Thanks for pursuing this David. While the proposal would be most welcome, I
agree with Robert that using left and right arrows to scrub backwards and
forwards respectively would be a simpler interface. That is what Reaper does,
with zoom level determining speed of the scrub.
My main use of scrubbing would be to locate an edit point. It is so much
faster to locate a point when scrubbing than without.
Thanks again
Andrew
From: audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Behalf Of David Bailes
Sent: Wednesday, 4 December 2019 1:11 AM
To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [audacity4blind] Possible interface for scrubbing using the keyboard.
The word scrubbing seems to used in a variety of different ways, but I'm taking
it mean the ability to playback the audio both forwards and backwards at speeds
varying from very slow to very fast.
You can currently scrub using Audacity, but only using the mouse. Andrew has
expressed an interest in being able to do this using the keyboard. The
following is a proposal for a keyboard user interface for scrubbing in
Audacity, and which is quite similar to the one used in Reaper. I would be
grateful if anyone interested in having such a feature could give me feedback
about the proposal.
1. There would be one key for playing backwards and one for playing forwards.
For example, these could be the U and I keys.
2. Playback starts from the cursor position, or the start of a selection if
there is one.
3. The speed of playback is determined by play at speed slider in the toolbars.
The current range of the slider is from close to zero to three, but it might be
possible to extend this if required. There are number of existing commands for
changing the value of the slider. One of these is a dialog where you can just
type in the desired speed. These commands currently don't have default
keystrokes, but could be easily assigned in preferences.
4. After pressing one of the two keys, playback continues until the key is
released.
5. You can scrub to the end of the audio, even if there is an initial
selection. In other words, scrubbing forwards does not automatically stop at
the end of the selection.
6. Normally, when one of the keys is released, the position of the cursor is
set to the time when the key was released.
7. If during the time one of the keys is pressed the left bracket and/or right
bracket keys are pressed to set the start and/or end of the selection, when
when the scrubbing key is released the change to the selection made by pressing
the bracket keys is preserved - the position of the cursor is not set to the
time when the key was released.
David.
