Use more consistent naming conventions and concepts

[Jon L. Jacobi]

I think the program might be quicker to learn if the naming conventions were more consistent. For instance, you have lenses for screen layouts and track control layouts, but a track manager and an event list manager for those module's layouts. Perhaps go with the lens thing with "Manage Tracks Lens" and "Manage the Events Lens" and lens anywhere else a layout is being defined. 

Then you have the views menu. Views by itself would be fine as a naming convention, but now it seems to run up against the "lenses" concept.  I first looked for these "views" under the Windows menu. Perhaps put them there, or rename it from "views" to "modules" or "panes"(etc.) which is what most of them first appear as.  Also, you have the Staff, Console, and Piano Roll, etc. which have "view" tacked onto the name, while the Event List, Markers, etc. which default to the same pane, don't. Adding the word "view" is redundant when you've already categorized them with the menu heading. 

If you want to save some space,  you might rename the Help Module simply Help.  I think everyone knows it's a module. Also Track Control Manager would be more accurate as Track Controls Manager. 

None of this is a huge deal as you figure out what everything is readily enough, but they are things I found momentarily confusing  upon first glance.  Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't used Cakewalk/Sonar in a very long time.

Great job on the updates!

[David Baay]

3 hours ago, Jon L. Jacobi said:

For instance, you have lenses for screen layouts and track control layouts, but a track manager and an event list manager for those module's layouts. Perhaps go with the lens thing with "Manage Tracks Lens" and "Manage the Events Lens" and lens anywhere else a layout is being defined. 

I can see removing 'View' from 'Event List View' and 'Piano Roll View' options for consistency and to eliminate redundancy in the Views menu, but that's a trivial thing. 

If there's apparent conflict/redundancy, it's might be between between lenses and screensets, but lenses are applicable across projects where screensets operate within projects. Both lenses and screensets are way of controlling the arrangement of views. I don't see why you would want to rename/reclassify a view as a lense...?

If you think about a 'View' as being a way of looking at and editing musical, lyrical, video and other content that you create, then the Track Manager doesn't really qualify; it's just a dialog for determining what tracks are visible. I suppose there's an argument to be made that it should be possible to leave it open and/or dock it like the Markers and Tempos views, but you can't create/delete/modify tracks in the Track Manager, so it's not really in the same class.

I'm not really sure what you mean by 'event list manager'...?  Event list qualifies as a view, albeit an old and largely neglected one.

[Jon L. Jacobi]

To be honest, I don't even see the screensets module in the early release though I've read about it and remember it. I find lens and screenset completely redundant, so maybe the latter is gone. But they've started using the lens concept for the track controls (first image) so why not settle on that nomenclature as simply any type of layout?

Also, it's the Event Manager in the Event List (second image) as you suspected.

I'm not saying "views" is unintuitive or completely out of context. Alone it's fine. But I stick by my assertion that "views" and "lenses" are too close conceptually, will cause mild confusion to begin with, and for lack of a better explanation, just don't sit well together. Then again, you use a lens to magnify a view.  Or view through a lens... Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe changing it from a noun to a verb "view" would be better. 

Unfortunately, I don't have a brilliant alternative for this other than perhaps calling them lens components. Lens/lens components is not what I'd call intuitive, but easily understood once explained and more consistent. Kind of foo-foo though... And of course this is all relatively trivial, but brains are strange contraptions and little things add up.

 

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by Jon L. Jacobi

[Jon L. Jacobi]

As to the inconsistent naming conventions, I'm still all about fixing those.