Repeating audible indicator when in ripple all tracks mode

[Chessel85]

Feature request. When in ripple all tracks mode, and when not playing, recording or scrubbing, a short beep sound is played periodically. Much like the noise they do in space telecommunications so you know the channel is open or closed. e.g. Roger that beep. Suggest something like a beep every 12 seconds. Problem being solved is that it is so easy to completely mess up a whole project if editting and unintentionally in ripple all tracks mode. I know there is always control Z but prevention is better than cure. Perhaps option in OSARA options to enable /disable this feature.

[Flameborn]

I am not sure how unintentional it can be if you have speech feedback, letting you know that you are indeed in Ripple All Tracks mode. There are other, very similar ways a project can be "messed up", for example if you select all tracks, or if you have multiple items selected across tracks.

I am not trying to blur the importance of this feature request, there should be a very good reason for it to be submitted after all, however, I am not sure I agree with it being an unintentional action.

At any rate, if this is added, it should be a toggle.

[MatejGolian]

@Erion, I agree with you.

2021-02-06 9:46 GMT+01:00, Erion notifications@github.com:

I am not sure how unintentional it can be if you have speech feedback, letting you know that you are indeed in Ripple All Tracks mode. There are other, very similar ways a project can be "messed up", for example if you select all tracks, or if you have multiple items selected across tracks.

I am not trying to blur the importance of this feature request, there should be a very good reason for it to be submitted after all, however, I am not sure I agree with it being an unintentional action.

At any rate, if this is added, it should be a toggle.

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[Chessel85]

Hi, I use ripple all tracks quite rarely and agree that you don't enter it by mistake. The spoken feedback of the ripple mode is good. Unlike item or track selection, the ripple state stays the same for a long time. Well, until you change it. You can do some editting in ripple mode, then go away and have a cup of tea, come back ready to record your new track, and forgetting you are in ripple all track mode, mess up the project. That's my scenario. As I say, we do have control Z so perhaps that should suffice but you do then loose that new section of audio you were inspired to make whilst drinking your tea. So my suggestion is to to prevent it going wrong in the first place. And if its a toggle option in control f12 then it doesn't have to annoy people who don't like beep noises smily face. Anyway, thought I'd put the suggestion out there.

[Flameborn]

I think this is beyond the goals of OSARA, namely making Reaper more usable via accessibility software/hardware.

Having said that, a script could be easily written to warn you when such a scenario happens, such as for Ripple Mode and Track Selection, since the selection tends to stay active as well.

I suggest the ingenious name of Tea Time, based on your use case, as well as on the fact that tea is the best beverage anyone could wish for ☺️

[ScottChesworth]

Teachery me feels obligated to point out that intentional usage habits are part of the solution to this. For example, whenever I'm stepping away from the computer or closing a project, I turn ripple off and unarm all tracks before saving so that I can be certain how Reaper is going to behave when I sit back down or re-open the project. It only took a while of doing that routine intentionally for it to become part of the Control+S keyboard twitch I always do before stepping away from the computer here. That said, what I'm seeing out in the wild is that people who aren't compulsive efficiency-chasers, people who's usage of Reaper is more casual or less frequent don't often adopt routines like this, so I can see a use case for OSARA providing some amount of awareness automatically.

What about if OSARA were to report ripple status when a project opens? It doesn't solve the problem of tea making @CastleStarter forgetful, but is that a middle ground that'd be open to us?

[ScottChesworth]

Perhaps we could start a GoFundMe, raise money for @CastleStarter to get an intravenous tea feed hooked up at his desk. :)

[pitermach]

For an alternative take, since I more often work with audio instead of music and ripple edit far more often than not, I agree that having some kind of repeating sound would get annoying. One idea I thought of while looking at the discussion is, what about changing the messages for actions that would be effected by ripple to tell you it was on? So for example if you have ripple set to all and delete an item Osara would say something like "`1 item deleted ripple all". While I guess it wouldn't entirely solve the problem since you'd still need to hit undo, but you could definitely make the case it would provide you with this information faster since a sighted person would immediately see all the other tracks being changed.

[MatejGolian]

What about just having an Osara action that would report the current ripple state? @pitermach, you gave me this idea. :D

2021-02-06 14:19 GMT+01:00, pitermach notifications@github.com:

For an alternative take, since I more often work with audio instead of music and ripple edit far more often than not, I agree that having some kind of repeating sound would get annoying. One idea I thought of while looking at the discussion is, what about changing the messages for actions that would be effected by ripple to tell you it was on? So for example if you have ripple set to all and delete an item Osara would say something like "`1 item deleted ripple all". While I guess it wouldn't entirely solve the problem since you'd still need to hit undo, but you could definitely make the case it would provide you with this information faster since a sighted person would immediately see all the other tracks being changed.

