Wish List

[elfan]

I've had some carpal tunnel problems over the years from overuse of the mouse. I always try to avoid using it as much as possible. Hot keys help you work much quicker anyway once you learn them.

The discussion about using the mouse as little as possible in eXT intrigues me . Ever since I stopped using trackers to start using VST-sequencers as my main mean of composing music, I have been forced to start using the mouse more than I'd prefer. I totally agree with the suggestion to let the user be able to use the mouse as little as possible (as an alternative way of using eXT at least ). Not only would this help people with medical problems as well as people who just don't like the mouse , it could also, if properly applied, speed up your work progress a lot, just as futz says ! Just look at trackers. In those, you can make music at lightning speed just because you rarely use the mouse .

One general thing I would really appreciate, would be making the sequencer as mouse independent as possible, letting the user write music very quickly in the sequencer using mostly the computer keyboard (and possibly midi keyboard). Of course it should be possible to use the mouse as well - just as today - but the "workflows" in which you spend most of your time should be keyboard-centric so to speak . These "workflows" would be pretty much everything that has to do with notes and composition, such as inserting / moving / stretching / shortening / transposing notes, copying / pasting / moving sequences of notes and things like that, that you do a million times and really want to do quickly. For every such small, but oftenly used, operation, there should be a way of doing by using the keyboard.

Actually, I have brough up issues regarding keyboard control of the sequencer earlier. These have been things such as shortkey to snap (so the user doesn't have to use a mouse and menu every time the snap needs to be changed or turned off/on) and note audition (allowing you to immediately hear the notes that are inserted/transposed by computer keyboard, instead of forcing you to look for the right note by using the mouse and trigging the notes through the "little piano keyboard inside the midi part", in search for the desired note).

Snap shortkeys have appeared in recent betas and I'm eagerly looking forward to a quick-snap-bypass-while-pressing-shortkey . Given this, I really hope that eXT will move towards enabling quicker composing and work done more independently of the mouse. That would be yet another unique feature of eXT, for sure !

Best regards,
Tomas

[futz]

Whew! Was wondering if I'd get flamed for that post Glad we all agree.

Thanks for the tips NicFit.

Jens! Those are some excellent ideas.

I just thought of another trivial little thing I'd like to see. A real icon for energyXT, so I don't have to look at that ugly windows default icon in my Alt-Tab menu and on the taskbar.

[futz]

when you click on a track it should highlight the synths and fx it is routed to (and on audio-tracks their gain slider etc.) - In short everything in the mixer on the left that belongs to a selected track should be highlighted

Actually, it kinda does that now in a way. Just under the sequencer transport there is a listbox that has 3 choices; All, By Track and Auto.

In 'All' mode, there is no way to tell at a glance which instrument goes with which track.

In 'By Track' mode, you only see the stuff connected to the currently selected track.

In 'Auto' mode, the non-selected track stuff is minimized and the selected track stuff is expanded.

So if we could have color highlighting in 'All' mode, that would be very nice, but not absolutely necessary.

[futz]

Aaaarrrrgggghhh...

CTRL-C seems to copy notes fine and CTRL-V pasted them (in another track) fine one time. Then the next time I did it, energyXT crashed.

Killed the unresponsive program in the task manager and restarted.

Tried copying and pasting that way again, and tho CTRL-C did copy the notes, I could not paste them with CTRL-V. Had to use the menu and choose paste.

And CTRL-X doesn't cut the notes the way it should. It does copy them though.

Yet another windows standard (that I use constantly) that doesn't work in XT. Hmmm...

[jorgen]

futz,

- do you have copy/paste problems in latest beta? I cant reproduce it here. Would be nice to know if any other have it too?

- ctrl-x is on the list.

- just added ctrl-tab switch window

- I will add an option to disable the default "stay on top of parent window " behaviour.

- delete arr coming soon, in v1.27, thats when you can trigger multiple arrs from midi key and stuff.

nF, yeah, I prefer keyboard, and I got an Edirol PCR-A30, which I hope to use instead of the mouse too. I'm planning to add support for using cc to navigate around eXT.

jens, drooping a wav on an empty area to insert new audio track, sounds like a good idea. Will do.

jorgen

[jens]

when you click on a track it should highlight the synths and fx it is routed to (and on audio-tracks their gain slider etc.) - In short everything in the mixer on the left that belongs to a selected track should be highlighted

Actually, it kinda does that now in a way. Just under the sequencer transport there is a listbox that has 3 choices; All, By Track and Auto.

