Additional views like Timeline, Onscreen Keyboard, Metronome, Tickerbar can be switched on in menu and via hotkeys, but there seems to be no way to switch them off again.
Maybe I’m missing something, but neither hitting same hotkey again, nor selecting the view in menu will make them disappear again.
Onscreen Keyboard and Timeline can be swiped off with mouse.
This seems not to be possible for Metronome and Tickerbar, so the only way I found to make them disappear ist hacking the settings.json
Ok, I found it myself:
Shift + Esc does the trick, but only when Panel is in Focus.
Right-Click Menu “hide” would be handy, or a real toggle behaviour of the hotkeys/menu just like for “Toolbar” and “Controller Bar”
I should write a blog post about this because it comes up every now and then.
This is by design. The idea is that the keys to show those panels always behave the same. eg: Pressing Ctrl+K will always show and activate the keyboard - regardless if it’s already active. If it was to toggle and the keyboard was shown, and you want to move focus to the keyboard, Ctrl+K wouldn’t do that - it’d hide it.
That’s the logic for the panels that can take keyboard focus. For non-focable panels like the toolbar and controller bar, they toggle. Yeah it’s a little inconsistent but once you’re aware of it I think it makes sense.
Brad
Hi @brad
I understand the thinking behind this but, for me, it actually slows down operation. After invoking cntrl E, the most natural action is to invoke it again to reverse the action. Often, there is no reason for the window to have focus.
For example, why does the keyboard need focus? Just playing is enough to see what’s happening. Any editing that takes place there requires mouse movement anyway, so what’s the gain?
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The keyboard needs focus so you can play it with your PC keyboard. Most (all) panels in Cantabile can be driven with the keyboard and need to be able to take focus.
Let me think about it, but I’m not inclined to change it at this point.
What does everyone else think?
I must admit, I do find it a bit annoying having to focus a pane in order to close it…
If you want to maintain shortcuts for taking focus to specific panes, how about having shift as a modifier to remove that pane? So for example Ctrl-E will open the timeline, or jump to it if it’s already there, whereas Ctrl-Shift-E will close it (without affecting whatever’s currently focused). It would also mean toggling a pane would be relatively straightforward, just requiring shift.
Neil
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That could work. At the very least I could provide commands for closing each of the panes and you could configure it anyway you like. Shift modifier seems reasonable to me and I can only think of one existing conflict (Ctrl+Shift+M) that would need to be changed.
Sounds good to me. My only fear is that newcomers to the software may never discover these “hidden” commands, and may forever feel pain when closing panes…
What would be really nice would be to have the following commands for each pane:
- Open or focus if already open (current behaviour)
- Open if closed, otherwise do nothing
- Close if open, otherwise do nothing
I think that would therefore allow you to maintain existing behaviour, set up the shift-modifier method, or even set up shortcuts to toggle (by assigning the same key to commands 2 and 3), if I’m not mistaken. Although I don’t know what you’d put in the View menu…
Neil
I understand this, which is why invoking the key command for the PC keyboard brings the focus to the PC keyboard. You can play it as soon as you invoke the key command.
I would expect that condition if I invoked the command from a ‘closed’ state.
The window would open and be ready to play.
Why should that limit the ability of the same key command to close that window even if focus has moved away? What am I missing here? (rhetorical question 
)
OK - so the user leaves the keyboard window open and moves to another window. Then Ctrl K is invoked and, instead of jumping back to the keyboard window, the keyboard closes. Know what? My hand is already on that key combo. Press it again and back it comes, with focus… and fast too.
It’s that consistent association of a key command with a result that produces speed.
Anyway, it’s not the end of the world but, for me, I think it would speed up operation and create a few synapse linkages. 
2 Likes
Good point!
And I would absolutely agree with that.
OK, I’ve made some changes here:
- All the panels now have three hot key bindable actions: show (and activate), hide and toggle
- Added Ctrl+Shift+E, Ctrl+Shift+M and Ctrl+Shift+K to hide timeline, metronome and keyboard
This has the least impact on the current defaults, but means you should be able to re-configure it anyway you like.
I might adjust the defaults at some point - but prefer wait and see what happens with OS X port first.
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