The Pattern Editor Needs to be Modernized

[Gabrielxd195]

In the last few days, I've seen many comments and contributions regarding the Pattern Editor, such as: timeline #7794, slider #7313, clip preview in the song editor #7559, as well as some fixes and a name change. I think this is very positive, as this editor is very useful but needs to adapt more to the times.

However, there's one problem that for me, has been the worst of all: not being able to make clip variations within the same track. Instead; to make a slight variation to a clip, you have to clone the entire track and dedicate it only to that clip's variation. This is very annoying and visually unpleasant, especially when you have to make a very rhythmic and percussive song with many variations. Other DAWs that handle rhythm clips allow you to make variations without having to clone the track and without any limitations.

In previous versions of LMMS, we could draw Pattern Editor clips in the Song Editor, which met all our needs when creating rhythms and variations. However, that feature was removed #5988, which I found very arbitrary and capricious, since many of us used that feature precisely because of the Pattern Editor's limitations. To a certain extent, I can understand why they removed it because it would take the place of the Pattern Editor. However, they left us without both, which ruins the user experience when creating rhythms and variations.

Every time I see someone talk about this topic, all many of my colleagues do is show them "the philosophies of the Pattern Editor," which I've always found impractical and cumbersome. We need to take this into account before making any refactoring or change, since it's not worth much for something to be well programmed if it isn't well thought out beforehand. I really wanted to say this, but I didn't because other users were reporting this and marking it as a "duplicate", but the problem still remains. We don't have either one or the other yet, but I wanted to talk about this issue because I saw this report #7907, which proposes something new, but it could be made easier if the Pattern Editor would let you make variations or give you the option to "Make clips independent" within the same track. Regards (Google Translate)

[Monospace-V]

The issue template supports enhancement requests, and this has been discussed in #454 if you wish to see discussion. #453 asks for some features I think you may be interested in too.

I realise there is higher demand for the legacy song editor bb behaviour. This can be enabled with the legacysebb=1 flag in the config XML so you can continue using it in newer versions.

[Gabrielxd195]

@Monospace-V Simply allowing variations within a single track is more than enough to satisfy the demand for Pattern Editor clips in Song Editor, as many of us were using that feature due to the Pattern Editor's limitations.

Also, I had already found a way to do this with the "legacysebb" command in the configuration file, but it's very impractical to have to do this every time I install LMMS, especially for new users. They should add this option to the LMMS configuration. The issue is so simple in theory because it only allows adding clip variations to the Pattern Editor, and then, with the other improvements to the Pattern Editor, it will make it more practical and more widely used by users.

[Monospace-V]

The legacysebb option can be retained in the config XML between installs. You may benefit from the -c flag in your shortcuts to point to a configuration flag.