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Old 09-21-2019, 12:01 PM   #33
Breeder
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Join Date: Nov 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bFooz View Post
Hi Breeder, this is a really good work. I especially like how all menus labels are so polished and consistent with naming and formatting.

I did my own menus as well and wonder if you used the internal menu editor or some other tool.

Also, how do you approach keeping the menus up to date? I found one thing missing in your menus - "Item - Stretch markers", there is only one mode - "tonal optimized", while in the meantime 3 new modes became available.
Thank you - I've created my own mental paradigm - I call it geometrical sorting - I developed my own rules based on experience. The idea is to make eyes move as smoothly so they can instantly lock to a term one is searching for.

The experience has shown that the more you stop to look at menu entries, the more tired you become - so I tried to minimize stopping of the eyes. Eyes supposedly take in around 90% of information from the environment so if one can make economic decisions here, one should be able to minimize energy loss and prolong the flow by conserving mental energy, at least in theory.

I update menus by hand - and thank you for finding this omission - I had a feeling I missed something in stretch markers and you have found it. I have updated the menus so feel free to redownload. Please note that I also keep full menus set configuration in MenuSets folder called REAPER ReWorked Menu and Toolbar Set.ReaperMenuSet

So you don't have to overwrite the whole folder but only take this menu set and import it into your installation of REAPER ReWorked.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bFooz View Post
One observation - while doing my own menus (and being inspired by Dorico menus) I found that it is better to have items which are not clearly categorised or does not have a strong and clear hierarchy or order sorted alphabetically instead of creating "weak" groups or sorting based on "weak" order. The most obvious example would be the "View" menu with all windows grouped and sorted by a key which is not obvious and not quickly understandable. Also e.g. the top level of "Edit", "Track" and "Arrange" menus. As an example of a menu with a "strong" grouping and order would be "Track-Select".
This is quite similar to my way of thinking - I first create groups of items, them make sure they are sorted in a logical way within themselves and then I make sure they are easy to look at - only then will I consider changing the terms used in menu items to make it more readable

What I have found out is that there aren't a lot of rules one can follow exactly to the letter here, but because menus are a visual thing, it seems good to strive for visually appealing configuration. Experience shows our whole universe is fractal and repeats itself within it so if we go by that theory we can deduct that we can approach the end goal in many ways - I personally pick a visual approach first because I find myself to be a visual type and menus visual type of tool.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bFooz View Post
Maybe you would be interested in this - dropdown menus for toolbar buttons https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=210482
Nice. I personally like normal submenus because they seem to be the most transparent. When one introduces separate menus for toolbar buttons, one must also take care to remember which buttons have them. REAPER ReWorked has a lot of stuff in it, and I do not want to trouble the user of remembering this kind of quirks so I opted out for normal submenus because this is targeted for a general audience and I want them to be able to learn REAPER as fast as possible!

Last edited by Breeder; 09-21-2019 at 12:17 PM.
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