| Description | This is more of a design problem than a bug.
The mouse wheel is the fastest way to scroll up and down the track/bus list in the editor.
(The is no scroll bar, which I think there should be, but that's a separate issue.)
However - depending on what the mouse pointer is hovering over - it can also change properties of various objects in the Ardour session.
For example:
- Changing MIDI note velocity
- Changing automation lane state (Manual / Play / Write / Touch / Latch)
I can't say how many times I've screwed something up by simply scrolling my session and having my mouse cursor hover over the wrong spot.
This can potentially lead to user messing up their automation data really bad.
imagine you've mistakenly changed from Play to Write and didn't notice. You play your project and realize that something is not right.
Suddenly you discover that you've been overwriting all the automation curves you've spent so long crafting, and it's totally gone now, because it happened an hour ago and you're long out of undo. And even if you could undo this far, you'd loose all of you progress made since then. Oops.
That is an exagerration, but something similar has happened to me, and I keep having small issues with thee mouse wheel behaviour in Ardour.
Every once in a while I have to go back and fix the problems this causes, which breaks my creative flow.
To be fair they usually are immediately visible, because the scrolling stops unexpectedly, but I can imagine a less experienced user missing this clue and paying the price later.
I used to think it's good that I can use the mouse wheel to change automation lane states, because it saves me two mouse clicks every time.
But the slight chance of messing something up every time I scroll my session and not realize it until much later is not worth it.
And my session are big, and I scroll then a lot. Actually I think there needs to be some better vertical navigation in Ardour, because I've realized I'm loosing a lot of time just scrolling.
*Solution?*
I'd make the scroll wheel *not* affect any GUI elements, like in Blender UNLESS the user holds down a modifier key.
So the scroll wheel only ever scrolls the contents, but if you press a Shift key (or something else) it then doesn't scroll, but instead affects the session objects.
This would allow to clearly separate the two actions, so users can't make mistakes. Yes, it may seem less efficient, but having a random chance of messing something up is far less efficient in my opinion.
What do you think about this? |
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