Is there currently a way to move the notes of a pattern as you expand or shrink it, and if not would it be possible to implement it?
Example, say you have a pattern like this (top rows):
ModPlug Tracker IT
|C-501......
|...........
|...........
|C-501......
When expanding the pattern x2 I'd like it to automatically look like this afterwards:
ModPlug Tracker IT
|C-501......
|...........
|...........
|...........
|...........
|...........
|C-501......
|...........
I.e. implement the growth on every other line, and not just all in one big chunk at the top or end.
This would save me a LOT of time if I've worked on a track in the default 64 row pattern, and then suddenly want to import a MIDI of 128 rows, or want to convert to 128 rows to have more room for extra in-between notes than 64 allows, because when I do I have to do all the moving manually, and it takes a LOT of time if there are many patterns in the track. Naturally a halving would have to come with a warning that some notes could disappear when deleting every other line (but doing that in a written pattern results in that most of the time anyway), but for expanding I don't really see a downside to it, at least not as an option.
What you are asking for is exactly what happens if you click the Expand Pattern or Shrink Pattern icons. Is that not what you're observing?
Quote from: Saga Musix on May 30, 2024, 15:26:43What you are asking for is exactly what happens if you click the Expand Pattern or Shrink Pattern icons. Is that not what you're observing?
Oh my! I haven't noticed those icons before. I've always gone through pattern properties and used the /2 or x2 buttons there, that just adds a big chunk at either the top or bottom.
Thanks for making me search out the icon names you were referring, since those didn't have the same name as the "pattern properties" I used. Wouldn't be amiss to have the same options added to that dialog, though.
The main problem here is that if such an option existed in that dialog, it would also have to work for non-trivial cases where the factor between the two pattern sizes is not 2. Such resampling is an (comparatively) easy task for images or samples, but with the relatively low detail that patterns have, it would be much harder to achieve this is in a good way. That said, it could be interesting to have this option for modifying patterns to go from 4 rows per beat to 3 rows per beat (for triplets) - if it can be made to work properly.