Discussion:
[Audacity-devel] I have implemented TAB key cycling among multiple hit tests in TrackPanel
Paul Licameli
8 years ago
Permalink
... try it out at:

a618ec8967f455e53de5763fe7327c6a949803d4

PRL
David Bailes
8 years ago
Permalink
Post by Paul Licameli
a618ec8967f455e53de5763fe7327c6a949803d4
From one of the commit messages:

... The old effect of TAB -- to rotate the selected label, when a Label track
has focus -- is still available, but only when the pointer is not on a text

box or a label glyph.

Please, no. This is very user unfriendly.
A user clicks in the name of a label to edit it, mouse pointer stays over
the label name, presses tab, nothing happens.
Or, mouse pointer is accidentally over a label name, user presses tab, and
has no idea why it doesn't work.

David.
Post by Paul Licameli
PRL
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Steve the Fiddle
8 years ago
Permalink
...
Agreed, that could easily happen and would be confusing as there is no
indication why pressing Tab "doesn't work" (as the user would see it).
Surely we're too late in the release cycle to be making (contentious)
behavioural changes.

Steve
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Paul Licameli
8 years ago
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...
Very well, I will restore behavior of TAB when a Label track has focus.

However I wish to preserve this new behavior of TAB in other cases.

PRL
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Steve the Fiddle
8 years ago
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Perhaps you should describe what those other cases are so that they
can be properly tested before release.

Steve
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Paul Licameli
8 years ago
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Yes. As mentioned in my commit comments, one example is that TAB can now
alternate between the stretch and selection cursors in a note track.
Another example is that in multi tool, it may alternate between selection
and envelope, or selection and draw, or it may even cycle among the three.
In Select or Multi tool, when the mouse is near a cutline or mergeable
boundary, you can get another alteration.

If you TAB to the non-default cursor for the mouse position, and move the
mouse, then the cursor should remain the same, until the mouse enters the
hot zone of some other hit target.

Watch the changes if status bar messages too.

PRL
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Steve the Fiddle
8 years ago
Permalink
When mouse over a split line in an audio track with the normal
Selection tool, pressing Tab does nothing.
Pressing Tab a second time changes the status bar text from
"Left-Click to merge clips" to "Click and drag to select audio".
Pressing Tab a third time changes the status bar text back to
"Left-Click to merge clips".
To go back to "Click and drag to select audio", the Tab key must be
pressed twice.

Note that retaining the mouse pointer precisely over the split line
while pressing a key on the keyboard and looking away from the mouse
pointer is not easy, especially with a high resolution monitor. If the
mouse pointer drifts a tiny fraction off the split line, the behaviour
returns to "Left-Click to merge clips".

If the mouse pointer is not precisely over the split line on the first
press of the Tab key, then focus moves off the audio track and the
above behaviour does not work, repeated presses of Tab just moves
focus around the Audacity interface.

I don't object strongly to this new behaviour as I can simply ignore
it, but in my opinion it fails to recognise basic principles of user
interface design.

Steve
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Paul Licameli
8 years ago
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The duplication of the cutline in the TAB key cycle for select tool is
fixed at f24a704a5bae0660835dbda4876997ef91a34e22

On Mac I do not observe the change of focus that you describe.

Explain what principle of design is not recognized here. I want to
implement a way to disambiguate hit targets that are near a common mouse
point. TAB is a key often used to cycle among alternatives. Should it be
some other key?

PRL
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Paul Licameli
8 years ago
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I don't understand your complaint about needing to look away from the
pointer. I expect it to be easy enough with little practice to keep the
right hand on the mouse, the left hand on TAB, found by feel, and the eyes
on the screen.

Is the ESC even easier to find by feel? But I would not like to overload
the meaning of ESC for this purpose as well as for escaping from drags.

PRL
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Gale Andrews
8 years ago
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Does that refer to Multi-Tool too?


Gale
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Paul Licameli
8 years ago
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Yes, Gale.

PRL
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