Re: [Audacity-devel] Can we agree on four items: Waveform, Waveform dB, Spectrogram, and Spectrogram Settings...

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

I'm wondering about the "Apply" button.
Do we need it?

Currently (HEAD), changed settings are not applied until either the OK
or the Apply button are pressed. Any reason not to apply the change
immediately?

What exactly does the "Use Preferences" checkbox do?
It seems to reset all controls back to their default settings.
If that is the case, would a reset button be clearer?
Either way, I think it would be better to have the reset near the
bottom rather than at the top because, once it has been selected, all
current non-default settings are lost and there is no way back to the
previous settings other than to cancel.

I would put "Enable Spectral Selection" at the top because I would
guess that option will be one of the most common reason for opening
the spectrogram settings. It looks rather lost down there at the
bottom.

Steve

On 19 August 2015 at 16:57, Paul Licameli <pau...@gm...> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 11:50 AM, David Bailes <drb...@gm...> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 3:26 PM, Paul Licameli <pau...@gm...>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:53 PM, Paul Licameli <pau...@gm...>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Here was the overriding thought of mine behind this project:
>>>> Spectrogram settings should really allow a rich set of combinations of
>>>> algorithm, scale, spectral selection, and other things, that are just too
>>>> many to enumerate in one menu.  And I wanted to implement some new scales
>>>> and algorithms.
>>>>
>>>> Therefore there should be only one menu choice for Spectrogram, and
>>>> another menu item for varying the detailed settings.  I still stand by this
>>>> as a good idea.
>>>>
>>>> Here was my bad idea:  imposing a false analogy on the waveform case.
>>>> There are simply too few things to vary there to justify that, at least for
>>>> now.  (Reconsider that perhaps if we want color theming or changes of tick
>>>> mark labels indepdently of scale in the future, but not for now.)  The
>>>> sparse Waveforms page is unpopular, so let me retract that and put Waveform
>>>> dB back in the track drop-down menu and in Tracks preferences for default
>>>> view choice.
>>>>
>>>> Here however is one good development for Waveforms that I want to keep:
>>>> easy and independent change of the bottom of the dB scale in different
>>>> tracks.  Maybe ctrl-mousewheel in the ruler will be the only way to do that,
>>>> not any dialog.  Maybe that will be hard to discover, but nice to know.
>>>>
>>>> So to conclude, I could retract some of my work.  The choice of default
>>>> view type in Tracks would be three-way, not two, with Waveform, Waveform dB,
>>>> and Spectrogram.  The track drop-down would have those three items plus
>>>> "Spectrogram settings..."
>>>>
>>>> And that name change would also address Peter's misgivings about "View
>>>> Settings..." being ambiguous between the noun and the verb "view."
>>>>
>>>> PRL
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> James and Steve expressed some approval, so I have realized these ideas
>>> here in master:
>>> https://github.com/audacity/audacity/commit/b5103a6a8dffa07be69105bc02279ce658cb7419
>>> PRL
>>
>>
>> just a couple of comments which may or may not be worth considering:
>>
>> 1. I think that the "use preferences" label for the check box is a little
>> terse - maybe "use the settings in the Spectograms section of Preferences"
>>
>> 2. Sometimes, to indicate that controls have do effect they are made
>> unavailable. So in this case, if the check box was checked, then the other
>> controls would be unavailable.
>
>
> You misunderstand.  The other controls are available, and if you change any
> of them, there is the immediate side effect of clearing the checkbox, and
> the result is that the track ceases to use preferences and instead stores
> its own independent settings.
>
> PRL
>
>
>>
>>
>> David.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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