Proposal Menu Reorganisation

Proposal pages help us get from feature requests into actual plans. This proposal page is about reorganising the menus.

Proposal pages are used on an ongoing basis by the Audacity development team and are open to edits from visitors to the wiki. They are a good way to get community feedback on a proposal.

• Note: Proposals for Google Summer of Code projects are significantly different in structure, are submitted via Google's web app and may or may not have a corresponding proposal page.

Proposed Feature

One driver for reorganising the menus is to avoid the problems that arise from having 'export' and 'save' as different functions. The options there can with care be merged so that there are fewer menu items.

The Audacity menus have also become rather complex with numerous options, especially when label linking is enabled.

Developer/QA Backing

• "Something needs to be done!" That sentiment is backed by (at least)
  • JC
  • GA - But regressions in functionality and need for ease of access must be kept in mind
  • PS - I particularly like restricting the Open (Open Project) command to only opening Projects. I would also support the implementation of Effect Menu categorization provided the proposal for the assigment of hot-keys to effects is prior implemented.
  • BW

Issues

• New users:
  • Confused about what 'export' and 'save' mean.
  • Too many choices.
  • Expecting to work with (e.g.) wav rather than projects.
• Experienced users:
  • Find menus too long.
  • Find menus too verbose.

Details

The general tenor of the solution is to make it easier and more natural to get to the most commonly used and most familiar options. This will mainly be achieved by better grouping of menu items into submenus, rather than putting them all at the same level.

Note: April 2011: The changes to Open/Export/Import proved contentious and also there is concern that some non-rearrangement changes proposed to get that to work would risk jeopardizing the 2.0 schedule. The Edit-Menu changes don't have these problems and have been implemented. Actually making other changes will be parked until December 2011, or until 2.0 comes out, whichever is sooner.

Effect Menu

• Allow the Effects drop-down menu to have the capability for sub-folders or categorisation so that the user can organize his plug-ins however they wish.
• A new Preferences setting to be provide to facilitate turning categorization on/off (default to be "on").
  • Steve 5Sept12: If the menu has the capability for subfolders that the user can organize however they wish, then wouldn't that imply that the user can choose to put all of the effects in the root (top level) menu with no sub-menus defined? In effect that would be the same as "turning categorization off" so why the extra bullet-point?
    • Peter 6Sep12:Partly to help avoid a regression - and partly because I envisage Audacity being delivered with the effects already sensibly categorized, so in your schema the user would have to do a fair bit of work to get back to a single unified list - a switch is much simpler for the user.
• Restrict the subfolder to only 2 levels deep (Effects > Category), not 3 levels as tried before in 1.3.6 (Effects > Category > Sub Category). Sub categories are just too fiddly and involve too much clicking, especially for skilled/experiences users.
  • Steve 5Sept12: -1. I don't see a problem with sub-sub menus if that is what the user wants. for some users (particularly those that have a very large number of plug-ins), it could be useful to "park" some of their little used plug-ins in a sub menu of a main category. For example, a user may have a dozen different DSP effects of which they regularly use 4 or 5 - the other 7 or 8 they could put into an "Other DSP" sub-menu to keep them separate but still in the correct category. I would see it as a problem if 2 levels are forced on the user (as in the previous implementation).
• With just one level of categories, the menu will open by hovering the mouse, making locating a specific effect much quicker and easier.
• Provision to be made for the user to customize their categories, change and sort their entries.
• Set the menu to automatically detect and display subfolders of the Plug-Ins folder as categories.
  • Peter 4Aug12: 1.3.6 trialled a limited version of this but it was dropped for 1.3.7 and later Betas due to strong negative feedback from skilled and experienced users. Now that the key part of the related Proposal Binding Effects to Hot-Keys has been implemented I believe that there will no longer be opposition to categorization in the Effect menu from the skilled power users.
  • Steve 5Sept12: If sub-menus/categories and the placement of effects into these is fully customizable in a not too complicated way, then I see little to object to and a great deal to support. +1
• Steve 5Sept12: If categories/sub-menus are implemented, then I think that it should still be possible to place effects in the top level of the menu - that is, not in any category but directly accessible from Effects > this-effect. This would be particularly useful for visually impaired users that may find it difficult to navigate complex menus.

Gale 07Sep12:

• I think the proposal should include a "Favourites" folder that is nothing to do with the automatically generated structure (about one-third of voters for this feature want this).
• I agree the auto-generated structure should be only two levels deep but not restricted to two levels.
• I'm inclined ATM to think categorisation is off by default, but also think it should be toggled in the effect menu somehow rather than being a Preference.
• There must be some discussion of the mechanism by which users (particularly VI users) are going to customise the menus (move an effect in/out of root and how create a third or deeper level). VI users cannot drag and drop (if that is the method).
  • Can users override alphabetical ordering of each level? Can they rename an effect or a category or create their own categories? Can they move an effect out of Unsorted?
• Format - specific:
  • Since we know that GVerb (due to be replaced by SoX reverb in 2.0.4), SC4 and Hard Limiter will be shipped with Audacity, they should be categorised, not "unsorted"
  • VST effects lack (and probably cannot have) any way to categorise them, but some Windows users have dozens of VST's. The current VST naming puts the vendor first. I strongly suggest this proposal includes putting the name of the VST effect first or dropping vendor from the menu listing.

