Poor usability

Ok I understand that, when you are coming straight from a DAW, Synfire doesn't feel as fast compared to that. If you are working with Synfire all day, muscle memory gets used to the timing and the music takes the foreground. That's not an excuse. Just so you know that your feedback helps to put more focus on that again.

So if your suggestion is to allocate more time to address these things, I'm with you. If you send us a list of the things you believe are most urgent, we can used that to prioritize things.

The new features are necessary to make Synfire work for a broader range of music. Composing string sections, for example, did not work well enough with Relative symbols.

On a side note, it's a hefty challenge to get up to par with DAWs. Synfire is not a monolithic program. The audio engine (the actual 'DAW') is a separate program without a GUI. Every user interaction needs to be passed through the network and every state change is reported back through the network. This is why some seemingly basic things (e.g. solo buttons) are more complex than you might think and why they take a longer to debug and fix.

(EDIT: got the solo thing wrong, it already functions per instrument)

some obstacles simply become invisible over time

That's quite a challenge. I remember when I was a kid, I was riding to school for weeks on end with a bike that had lost pone pedal. It was uncomfortable but somehow possible. There was no easy fix, so I got used to it. 

Until I got a bloody nose ;-)

The solo/mute stuff should work with next build. Shortcuts and configurable zoom factor are trivial. Thanks for the reminder.

The solo/mute stuff should work with next build.

Oh wow, really? In the future, I'll send my complaints to @spukipuki so he can forward them to you in the proper tone :)

And Just to illustrate, a current example from daily life:

I want to shorten a symbol without quantization. So I select the appropriate setting and tool. Then I click on the symbol to select it. Then I move the mouse to the end of the symbol until the arrow appears. Then I click because I want to shorten the length. And what happens then? The whole segment is smashed up. What can you say about that? Such things happen all the time. 

Also popular: Selecting by drawing a rectangle doesn't work straight away, but only the second or third try.  @spukipuki: Tell him :)

Thanks for the video @juergen. Cant reproduce the bug though.

shorten a symbol without quantization

Hold command key while you drag (Ctrl on Windows). That disables quantization for most mouse operations. No need to select the infinite resolution.

Quality assurance is often like you have to decide whether you want to eat or breathe but can't do both because there is not enough time. If the fix of an inconvenience takes longer than a day, there are a hundred more urgent tasks that get in the way. I mean, please continue reporting where it hurts. But there will always be items that can't be fixed immediately.

I posted this just for illustration purposes and because that just happened yesterday and did fit perfectly into the topic of this thread. Many of these issues happen only occasionally and can't be really reproduced. Nothing of that is really mission critical but it can be quite annoying. 

Like Spukipuki, I agree that the priorities could perhaps be shifted a little. User experience is very important and providing rock solid working Mute and Solo functions should be a "whatever it takes"-priority. It can't be an "I'll put it on the list"-priority. Just my 2ct.

Build #5 should now have solved mute/solo issues and keyboard shortcuts. Also faster response times with many commands on macOS.

And be sure to try the zoom factor scaling in Preferences.

And be sure to try the zoom factor scaling in Preferences.

For consideration - 

Two ways of dealing with zoom that I think are generally faster and easier and more accurate than repeated clicking on zoom in/zoom out buttons:

1.  Hover over horizontal scrollbar (with modifier key, if necessary) and allow use of mouse scroll wheel in both directions for zoom in/zoom out 
2. Grab the right end of the  horizontal scrollbar with the mouse and  (with modifier key, if necessary) allow dragging to change the zoom level in either direction

Ah yes. I've noticed the mouse scroll doesn't work in Synfire. Honestly, having this work along with the mute and solo buttons working now would shave off hours a week for me. Im sure it would do the same for everyone else.

Is it worth considering a new forum category for "Workflows"?

Currently the only mention of 'workflows' across the categories is in General Questions, Suggestions & Talk - "Consider writing a blog post if you want to show your music and discuss workflow ideas." .

As well as discussing workflow practice and consolidating usability issues that involve more than one of the existing categories, the level of interest/support would help Cognitone determine priority in its development work schedule.

Some surprises might emerge from a more holistic approach.

We will have zooming with the mouse wheel (Alt-Scroll, Shift+Alt+Scroll) in next build. Also Zoom To Selection with the Z key.

I asked Claude AI to give me a list of all major DAWs and their zoom commands in the hope to spare me the tedious research effort. The list looked great! It was completely wrong though. I don't know why investors are still burning 100 billion and more on general AI when it can't get anything correct or complete. Scientist have clearly explained why it will never work as expected. We are living in mad times.

Workflow is a somewhat blurry term. For me it means how (and in which way) to use tools and resources to develop an idea and accomplish a desired outcome. These workflow discussions should go in Harmony, Phrases, Containers and similar forums.

Of course one can also think of it in more technical terms, e.g. how copy/paste, drag/drop and mouse and key commands are implemented. If it's about that, the Technical Questions & Suggestions forum should fit.

Hi 
About workflow, In Logic you can with only one tool, with pensel tool, you can create a note, select a note, move, delete (dubble click) and resize a note. You must if you will select more than one note you have to use shortcuts.
I think that Synfire must have the opportunity to a use few of those combintion of tool that Logic have.
 

