Boundary Snap Guides

Peter 14Apr13: ToDo-2 Ready for editorial review and merciless editing

• Peter 14Apr13: I note that we need to make clear on this page the distinction between "Snap-to" and these "Snap-to Guides". This is because we have created confusion by giving these, two distinct (albeit mildly related) pieces of functionality, names that are too similar. Is there any chance that we could consider renaming "Snap-to Guides" to something more distinct from "Snap To" or is the nomenclature set in stone.
• Peter 16Apr13: Ok, it's time for some voting on nomenclature, I've combed back through the suggestions of the last couple of days:
  1. Snap-to this is how it started out (on Audacity Selection) - Peter -1
  2. Selection Drag Guides - Gale suggested this - but it has the downside of the boundary case of point-snapping - Peter +0.5
  3. Snap Selection - Steve suggested this - Peter +0.5
  4. Snap Guides - Ed suggested this - Peter +1
  5. Boundary Snap Guides - Gale most recently suggested this variant - Ed +1
  • Ed implemented his Snap Guides on the latest version of this page and now that I see it on the page I *really* like this. It's succinct, it differentiates from "Snap To" while retaining the "snap" terminology - and it deals with both dragging and point selection.

Audacity makes it really easy to make a selection that starts or ends at a physical boundary like a label or clip boundary. When snapping is taking place a Snap Guide (a vertical yellow line) appears at the point at which snapping is occurring.

When you take any of the following actions:

• Creating a selection with the mouse
• Modifying the selection boundaries with the mouse
• Sliding / time-shifting a clip

the selection boundary, or the boundary of the clip you're time-shifting, will snap to the following one of these locations:

• The start or end of the nearest track or clip
• The start or end of the nearest label
• Time zero (0 on the Timeline)

depending upon which is nearest.

Gale 15Apr13: ToDo-1 we don't mention that you can click close to a boundary e.g. above a label in the waveform and snap to it. No selection involved, but you would almost always do that because you wanted to create a selection starting from there.

Ed 15Apr13 : in the above set of bullet points I made significant changes to the wording to more correctly express my understanding of how this works - someone with more in-depth understanding should probably look at these changes carefully.

In the image below a clip in the "Guest" track is being dragged leftwards with the mouse. When the clip reaches the right-hand boundary of the clip above it a vertical yellow guide line appears through all the tracks showing the position of the snap boundary. With this Snap Guide visible we can release the mouse and the dragged clip will be perfectly aligned with the one above:

The Snap Guide appears when the selection will be snapped to the start or end of a boundary in any of the Project's tracks:

If there are two boundaries very close to one another, and Audacity can not tell which one is appropriate, Audacity will not snap to either. If you want to snap to one of them zoom in so that you can clearly position the mouse closer to one rather than the other.

Note carefully that Snap Guides are distinct from the "Snap To" checkbox in Selection Toolbar which snaps selection edges (or the cursor) to a chosen unit of time.