little switch in the Spectrogram's
> View
> Settings for "Enable spectral selection.  I do however thing that Spectral
> Selection should be capitalized in this dialog as it is a specific
> Audacity entity.
>
> 6) I agree with Steve that the dialog for the Spectrogram's View Settings
> is
> somewhat daunting and techy - but then so is the existing
> Prefs>Spectrograms
> and indeed so are spectral views and spectral editing anyway  They are not
> for the faint-hearted o the un-knowledgeable.  But I am happy with that as
> I'm
> pretty sure that most users will never stray from the default Waveform view
> anyway.  We almost certainly need more spectral help in the Manual but that
> is well beyond my experience and skill-set.
>
>
> If Luciano's project goes through, the Spectrograms page will get even
> bigger with color choices.  Perhaps that should be done as a modal pop-up
> dialog from a "Colors..." button.
>
> Maybe the more exotic spectrogram settings could be hidden in an
> "advanced" tab.  The Preferences dialog and the View Settings... can have
> an expanding and collapsing tree of page names in the left column.
>
> Or maybe we just need to think about the sequence of the items on the page
> and push exotic things to the bottom.
>
>
> 7) While we are bent on making the TCP dropdown menu shorter, why don't we
> consider hiving off the channel management block into a separate dropdown
> off the main TCP dropdown with a rollover?
>
>
> Aha, so I see you did not build and test my fork.
>
> I think those opposed to the cascading menu don't like it that keystroke
> shortcuts might be one key longer, for the VI who don't use mouse.  Against
> that, though, I say that with fewer items in each menu, there is less
> conflict over assigning keystroke shortcuts, and so the keystrokes can be
> more mnemonic.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 8) I don't like the way the View Settings menu can be used to change the
> view from
> Waveform to Spectrogram or vice-versa - but if my point 4 is accepted and
> implemented then this would no longer occur anyway.
>
>
> Once the menu has stabilized we can start work on the update to the Manual.
> I have already placed a P1 there for that, but it will be a fair bit of
> work and we
> are likely to need help with the techy Spectrogram's View Settings stuff
> as that
> goes right over my head ...
>
> Cheers,
> Peter.
>
>
>
>
> Peter Sampson
> Tel: +44 (0)1625 524 780
>
>
>
>
>