Re: [Audacity-quality] Fixing the interaction of Undo/Redo and Recording

[Peter S. <pet...@gm...>]

And just a reminder that I am still hindered in my testing of 1822 1823 et
al.
by there being a total absence of Windows nightlies since September last
year.

As I recall Buanzo's friend Bryan was making builds but:

a) he was encountering build issues

b) they were not being transferred to the publicly available Fosshub site

Peter.

On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 11:39 AM, Peter Sampson <
pet...@gm...> wrote:

> I observe (on macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 with *audacity-macos-nightly-2.2.2-4ef8da8.dmg
> *
> <https://www.fosshub.com/Audacity-Mac-Nightlies.html/audacity-macos-nightly-2.2.2-4ef8da8.dmg> -
> 26.27 MB | version: 2.2.2--15Jan18)
> That behavior has improved (I get no crash now) but it is still not
> perfect.
>
> With 2.2.1 using Paul's steps in this thread
> 1) after several undos as per the last step I get a crash
> 2) using the Discard in the History while recording is active I get a crash
> 3) using the Discard in the History after recording makes no discards at
> all
>
>
> With 2.2.2
> 1) Undos work, but the recorded audio is removed a bit at a time in between
> the undoing of labels pan/gain.  With final Undo I am still left with  the
> segment
> of audio recorded before the first label was dropped.
> In the user's mind surely the completion of the recording (the whole
> recording)
> with these steps should logically be the last thing on the stack - and
> thus the user
> could realistically expect the first Undo to delete the recorded audio.
>
> In fact if all I do is Record and then Stop
> a) with the History>Discard the audio is not removed
> b) however Undo does remove the audio (but not if you've used
> History>Discard first)
>
> The big improvement is that there is no crash
>
>
> 2) The Discard in the History is grayed out and inoperable while recording
> is active
> so one cannot get a crash a big improvement.
>
> This also makes for good consistency with the Edit>Undo (in both 2.2.2 1nd
> 2.2.1)
> as these are grayed out and inoperable while the recording is active.
>
>
> 3) using the Discard in the History after recording makes no discards at
> all
> just the same as in 2.2.1  -  this is not expected behavior, I would be
> expecting
> undo to work it's way through the history stack undoing as it goes.
> It does empty the items in the History window it just doesn't action the
> Undos.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------------------------------
>
> This has for me raised a number of fundamental architectural  design
> questions:
>
> A) Why do we allow the user to adjust the Pan and gain sliders in a track
> that they
> are recording into?   They have no impact on the ongoing recording, only
> impacting
> the track when it is played later.
>
> B) There is a small argument for allowing the gain and pan sliders in
> tracks other than
> the one in which the ongoing recording is taking place to be usable while
> recording
> as the user may be overdubbing.  But I will still argue for disabling all
> pan/gain
> sliders while recording is taking place.
>
> C) The arguments for A and B above also apply to the Mute and Solo buttons
> which I
> note are operable while the recording is taking place - once again these
> have no
> impact on the recorded track while recording, only on playback.
> Accordingly I argue for the disabling of these buttons.
>
> D) We do already inhibit certain actions while recording
> i) access to the Device Toolbar (grayed-out)
> ii) access to the edit buttons in the Edit Toolbar (grayed-out)
> iii) the Play button (grayed-out) in the Transport Toolbar
> iv) many/most menu commands (grayed-out)
> So I can see no real reason for not adding to that list.
>
>
> Things that we do allow and that are useful are:
>
> E) Zooms
>
> F) Labelling (useful but can be risky for the unwary - don't ask me how I
> know)
>
> G) Mixer Toolbar
>
> We should continue to allow these.
>
> H) In the Tools Toolbar you can switch tools but all except the selection
> tool
> are inhibited from use with a no-entry white icon on the waveform
> Access to the Selection tool (and selection) can be useful while recording.
>
>
> We should also bear in mind that doing anything else while recording,
> particularly
> on older lower-powered engines has the potential to interrupt the
> recording and
> cause dropouts (unrecoverable) - so minimizing the "stuff" that a user can
> do while
> recording is almost certainly beneficial.
>
> It's advice we often give out on the Forum:  "Don't do other stuff on your
> computer
> while you are recording, especially critical unrepeatable recordings ..."
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------------------------------
>
> Looking at this has reminded me of some earlier discussions of some months
> back
> when we were discussing the History stack and its inadequacies.
>
> I suspect that we may have a deeper architectural problem to consider with
> this
> at some stage - but not right now, I'm thinking.
>
> Peter.
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 1:07 AM, Paul Licameli <pau...@gm...>
> wrote:
>
>> I lately filed, and submitted fixes for, two bugs involving the
>> interaction of recording and undo.  The first is a crash, and the second is
>> just some stupid program behavior that has bothered me for a while, and
>> needed a nontrivial fix.
>>
>> I'd like others to give this some exercise, especially regarding the
>> latter one.  Compare it with 2.2.1 (and earlier) behavior, and verify that
>> it's better now.
>>
>> http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1822
>> http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1823
>>
>> Quoting the Steps to Reproduce from 1823:
>>
>> "New project.
>> (Open the history window, this may help.)
>> Start recording.
>> During recording, do one or more things such as:  Adding a label with
>> Ctrl+M (Command+.); moving a pan or gain slider; resizing a track; changing
>> selection; changing view type.
>> Stop recording.
>> Undo several times.
>>
>> Observe that the first undo does not remove all of the recording.
>> Instead, the recording may be removed in stages, parts of it belonging to
>> other undo items on the stack.
>>
>> Some of the recording might become part of the "Created new project" undo
>> item at the start of the history, which is never undone.  Thus it becomes
>> impossible to undo the project back to its original empty state."
>>
>> PRL
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------------
>> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
>> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
>> _______________________________________________
>> Audacity-quality mailing list
>> Aud...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/audacity-quality
>>
>>
>