[ardour-dev] UI review: shadow copy region and region bottom color changes

[Marek Peteraj]

Currently, if a region gets copied by ctrl+clicking and dragging a
region, the newly copied region starts to exist by releasing the shadow
region/mousebutton. This is wrong. The newly copied region actually
starts to exist from the time the mouse coordinates change while the
ctrl+mousebutton is pressed, i.e. from the time of the first drag. The
reason for this is that 

1. you "tear the copy off" its original if you start ctrl-dragging 
2. the copy operation becomes more obvious and you'll be focusing and
operating on real regions only, and there's no need to actually
distinguish between a real and shadow copy region.
3. there is no explicit way to discard a copy-region while moving it,
that is before mouse release. One way would be to release it above the
bus track, but this could be applied to all regions, no matter whether
it's a copy or original.
The other way would be the HIG way: HIG states that in order to cancel a
copy operation during dragging, you have to hit escape. This is a fairly
non-obvious and hidden feature. Besides, it's non-obvious that you can
release the ctrl key while still dragging the shadow-copy region which
makes your hand free to hit escape. There's already a way to discard a
selected region, by hitting the 'del' key. This can be unified by
allowing the user to cancel the copy operation by hitting the del key
while dragging the copy region, which in turn becomes equal to
discarding a real region. This is already possible. Try dragging a
region and hitting del key while dragging it - the same situation would
be a freshly copied region that is being dragged.
4. It would completely unify the UI behaviour for moving and copying and
simplify the undestanding of regions for the users.


Similar scenario: the bottom color of regions
Regions on the same track share the same bottom color, if they're moved
to another track, they "adopt" the color of that track. The current
behaviour is that the region adopts the color of a track by mouse
release. This is wrong. The region should adopt the color immidiatelly
after it's "floating" above a given track. This notifies the user that
the position of the moved region has changed. The reason for this is
mainly that there's no way to discard the move other than by undo so the
move has already happened before the mouserelease. A different case
would be if the region moved to its original position  by plain
releasing without some additional confirmation, a behaviour similar to
being on a rubberband. In that case, the adoption of color would need to
happen after the confirmation of the new position.

Marek