#79 tabbed time instant label editing

[Craig Stuart Sapp]

It would be useful for data entry applications, if
the text labeling of time instants could be done
in a quicker manner.

For example, it would be nice if a sequence of
time instants could be labeled by selecting
the first instant to be labeled, then typing
the label, and pressing the tab character to
progress to the next time instant labelling.

In essence, it would be useful to have a fast
labeling method similar to that of Audacity:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/onlinehelp-1.2/track_label.htm

"Once a label is selected, you can move
to the next label by pressing Tab, and
move to the previous label by pressing
Shift-Tab."

Perhaps the mechanism can be incorporated into
the current labeling window dialog box. When
typing a tab character, the current label would
be saved, and the dialog box for the next would
be opened (with any current labeled selected so
that it can be replaced by typing a new character,
or edited by deselecting with the left/right
arrows).

An application of this input system would be to
apply drum-stroke identification to a performance
file while listening to the audio (the time
instants would already be in place).

For example, say there are five time instants
in a pane:
1.0 1
3.0 2
4.0 3
5.0 4
8.0 5

Then, if I wanted to relabel the time instants
to be A E O U Z, then I would click on the
first label to bring up the label dialog box
and type:

A tab E tab O tab U tab Z enter/ok
and the time instants would now look like this:

1.0 A
3.0 E
4.0 O
5.0 U
8.0 Z

For this system to work, it would be best if the
text for the label is highlighed when the label
editing box is opened. Then you do not have to
use the backspace key to delete the old label.
If you need to keep the old label and just append
data, you would be able to use the left/right
arrow key to deselect the label text and move
the cursor to the start or end of the existing
label.

[danlw]

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Strongly agree about having the label text highlighted. It would be nice, too, simply to be able to turn labels off in a layer. Dan