Feature Request: Highlight Aux Send bus if selected

Submitted by windowsrefund on
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Qtractor

This is just a quick idea but it may be very useful? Opinions are very welcome.

Here's the starting place...

Track is selected and mixer (track and bus) is focused as expected.

track-selected

Below the Odin2 plugin, is a AUX Send. The associated bus is located quite far to the right in my mixer panel. In other words, I'd have to reach for the horizontal scroll bar in the mixer in order to find it when I want to get into any plugin(s) attached to the bus. This is tedious and boring so I wonder....

Perhaps if one were to click on an AUX Send in order to highlight it (seen below), the "focus" behavior of the mixer panel could be overridden and the associated Aux Send bus could take the focus?

aux-send-selected

What's nice about this is how easily one would be able to quickly bring the mixer focus back to the track (and associated bus) by simply clicking on the track again in the Arranger window.

Thoughts?

File attachments
track-selected.png
aux-send-selected.png

Submitted by windowsrefund on Mon, 25 Aug 2025 - 16:08

Permalink

I'd say that's harder on the eyes and less intuitive. It also doesn't scale. At the core of the request is the idea we should be spending less time "finding things" with our eyeballs while leaning into the software to guide us as needed.

Submitted by windowsrefund on Tue, 26 Aug 2025 - 15:56

Permalink

Kinda hard for me to make out what's what but I assume those are AUX Sends you're clicking on. If so, the associated bus should be given focus. I'm also assuming you've compiled the latest bits.

These are AUX Sends and I used the latest Qtractor, main branch with "git log" showing the patch.
Do I have to use a special theme? I use color scheme "default" and tried with style theme "Fusion" and "default".

I've reviewed the code and there were changes in the comments about "double click."

It works, but if it's an Auxsend, you need a double click to get focus.
I think the expectation is that it will also work with a single click.

EDITED:
It should be a single click, because a double click is the action that opens the plugin window.

You'll most likely want to have the advantage of focus to monitor levels or modify gains on the destination, but you don't want to modify the AuxSend itself. Therefore, opening the window is a nuisance.

However, I don't know if the track focus and AuxSend focus conflict with each other, and if it's possible to fix it. I don't know if Qt has a way to prevent the click from staying on the clicked element and not reaching the parent.

A doubleclick opens the AUX Send window but does not change anything else on my machines.

Submitted by rncbc on Wed, 27 Aug 2025 - 18:14

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indeed there were differences in behavior probably due to Qt version bundled in newer debian13 (trixie) (6.8.2); but not on older debian12 (bookworm) (6.4.2), which behaved quite similar, if not exactly to what is expected--tested under qemu/kvm.

anyway, made some changes and hopefully for the good: v1.5.7.20git.d34cf0 is the new ground base... please test && tell...

cheers

1.) Click track -> output bus ist highlighted
2.) Click Aux Send -> Aux Send's destination bus is highlighted
3.) Click track again -> no change. Aux Send's destination bus is still highlighted
4.) Click another track -> see 1.)

So the remaining issue is 3.)

3.) Click track again -> no change. Aux Send's destination bus is still highlighted

this is not going away anytime soon, so sorry... you'll need to click or select another track and then back to it to get exactly the output bus highlights you had originally as in 4.) then 1.)

yes, it's not exactly perfect, but that's life,... kinda minor issue I believe :)

cheers

Uhm, now I'm confused as the functionality is no longer consistent. It seemed to be working fine? A single click (timeout exceeded) would move focus to the target bus and a double click (within timeout) would spawn the dialog (allowing for edit).

Now, there's this unpredictable behavior where sometimes it'll move the focus and other times it won't.

I'm also seeing a bit of a unintended side-effect where a previously selected aux plugin (and therefore, corresponding behavior) will persist so when the track is highlighted again (after highlighting another track), focus is moved to the aux bus. A good fix might be to "deselect" any/all plugins attached to a given track each and every time a track is selected. That would act as a kind of reasonable "reset".

maybe because the current highlighted plugin on each plugin-list box is maintained and it reflects on the highlighted bus (if it's an Aux-Send p-plugin)

it is now expected behavior as it also is when right-clicking on a plugin entry or navigating the list with up and down cursor arrows, not just a single (left-)click;

also that a bus remains highlighted even though you select the same and current track is mostly the situation @bluebell reported here earlier--it's a fact and it won't get "fixed" anytime soon. so sorry.

cheers

the only way to "reset" all buses highlights is to click on an empty space, either in the track list or in any mixer pane.

Today when I edited several buses, one after another, I noticed that they are not highlighted when I click them. So I had to remember which bus I edited last when I proceeded to the next one.

Klicking a bus should be the mightiest action that causes a bus to be hilighted, else editing buses feels like flying blind.

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