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[ScottChesworth]

What about just having an Osara action that would report the current ripple state?

That already exists: "OSARA: Report ripple editing mode". Assuming your keymap is current, hit Control+Shift+P.

[Chessel85]

I think you have to take tea orally otherwise you get an inspiration immunity response. I always try and turn off ripple all as soon as I'm done with it. It is like moving out of WASPI shared feedback mode as soon as done with it. Ideally it is a reflex. But I still fail to do it from time to time. And I don't think it goes beyond OSARA remit because, as already commented, there is visual information when you mess up with ripple all on. But glad this is being discussed and other's ideas shared. Think I need another cup of tea.

[ScottChesworth]

Ah, so you're still at a stage where you have inspiration left to lose? That explains the keenness. :)

[Chessel85]

I think it was Terry Pratchett who identified that inspiration was actually due to the inspiration particle, not yet discovered by CERN, which only has a weak interaction with the human mind. This becomes a strong interaction in close proximity to tea.

From: ScottChesworth Sent: Saturday, February 6, 2021 3:19 PM To: jcsteh/osara Cc: CastleStarter ; Mention Subject: Re: [jcsteh/osara] Repeating audible indicator when in ripple all tracks mode (#471)

Ah, so you're still at a stage where you have inspiration left to lose? That explains the keenness. :)

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[MatejGolian]

@ScottChesworth, I either forgot about, or missed that. Thanks a lot. In that case I think the current behavior is sufficient. But hey, that's just me, so feel free to differ.

2021-02-06 16:36 GMT+01:00, CastleStarter notifications@github.com:

I think it was Terry Pratchett who identified that inspiration was actually due to the inspiration particle, not yet discovered by CERN, which only has a weak interaction with the human mind. This becomes a strong interaction in close proximity to tea.

From: ScottChesworth

Sent: Saturday, February 6, 2021 3:19 PM

To: jcsteh/osara

Cc: CastleStarter ; Mention

Subject: Re: [jcsteh/osara] Repeating audible indicator when in ripple all tracks mode (#471)

Ah, so you're still at a stage where you have inspiration left to lose? That explains the keenness. :)

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https://github.com/jcsteh/osara/issues/471#issuecomment-774495215

[jcsteh]

Bah. The flakiness of editing on mobile frustrates the living crap out of me. Now replying from my laptop.

Thanks for taking the time to file your request. However, I don't think the request as originally proposed is something that should be implemented. While it may seem intuitive and in scope on the surface, there are several reasons against it:

1. There are many other options that have similar long-term effects; e.g. the various cross-fade toggles, even track arming. Implementing this would thus be a very slippery slope. We'd end up with toggles to provide continual indicator sounds for all kinds of options, ending up with a potential cacophony of strange, counter-intuitive indicators.
2. There is no equivalent in the visual UX and I think it'd be pretty annoying if there were. The analogy would be something periodically flashing when ripple is enabled, and while I haven't asked a sighted person to check, I very much doubt REAPER does this. A sighted person can certainly check if ripple is enabled, just as we can, but if they don't think to check, they're going to be bitten in the same way. Which leads me to:
3. It's true that there is visual information when you mess up with ripple on, but only after you mess up (unless you look at the indicator beforehand, but we've already discussed that). So, a sighted user still has to undo if they see they've messed up, just as you do.
4. The main difference in UX here is that a sighted user gets visual feedback immediately when they've messed up and only has to undo once. In contrast, a screen reader user might perform several editing actions and only realise after all of them that they've messed up. For this reason, @pitermach's idea of reporting ripple status after actions which are affected by ripple seems more reasonable and acceptable to me. However, this would have to be balanced with the potential annoyance of such feedback and the cost of implementing it.

[ScottChesworth]

I'll collect info on the sighted UX when my better half wakes up.

[Chessel85]

Thanks for the comprehensive and considered response Jamie. I could waffle a lot here but essentially, I think you are right. On tagging on voice feedback on actions affected by ripple mode. I was initially skeptical but thinking about it more, perhaps it could work. If a tag was added only for ripple track and ripple all, that would cut down on the annoyance factor. And if the tag comes at the end then you only have to move onto the next action or press control to stop listening to it. I wonder how many actions would need a tag? It’s probably one of those 20-80 things. Spend 20% of the time thinking about it to capture 80% of the actions. Spend another 80% of the time thinking about it to capture the last 20%. Paste and delete are the biggies I can think of. Regards, Chris G.

