[Denemo-devel] Denemo Modes

[Richard Shann]

I have been looking at the Menu system and particularly the Mode menu.
There are several hard-wired keyboard shortcuts there - for example "r"
for rest mode - which I think would be better consigned to a keymap.
Moreover there are underlines in the names, which I think are supposed
to imply some other keyboard shortcut (the menu itself has Mo_de and
alt-d brings it up) which seems to be inoperative. The Replace mode is
not working (as Aaron mentions in the manual), but curiously, it starts
working when you select the Rhythms and Overlays submode, which does
include this feature, currently under the Overlay button.
Now my work on rhythm based entry has lead to more possibilities for how
to go about entering music - besides the extra possibilities introduced
by the pitch recognition stuff. All of which points to the need for a
major tidy up. I will start by describing the methods of entering music
from the keyboard that we have available, and suggesting some names and
defaults and methods of switching and invite comments.

Note Entry:
1) The current default mode:
You press a note name (e.g. "a"), optional octave selectors ("'" or
","), a duration (e.g. "2" for a quarter note), optional accidental
shifts ("+", "-") optional dots ("."). Further notes at the same pitch
can be entered by pressing the duration and dots.

2) With the Rhythm & Overlays checkbox checked you get the following
method:
You press a duration, then a note name, optional octave selectors,
optional accidental shifts, optional dots. Futher notes of the same
duration can be entered by pressing the note name, with accidental
shifts, dots as before.

3) With the Rhythm & Overlays checkbox checked and the Overlay button
pressed you get:
You press a duration, optional dots, note name, optional octave shifts,
optional accidentals. Further notes are entered the same way.

Both mode 1 and 2 suffer from an illogical feel - in mode 1 the note
name is separated from the accidentals by the duration, in mode 2 the
duration is separated from the dots by the note name. Mode 3 collects
together the duration things and the pitch things making it more logical
looking on paper.

Note Editing:

When editing Mode 1 does not allow you to change the octave of a note
nor the note name except by deleting and re-entering the note. It does
allow you to change the dots and accidental shift. Mode 2 does not allow
you to change the note name, but does allow you to change the octave,
dots and accidental shift. Mode 3 allows you to change all of these.

Now, on the face of it, it looks like mode 1 should be consigned to
backwards compatibility status (those who have invested in learning to
use this mode may want to carry on using it, and we should support
them), and mode 3 would seem to win for keyboard entry/edit uses. I omit
discussion of the entry of multi-note chords here, out of ignorance.

The situation changes when you are using rhythm patterns to insert notes
- then Mode 2 is needed, at least at present, since in mode 3 with a
rhythm pattern selected all the notes are entered at once on one pitch.
You would use mode 3 in this case if you wanted to enter the rhythm
first then go back over typing in the note names, octavation and
accidentals.

The situation changes when you are using pitch recognition to enter
notes. When using the "insert" radiobutton on the pitch recognition
window you will use Mode 2 since otherwise (Mode 3) you have to press
the duration for each note you play; in Mode 3 you can play a succession
of the same duration by sounding the notes (and, of course, you can also
follow a rhythmic pattern, in particular you can enter dotted notes by a
single keypress and sounding the notes).

>From this I suggest we make Mode 2 the default mode, and turn on Mode 3
when the "insert pitch recognition" is chosen. Mode 1 can be turned on
by a denemo->prefs setting.

In the current program there is also something called "default" which
seems to be a sort of read-only setting - this seems a very strange name
- I stumbled on it by accident and thought that denemo had locked up.
This should be developed as a normal read-only thing, with a dialog
popping up when you try to edit. Another mode in the current program is
blank mode - I think it is intended for entering voices that appear
during the course of a measure but don't have rests written (the
notation in lilypond is "s" rather than "r"). It doesn't give any
display for the blank notes - which is logical, if not practical - and
needs more work and documentation. Finally there is rest mode, which
despite being described as toggle_rest_mode is in fact just an on button
- it would help if it was a toggle and if the status bar indicated how
to quit, though this would require an inverse mapping from functions to
keypresses - do we have that?

What can we call these modes? Well, Mode 2 could be something like
Standard, or Default, Mode 3 could be Insert, Mode 1 could be
Compatibility mode - Blank and Rest mode apply to any of these, with
various effects; it would probably be better not to lump them together,
in fact, if we can make Blank mode display the blank notes entered (e.g.
as pale gray) then we can describe these as two sorts of rest entry,
printing and non-printing and keep them as a separate category of thing
which can apply to any mode. The status bar could describe both the mode
and the normal/rest/blank status.

Ideas and opinions please.

Richard