Topic for the ancient modplug users who havent caught up with time signatures

[Exhale]

I used to use the primary and secondary highlights to change the way the pattern looked years ago to make easy to see 3/4 timings and other systems, but for a very long time there has been no way to set it other than 16 primary and 4 secondary... it is extremely frustrating when I want to do a waltz and I tend to just switch it off and look at things without it if I need to do it which is even more frustrating.

I didnt think of mentioning until now that I am messing around with the same song which is recorded 3/4 from a friend and getting frustrated again. I am a visual person and I dont even need a click track to get my timing right if I can see it with my eyes, but the fact that the adjustments havent worked for years has forced me to either stay in 4/4 timing or make it in 3/4 from scratch knowing the mathematical lengths of patterns etc and turn off the distracting highlights.

I really hope this can be fixed sometime.

[Exhale]

resorting to a click track to get my timing right

[Exhale]

I managed to do the project... but yeah... I really think this is something that should be fixed at some stage. certainly would have caught on to the timing a lot quicker if I had the adjustable highlights to go back on... why have they been stuck for so long anyways? Used to be able to set the primary to whatever you wanted and the secondary at any kind of fraction of the number and it would work out wonderfully.
Oh well.

[Saga Musix]

I'm not sure where you have been looking all those years but the time signature has been adjustable the whole time in the Song Properties. In the MPTM format you can also change the time signature for each pattern individually in the Pattern Properties dialog. The only thing that changed (many many years ago) is that the default time signature in the settings dialog is only used for newly created songs. And this shouldn't be a surprise because the dialog tells you exactly that: Once a song has a time signature set, the defaults from the settings dialog no longer apply.
If your problem is that you don't see the highlights at all, make sure they are enabled in the Display settings and that the highlight color is distinguishable from the default background color.

[Exhale]

The way modplug used to work is you would adjust the numbers in the primary and Secondary highlights and it would adjust the numbers of rows that were between each higlight according to the numbers you chose... that is where I have been looking this whole time, and just gave up. I decided the only way to have it is 4/4.

I wish that would work again, even if it didnt adjust the time signature, just the way it was highlighted.

[Saga Musix]

There is no difference between highlighting and song signature.
Just think about it for a moment. The old way was completely decoupled from the song itself. So If you had one song that was in 4/4 and one in 3/4, the highlighting would be wrong for one and right for the other, and if you wanted to change that it would be a choice that would affect all other songs as well. We fixed this by making a setting that you choose for each song individually. Your 3/4 song will show a 3/4 row highlighting forever, no matter how many 4/4 songs you load in the meantime. Doesn't that make a lot more sense to you? Just go to the Song Properties dialog and set the correct time signature and you are done.

[Exhale]

Oh certainly it is a lot more logical, but I admit I would only use it every now and again any ways and change back to 4/4... it was simply for the aesthetics and quick use for one song... If I wanted to edit that song again I would see the timing by looking at the code and change it back again... either way it would be nice to have both options than just the one... but I understand if this is not a shared perspective.
Yes I have thought about it for a 'moment' a lot more than a moment... and I liked the old way... I didnt know about the new way or I forgot / it doesnt feel as intuitive to me, and if the old way is redundant, then why are the input fields for the old way still there if they do nothing?

[Saga Musix]

You can still turn row highlights on and off at any time you want, if that's what you mean by "use it every now and again". You just check or uncheck the checkboxes in the Display settings for the primary and secondary highlight. That is completely fair and an intended use case. However, viewing the very same song sometimes with a 3/4 highlight and other times with 4/4 absolutely doesn't make sense, and that is why you are supposed to set the correct values in the Song Properties. If you do so, the song will always show the correct highlights no matter how many times you turn them on or off. No need to manually go to the settings dialog to set it to 3/4 and then going back to it to reset it to 4/4 for another song you want to open. Quite honestly I don't see why you would want to do that. It just doesn't make any sense.

and if the old way is redundant, then why are the input fields for the old way still there if they do nothing?

Those are, as they say (and the documentation says), default values that are used for newly created songs, or songs imported from file formats that do not have a time signature. So if you mostly create songs in 3/4 you could set those to values to 4 and 12 rather than 4 and 16 for example to save you some work every time you create a new file. But once the file has been created and saved, you must go to the Song Properties instead, because at that point these two settings are part of the song.

[Exhale]

Ok, I have learned something today, and yeah, I understand if the way I want to do it sounds complicated to you, but the way you have it now sounds complicated to me... I dont learn things quickly and am not technically inclined, changes like this do throw me for a loop, and yeah I understand this change happened years ago... and thus I have simply been turning them off so they are not distracting when I am tracking a 3/4 or other timing... I had been meaning to bring it up every once and a while, but just thought fuck it.
Either way, thank you for your patience with me.
I know now to look in the song and pattern properties to get my alternative timing fix every now and again.

[Saga Musix]

Sorry, but "I'm not technically inclined" has absolutely nothing to do with any of this and I would argue the other way around: the way OpenMPT does things now - having a single source of truth for the pattern highlights, and that truth being part of the song itself - is going to be much easier to grasp for anyone who is not interested in the technical details of anything OpenMPT does here. Previously, you were able to have the song signature, as specified in the Song Properties (which was already saved in the file at that time as well!), to be different from what you have specified in the Display settings - which would be absolutely confusing to anyone not knowing how OpenMPT works on a technical level: "I specified my song to use 6 rows per beat but it still highlights every 4th row, why is is that?" would be the kind of questions we would be getting from non-technical users if the old way of specifying the row highlights was still possible. Hence: Display settings = default values for new songs, Song Properties = the actual value tied to every song. It's really not that complicated, is it?

[Exhale]

I have been playing with it now and I agree, it is simple and obviously flexible with the ability to change it on patterns... I have to get my mind around these alternative timings again though... so my slow learning is the real issue I suppose, not my technical inclination. Either way as I said, thank you, I now know what I am looking for.
What I was saying is that the old system seemed simple enough to me, I wasnt saying that this is any less simple, just that it was what I knew.

[Exhale]

Changed the topic name to better suit the truth behind my confusion