Scroll horizontally different amounts by keys

In the editor, Scroll Forward and Scroll Backward are the only actions I can see which can be bound to keys in order to scroll horizontally without moving the playhead, and these are fixed to scrolling by one “page”, i.e. the current width of the editor.

It would be very useful if there were actions for scrolling by other amounts, e.g. half a page, one bar, one beat etc.

I appreciate that scrolling can be done by shift+mousewheel or dragging the summary slider, but keybindings would allow extra precision, and are also more useful if the hands are already nearer the keyboard than the mouse (e.g. when already in the middle of some other editing operation involving key bindings).

Presumably this would not be too hard to add? Perhaps even manageable by someone relatively new to the codebase?

Can you give some summary of the workflow benefit to this? Why is not moving the playhead important in this case?

It may not be difficult, it is more a question of keybindings, there are only so many. And of course developer time unless you are volunteering to add it.

 Seablade

Out of interest, why do you have a signature with “Seablade” when it shows your name at the top of the post?

Imagine the playhead is near the right-hand side of the editor window, and I want to perform some operation at that point but first I need to see a decent chunk of context to the right of that point in the music. The context is hidden off-screen so I want to bring it on screen without moving the playhead.

There are already plenty of actions which are not bound by default but which are still useful to people who can then decide to set up their own custom keybinding for them. These could fall under that category.

Yes I probably would volunteer if someone could give me a rough overview of how the code would need to be altered - with that as a starting point, I could probably figure out the details by myself.

I’m interested to know that too :slight_smile:

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He probably has a very good reason for doing it. Looks like he is a moderator of some kind. What’s interesting is it says not to in the very forum guidelines that they put up :stuck_out_tongue:

Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Why wouldn’t zoom work for this out of curiosity? If it is so far out of context that zoom wouldn’t work, I am curious for an example probably.

Again keep in mind I am asking for my own curiosity more than anything right now, helps me to understand the thought process and because I can always discover new ways of working.

Very true, of course we already have people complain they can’t find the actions to bind the keys to:)

I would probably start with a grep of the codebase looking for things related to scroll and zoom. That would give me an idea of where to start reading at least I think.

While there are more reasons than I am listing here, the primary and most appropriate is that it is a combination of old habits from when that wasn’t the case and knowledge that I post in a variety of areas that that isn’t the case and muscle memory happens. It also helps me to clarify in my head the context I am posting in, for instance as my business, myself, or as a volunteer.

For the record this is not an automatic thing, it literally is something I type in muscle memory out each time, and is not the typical ‘signature’ you get on forums. That is also why sometimes you see it offset or not depending on the number of spaces before the signature.

That being said it is being discussed in the backend by admins and moderators (Meaning more than just me) and I have been keeping it in mind and thinking about it since you brought it up previously in IRC @BethHarmon (I wasn’t around when you did so and by the time I saw it you had logged off).

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I just want to add I want the ability to scroll by less than a page left/right too.

Yes, you can fudge it with zoom in/out following mouse etc. but it’s nasty.

It’s useful to keep the playhead to where you are up to, but be able to SEE and therefore MOVE other regions around, and then hit space and pickup where you left off.

Real-life example: editing a podcast, if you start at the beginning, and are removing umms/ahhs/dead-air, a progressively larger space will appear between where you are working and the next region to grab. So, the ability to leave the playhead where it is, and grab the next few regions, and keep going is useful.

There has to be a way to fluidly scroll left/right, or at least define the % of a page to scroll. Right?

I would suggest you look into ripple mode for this by the way if you are not already.

  Seablade

Just tried it out, that’s pretty cool. Thanks! I’d still like to be able to scroll horizontally in a finer grain, but thanks for a work-around I hadn’t thought of. :grinning:

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