[alex_hk90]

Sometimes things that seem simple on the surface turn out not to be very simple at all. In the case of providing automatic scroll settings per page, the UI changes wouldn't be too bad, but I would have to restructure all of the database tables to hold a list of automatic scroll settings per page instead of just one set of settings for a song.  This would change a fair amount of code by itself. Then I would have to update the automatic scrolling code to be able to automatically switch settings every time a page is turned, which might not be too bad, but things might get a little weird if it's automatically scrolling and you manually turn the page and it has to adjust the settings dynamically in the middle of a scroll.

I'm not even sure that this completely solves the issue though, because, based upon feedback I've gotten, in order for the automatic scrolling to really handle all scenarios, it would need to be very programmable. You'd need to be able to specify how fast to scroll on each section and automatically handle repeats.  The tempo may change in the middle of a page, so one setting for a page really isn't even enough to handle that.  Having said all that, I'm not sure if the right answer is to keep trying to extend the current automatic scrolling to handle all these cases, or to break it out and have a simple automatic scrolling feature for basic users (as it is now) as well as a more powerful automatic scrolling feature that is extremely configurable but requires more setup beforehand for power users.  Of course, to support this kind of advanced automatic scrolling, I would not only have to design a brand new editor that could handle all of the new features, but also redesign the automatic scrolling code.

I'm open to feedback on what people think would be the best direction for the future.

Mike

Thanks for responding on this. I can see how one speed per page might not work if there are multiple tempos on the same page, but at worst if you had it at the average you should hopefully have the relevant section on the screen (though maybe not perfectly at the top) at all times and be in the right place by the end of the page. As for repeats being at different tempos, since I use vertical scrolling I tend to repeat the page/section so it is in the file twice (and hence could have different speeds for automatic scrolling if there was a per-page setting). If you had per-page scroll settings, most complexities could probably be worked around by duplicating the page in this way and cropping to the relevant sections. Of course you probably don't want to do this if you're using a different display/scroll setting, but it makes sense for vertical scrolling display and automatic scrolling.

Perhaps another solution altogether could be an automated page turner instead of automated scrolling - where you would enter the commands (i.e. switch to page 2, switch to page 3, switch to 75% down page 1, etc.) and set up the time through the piece where these should be executed. Of course this would be a whole new feature so probably even more code required than the automated scrolling enhancement.