From: ScottChesworth Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2021 6:10 AM To: jcsteh/osara Cc: CastleStarter ; Mention Subject: Re: [jcsteh/osara] Repeating audible indicator when in ripple all tracks mode (#471)

I'll collect info on the sighted UX when my better half wakes up.

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[ptorpey]

I’ve been reading through this thread and thinking about how it might relate to an earlier thread I started about the feedback a sighted user gets versus the feedback a screen reader gets related to what is selected in a project.

Admittedly I’m fairly new to Reaper and have a lot to learn about using the UI with a screen reader, but it seems that part of the issue here is that it isn’t easy for the screen reader user to easily tell or be notified what is selected across a project and/or what elements of a project might have been affected by performing a certain action. To be fair, a lot of this comes down to a user being careful and being fully aware of what state they have put the project in and sometimes that job is just a bit more difficult or requires more care on the part of someone using a screen reader.

Anyway, with that preamble out of the way…

Here is an example of what I am talking about. Let’s say I selected a number of items on track 1. If I arrow to track 2 and hit the control+shift+spacebar twice, I am only told about track 2 being selected. As Jamie described earlier, that is because this feedback depends on the focus. In fact, if I arrow back up to track 1 I had a hard time even figuring out how many items on that track were selected without getting focus onto an item and inadvertently selecting yet another item by doing so. Is there a way of getting focus on the items without selecting an extra item? In either case, knowing which items are selected is trivial for a sighted user.

Now imagine the confusion when working across multiple tracks. How would the screen reader user know about which items were selected across many tracks? Would they navigate to each track, one at a time, get focus to an item, and finally hit control+shift+spacebar twice?

Fortunately when performing an action one is told how many items/tracks were removed ore added, but again, there isn’t any easy way of telling which items and/or which tracks were affected.

After getting some experience with Reaper I’m starting to learn what to look out for and how to avoid doing something that is unintended, but it can be a bit tricky for someone with little experience using Reaper with a screen reader. Of course every program has its learning curve, but it is just a bit harder when using a screen reader depending on the feedback one gets.

I don’t have any great answers here because, as we discussed before, there is just so much information we can give the user at one time and it can be a lot of development work to provide complete feedback.

Maybe even some simple feedback like “17 items selected on track 1, 15 items selected on track 2, etc.” is good enough without knowing the details. Similarly “15 items deleted on track 1, 21 items deleted on track 2, and track 7 deleted” would work, again, without seeing each and every item affected.

Of course, as Jamie pointed out, it isn’t just tracks and items that can be affected. One has to worry about envelope points, rulers and selections, and who knows what else. Again, especially being relatively new to Reaper I don’t have any magic answers that would be simple to implement, but I just have the sense that some additional feedback could be useful to not only new folks like me but also to help more experienced users avoid errors.

Anyway, just trying to keep the discussion going to see what thoughts more experienced people might have. In general our access to Reaper is really superb compared to other DAWS I’ve used and I’m very impressed with how well this all works. Just wondering if there is something more to think about here.

--Pete

From: CastleStarter notifications@github.com Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2021 3:05 AM To: jcsteh/osara osara@noreply.github.com Cc: Subscribed subscribed@noreply.github.com Subject: Re: [jcsteh/osara] Repeating audible indicator when in ripple all tracks mode (#471)

Thanks for the comprehensive and considered response Jamie. I could waffle a lot here but essentially, I think you are right. On tagging on voice feedback on actions affected by ripple mode. I was initially skeptical but thinking about it more, perhaps it could work. If a tag was added only for ripple track and ripple all, that would cut down on the annoyance factor. And if the tag comes at the end then you only have to move onto the next action or press control to stop listening to it. I wonder how many actions would need a tag? It’s probably one of those 20-80 things. Spend 20% of the time thinking about it to capture 80% of the actions. Spend another 80% of the time thinking about it to capture the last 20%. Paste and delete are the biggies I can think of. Regards, Chris G.

From: ScottChesworth Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2021 6:10 AM To: jcsteh/osara Cc: CastleStarter ; Mention Subject: Re: [jcsteh/osara] Repeating audible indicator when in ripple all tracks mode (#471)

I'll collect info on the sighted UX when my better half wakes up.

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