The penalty of that is that you *always* get a popup when drawing a new part. And that's not ideal. General rule = the less popups the better. Only popup when really necessary.Trancit wrote:You always assume, that at that point in the track, there is already a part...You are wrong, there isn't any...
And that brings one issue on the table: To load up an existing Sequence at a point, where is none at the moment, you have first to create a new sequence or copy one to this place to be able to use the features you mentioned...
In MuLab 3, imho, it was much easier to doubleclick somewhere in the track, choose an existing sequence eh voila, it appears at the wanted position...what's wrong with that...
In M4, that textual popup has been replaced by a much more graphic popup (that's a win already) and that popup *only* appears when MuLab really needs your input, and that's much less than in M3, so the benefit is faster workflow in most of the times, i think.
Now i'll focus on your specific workflow.
I'll talk about sequence parts, but the same applies to audio parts.
Case 1: you want to draw a new part and open a sequence from disk.
Indeed draw a new part and use one of the methods in my previus post to open the sequence file. Yes this is 1 step extra in this case, but you spare a step whenever you want to draw a new sequence part. So i think things are balanced in this case.
Now thinking further on this case, i'll add support that dropping a MuSequence file onto the composer also creates a new sequence part, just as with audio and MIDI files. And when that's supported, you can also add sequences files in 1 go, which hopefully is extra support for your workflow.
Case 2: you want to draw a new part and reuse an existing one.
Well, why not copy the part from elsewhere in the composition?
That's also only 1 step.
Now in the more exceptional case you want to reuse a pooled but unused sequence, yes in that case you need the extra step too.
But i think this is, statisticly, a more exceptional case, and i'm convinced that the benefits of the new approach are much bigger than the limited cases where you need a gentle extra step.
That's how i see it.
What's your view?
Yes i'm aware of that, and that's a point still on the wishlist: I want MuLab to auto-delete pooled sequences that are empty. That should be in there to complete this new approach. Will do.That means to me double work and I always have unused sequences in the manager and popup lists, which I have to delete all the time...
Even without looking if there is still room for such key combis (at first i don't think so, think they're all taken), i do want to minimize the use of very specific key combis as much as possible. Standard well-known key combis like Ctrl+drag to copy are more ok as most people know them from start.we need a better one to be able to load an existing sequence at a wished point, without creating a new part...perhaps a shortcut like CTRL Click = new behaviour and ALT Click = the open sequence menu appears.
I rather want to make use of the shortcut system, because then the user has the freedom to set things up as he wants.
But also because i'm managing MuLab in such way that it evolves towards the tablets and mobiles, where everything is done using your fingers, without modifiers keys, and as graphical as possible. That's also right-side brain based, so i think that's a good direction. Of course MuLab is not yet fully there, but i'm seriously taking this into account. Hope this background info helps in understanding this decission.
Open for your feedback.