In 'All' mode, there is no way to tell at a glance which instrument goes with which track.

In 'By Track' mode, you only see the stuff connected to the currently selected track.

In 'Auto' mode, the non-selected track stuff is minimized and the selected track stuff is expanded.

So if we could have color highlighting in 'All' mode, that would be very nice, but not absolutely necessary.

hey, didn't knew that - thanks, Futz

[jens]

jens, drooping a wav on an empty area to insert new audio track, sounds like a good idea. Will do.

jorgen

thanks, Jorgen

are there any chances that dragging of parts between tracks will also be possible?

another thing: I know there's the 'move-up'-command, but I think it would be great if we could just drag
the track-headers up and down. What do you think?

(I know I'm getting greedy )

[jorgen]

I'll keep that in mind

thanks
jorgen

[jens]

thanks, Jorgen

[scam_artist]

another thing: I know there's the 'move-up'-command, but I think it would be great if we could just drag
the track-headers up and down. What do you think?

i was thinking that the other day too would be easier to use

[futz]

do you have copy/paste problems in latest beta?

Yes, in v1.26. I had crashed and restarted the sequencer probably a couple times at that point. I'll try it again tonight after a fresh boot and let you know if it still does it.

Edirol PCR-A30

Cool. I use my old D-50 as a master controller.

there's the 'move-up'-command, but I think it would be great if we could just drag
the track-headers up and down

YES YES YES!!!

[futz]

do you have copy/paste problems in latest beta?

Checked it again right now after a fresh boot and it works pretty well. First time it copied & pasted fine. Second time I pasted, it didn't work - only pasted the last note. Then after that it worked every time.

So it seems that I can't replicate the problem either. But don't worry, I'll be working on it. I've developed software before, so I know how hard it can be to find all the bugs. I'd swear the program was solid and within minutes the beta testers would break it. Swat one bug and 2 more pop up. Damn bugs.

[futz]

Oh boy oh boy! More work for Jorgen. Every time I fill a page, I post.

1. When loading or saving something, eXT should remember what dir (folder) you were last at so you don't have to navigate down 6 or 8 levels every time you want to load a sound or midi file or whatever.

I have 400 gigs of storage in this box, partitioned into quite a few logical drives. I don't store everything in the root of c: Good god! The dir would be miles long!

2. When I navigate to a dir with a lot of files, I have to wait quite a long time before the dir updates with the new file list. At first I thought it was a bug, but it turns out that eXT must be just slow at reading dirs.

3. A 'MIDI Event List' screen would be nice someday. Sometimes it's the only way to clarify exactly what's happening when you have strangeness in playback. Should be a relatively easy thing to code too.

4. An odd thing: eXT sorts filenames very differently than windoze does. This isn't necessarily bad, but can be VERY confusing till you figure out what's going on. (Huh? Where's my files??? )

5. Sometimes when I delete a track, I get an error box saying something like, "Exception at xxxxx". I didn't write down the number. It seems random - I can't replicate it.

6. The sequencer seems incapable of playing this MIDI file correctly http://www.ghmicro.com/robotics/midi.html

I think the hat durations are too long and overlap the next hit. All other MIDI players I've tested the file with DO play it correctly.

[scam_artist]

3. A 'MIDI Event List' screen would be nice someday. Sometimes it's the only way to clarify exactly what's happening when you have strangeness in playback.

There is an event editor. Double click on a midi part to open the Midi editor. Click and drag right the left of the midi editor to show the Event List (have a play around until you drag the right thing)

Sometimes when I delete a track, I get an error box saying something like, "Exception at xxxxx". I didn't write down the number. It seems random - I can't replicate it.

I do too, seems to only happen for me when I delete the blank tracks that eXT puts in when I choose to do a new project. Forgot to mention this earlier! eXT doesn't crash though

[scam_artist]

1. When loading or saving something, eXT should remember what dir (folder) you were last at so you don't have to navigate down 6 or 8 levels every time you want to load a sound or midi file or whatever.

I totally agree about the folder memory, it's very annoying having to "renavigate" every time you want to add new sample. This is very similar to my thread "default samples folder", if the two could be implemented it would make life much easier