On Sunday 13 September 2009, D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
> If not, I feel the February deadline slipping away rapidly while we stall
> out trying to figure out how to solve these problems.  I have the
> beginnings of some thoughts about several of these, but if the things I'm
> thinking are in any way actually required to get the job done, we're
> looking at months to get it all done and get it all right.

And carrying that thought along (even though by now I have so much out there 
nobody will read any of it, and I'm talking to myself) what about this up/down 
business indeed.

If we did have a local cursor in the matrix, the "up/down" relationship would 
have no meaning in that context, because every matrix "staff" is hugely tall, 
and they all overlap identically.  The matrix is, therefore, exactly the same 
kind of problem to resolve as the case of several overlapping segments 
displayed on the same notation staff.  Up/down staff doesn't have any meaning 
at this level, because they're all on the same plane.  What we need is 
"up/down" layer instead.

Notation is a different and more complex problem, because there can be any 
number of staffs built up of any number of layers.

So it seems like in the matrix we need some kind of way to say "this is the 
active layer" and some mechanism for controlling it.  Perhaps one of those 
thumb wheel widgets from Sonic Visualiser we haven't used for anything yet.  
Roll up, roll down, change the "this is the active layer" and flip through 
what set of events is shown in real color, and available for editing.

Notation is more evil, because we'd have to have one of these per staff, and 
one of these controlling which staff was active too.  Or maybe not, maybe one 
widget to rule them all could just cycle through everything that's available 
from top to bottom, changing staffs when necessary.

A [staff 1: guitar incidental voice overlap conflict resolution]
B [staff 1: guitar picked short melody notes]
C [staff 1: guitar picked long bass notes]
D [staff 2: trumpet I]
E [staff 2: trumpet II]

Start on D, roll up to C, change the active staff in so doing.  Roll up to B, 
stay on same staff, change which voice layer is active.

I think we could make it easier in notation to see what's active by drawing 
inactive notes differently, as we do in the matrix now.  Not the "invisible" 
gray color, but something else.  (This all falls into some "after Thorn" ideas 
I have about fixed rests vs. calculated rests and so on that was I planning to 
defer until later, but maybe the color reform changes need to happen now after 
all.)  This would make it crystal clear which "landing zone" is available for 
entry, except in the case of layers occupying the same staff, which gets 
rather more nebulous.

All of this could work.  Would it be usable?  More importantly, can we avoid 
having to dive into something like this as a condition of release, or is it 
really inescapable as part of this "one cursor" plan?

The more I chew on it, the more I fear I had better get started looking at the 
code to make it all work, but I'd love to be talked out of this.  I'd just 
love it.

-- 
D. Michael McIntyre

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