Hi.   Trying out the new Zoom features with v2.6.1 (on Windows), which seem like they will be very helpful, some of the behaviors don't seem to be quite right yet.     Here is a video:

https://app.screencast.com/WKq7j0N8lNHps

Summary:    

Z key is not functioning as a toggle

Alt-mouse-wheel behaves differently by direction

Mac: 

Alt + Wheel (vertical), Shift + Alt + Wheel (horizontal)

Windows: 

Ctrl + Wheel (vertical), Shift + Ctrl + Wheel (horizontal)

No need to hover over scrollbar

Z behaves as a toggle most of the time. It requires the current zoom to be equal to the selection zoom. Then it toggles back to the total. For some reason this does not always work though. Probably a rounding error.

(EDIT: Fixed the rounding error)

Windows: 
Ctrl + Wheel (vertical), Shift + Ctrl + Wheel (horizontal)
No need to hover over scrollbar

Nice!    Thanks for this, it's a helpful feature.

When you hover over the right end of a symbol while the drawing tool is active, Synfire can't know if you want to resize the symbol or draw the next symbol. That's why you can resize the symbol while you are drawing it (release the mouse button only after it has reached the desired length).

Logic Pro switches to an alternative mouse tool with the Command key. I like that, but we can't currently do that because the Command key is used to unlock the grid (and all the other keys have different meanings). This needs more research and testing. I'd rather not disrupt our long time user's muscle memory at this point with a half-baken solution.

Doesnt HAVE to be the command key. Can be another modifier key...

Ok Ok spukipuki. All your concerns have been addressed in a matter of one week. You can come back to Synfire now. We miss you. :-)

Hi
I have one Macbook and I use an external trackpad. With the that trackpad and Line tool or Freehands tool I can’t extent the note lenght, I can’t select. 
I have also Macpro with a mouse, I see now that I can change the note lenght with line tool but not select, I often use the freehands tool and with that I can’t change the lenght or select what I can see.

(When you hover over the right end of a symbol while the drawing tool is active, Synfire can't know if you want to resize the symbol or draw the next symbol. That's why you can resize the symbol while you are drawing it (release the mouse button only after it has reached the desired length).

Logic Pro switches to an alternative mouse tool with the Command key. I like that, but we can't currently do that because the Command key is used to unlock the grid (and all the other keys have different meanings). This needs more research and testing. I'd rather not disrupt our long time user's muscle memory at this point with a half-baken solution.)

Moving or resizing symbols with the Line and Freehand tools is fiddly, yes. You need to press ESC to return to the pointer tool to move or resize.

I have a test here where pressing ESC once again brings back the previous tool. So ESC effectively toggles between the pointer and whatever other tool you had selected last. Example: Draw a segment or symbol. ESC to resize it with the pointer. ESC to continue drawing.

As said, if the right end of a symbol would show you the resize cursor, you would be unable to draw a new symbol there. It would be extremely fiddly to position the mouse exactly after the end (but not too far, or it would snap to the next grid position). This pixel-exact manoeuvring always drove me crazy with other programs. It would make editing almost impossible in a small zoom state.

Funy! I can't get the toggles pressing ESC, it always go back pointer but it stay there no matter what tool I start from.

(I have a test here where pressing ESC once again brings back the previous
tool. So ESC effectively toggles between the pointer and whatever other tool
you had selected last. Example: Draw a segment or symbol. ESC to resize it
with the pointer. ESC to continue drawing.)
 

As said it's a test (not yet released)

For the note input I suggest again the implementation of a step mode. I used to enter entire symphonies in this way. If you are practiced, this is faster than the corresponding live playback of the entered music. Fiddling with a mouse is always a pain, no matter how good the tools may be designed.

Juergen, do mean Step mode similer like those how are in the most DAW Cubase, Studio one etc

Yes, Cubase has that, also notation editors. And as long as Synfire doesn't have that, I will generally enter notes outside of Synfire and then import them. At best, simple phrases such as vocal melodies or arpeggios can be drawn with the tools. And even that is already tiring enough.

I asked Claude AI to give me a list of all major DAWs and their zoom commands in the hope to spare me the tedious research effort. The list looked great! It was completely wrong though.

Such problems are common when asking questions on matters where the AI has a limited amount of information -- the AI answers anyway, instead of saying "I do not know". 

Some workaround I use is to give it explicit access to the documentation of the software in question. For this particular use case, I might try one or both of the following approaches:

• With Google's NotebookLM, you can give it multiple large documents (e.g., software documents as PDF) and then asked it questions about those documents. The system quasi reads those docs as part of the query (Gemini has a huge context window) and then reacts. 
• Using the Cursor IDE ((https://www.cursor.com)), it is possible to let it index whole documentation websites (likely using RAG in the background) and then to include that documentation in the query.
  • Cursor also allows including explicit URLs or allow the AI to freely search the web, but giving it access to the indexed documentation tends to work better in my experience

Also popular: Selecting by drawing a rectangle doesn't work straight away, but only the second or third try

Seconded.