Note: The following is one of the highest rated Feature Requests listed on the Wiki:

• Effects Categorization: Allow the effects drop-down menu capable of sub-folders or categorisation so that the user can organize his plug-ins however he wishes. (34 votes)
  • Only 2 levels deep (Effects > Category), not 3 levels as tried before (Effects > Category > Sub Category). Sub categories are just too fiddly and too much clicking. With just one level of categories, the menu will open by hovering the mouse, making locating a specific effect much quicker and easier. (5 votes)
  • Preference setting to turn categorisation off. (3 votes)
  • Customised categories and sorting of entries (3 votes)
  • Include "Favourites" folder at the top for frequently used plug-ins (could be either autogenerated and sorted by number of calls, or rely on user adding items) (11 votes)
  • Set the menu to automatically detect and display subfolders of the Plug-Ins folder as categories. So if you have a folder called /Plug-Ins/MyEffects/ the menu shows Effects > MyEffects > (effects in the MyEffects folder). This should allow full customization of categories without having to do a major re-design.

1.3.6 Beta had incomplete categorisation of Nyquist and LADSPA plug-ins. Categorisation has a penalty in more difficult navigation, and was withdrawn from 1.3.7 until there is (at least) a way to turn it on and off.

File Menu

Mostly better use of fly-out submenus.

• 'Open' will be renamed 'Open Project' and ONLY open an Audacity project. If you try to open a wav file it will tell you about projects and tell you to import instead. This will help reduce the risk of users thinking they are genuinely opening and working on a wav file directly.
  • Recent Files will continue to operate much 'as currently'. If you import a file it will be added to the recent files list. If you select a non .aup file from the recently opened list it is imported.
  • Drag-and-drop opening of a .wav file will import the dragged audio into your current project.
• 'Save Project|Save Project As >|Export >' as the three saving options on the main menu, in that order.
• 'Save Project As >' leads to
  • 'Standard Project...|Compressed Project...'.
• 'Export >' leads to
  • 'Export All Audio|Export Selection|Export Multiple|Export Labels|Export MIDI'.
  • We might at some future date give access to all export settings from this 'Export' submenu, and also faster routes to export wav, export mp3, but we're not doing that this time round.
• The chains menu item is now called 'Batch Chains >' and leads to
  • 'Edit|Run'.

There is an alternative view on the Talk page that we should take the split between "projects" and "audio" to its logical conclusion and completely separate them in the menu structure (if we keep the "Export" word).

Other Changes:

• 'Check Dependencies...' moves to the Tools menu. It is a diagnostic tool.
  • Steve 5Sept12: -1. It isn't directly a "file" operation, but it is intimately associated with saving projects. Moving it out to the Tools menu will I believe discourage its usage. "Page Setup" isn't a file operation either, but is intimately associated with the Print option.
• 'Metadata Editor...' moves to the View menu. It isn't a file, and does not belong in the file menu.
  • Steve 5Sept12: +1 to moving it out of the File menu. Move to the View or Tools menu (is the Metadata Editor a "tool"?)

Edit Menu

Done:

• 'Remove Audio >' leading to
  • 'Cut|Split Cut|Delete|Split Delete|Silence Audio|Trim'
• 'Clip Boundaries >' leading to
  • 'Split|Split New|Join|Detach at Silences'

Tracks Menu

• 'Mix and Render >'
  • 'Replace|Mix to New Track'
• 'All Track Mute/Solo >'
  • 'Mute All|UnMute All|UnSolo All|UnMute & UnSolo All'

View Menu

• Now has the Metadata Editor, and it is called 'Metadata Editor' not 'Open Metadata Editor'.

Tools Menu

• This is a new menu before Help, with things that mostly come from Help.

Help Menu

The items which are really 'tools' (diagnostics) taken out of Help and are now in the Tools menu.

• Help Menu has 'About' as the last entry.

Images

Mock up of proposed menu changes.

Side Issues

These aren't strictly part of the menu reorganization, but came up in discussion of it. They are not being acted on for this proposal.

• Some users would like Export to default to the directory where the audacity project is.
  • Ed has a patch to allow this
• Some users would like project save and export directories to be set by preferences.
  • Ed has a patch to allow .aup to be drag and dropped too.
• It would probably be a good idea to modify trim so that it only removes audio from selected clips, not whole clips outside its selection.
• The "align" commands are inadequate, confusing and lack shortcut bindings. A command to align tracks end-to-end is sorely needed.
• Stop and move cursor to stop point, which is SHIFT+A, is not in the menu. Preferred option is to make this a preference as to how stop behaves.
• Signposting: Give the users visual clues that are in their face. Look at GIMP. Every menu item has a hover tooltip which is duplicated in the Status Bar. It would have to have a Preference to turn it off (as it does in GIMP).
• Lots of discussion of shortcut keys. (Moved to talk page for now).
• At this stage we are NOT proposing a mode where Audacity can switch over to using a wav file as if it were its project - much as Microsoft word can open a txt file, but then warns when you try to save it that 'some features/formatting can't be saved in text format'. It's not that hard to add, but it would go outside the scope of this proposal. This would be a good feature though and solve a lot of user confusion. If we were to do it, we'd list in the warning dialog what would be lost. IF we did this we could at the same time change the labeling of 'Save Project' and 'Save Project As' to 'Save' and 'Save As'. We would also change 'Recent Projects' back to 'Recent Files'.
• In the Edit menu, there is an unresolved issue as to how to handle the different behaviour of [ and ] when the track is static or playing (currently this is at Edit > Select > Left / Right at Playback Position).
• There is a consistent view among some users that the Tracks Menu and not the Track Control Panel should have commands for channel setting (or even rate and format). This is on grounds of discoverability above all else. Gale thinks this is worth some consideration although it might be hard to make it work intuitively. It "would" be a considerable time saving if e.g. you wanted to split 20 stereo pairs in a project.
• If Open still imports audio (or more likely, if Import has a means of importing into a new window), we should consider the current restriction that "Open" doesn't import Label Tracks, MIDI or raw data. There is no logical reason for that, indeed a high probability that you might well want to import MIDI or raw into a new window.