Folks,
One of the features for which I've been campaigning on the accessibility with
on the Pro Tools front has been the nudge value field. In earlier versions of
Pro Tools, it was not specifically accessible but one could at least press the
button, type a value, press Return and at least the custom field was entered
and one could go about their business with the new nudge value. Now, if you
don't know why a custom nudge value is important, never mind for now and trust
me when I say that it'll save your ass at some point, guaranteed.
well, in Pro Tools 11, the interface changed a bit and now at least we could
see the Nudge Controls button which popped up the format selection and default
values. Thing is, now we couldn't enter the custom value. I submitted a bug
report and nothing seemed to change because other items like the MIDI Event
List took precedence, understandably.
Well, only yesterday, I stumbled upon what I can only call a discovery, for lack of a better word because it
was truly hidden. Unfortunately, a bit of a misnomer was incorporated when one of the programmers worked on
the nudge and grid controls. In the edit window, there is a Grid/Nudge cluster. That naming convention was
inherited from the initial work of PT accessibility in version 8. When interacting, you find 3 items labeled
"Show Grid Lines" (which is either selected or not), "Grid Controls button" and
"Nudge Controls button" Clicking on the first button toggles its state of either showing or not
showing grid lines in the timeline. Clicking either of the two remaining buttons pops up a list of formats
and default values as mentioned earlier.
Yesterday, as I was making a macro to double-click on the nudge value field to at least be able to once again
enter custom nudge values, I needed to quickly navigate to the Nudge Control button and so I brought up the
Item Chooser list and typed n u d g e. Surprisingly, the list contained several items rather than just the
one I was expecting. It contained a text field labeled "Nudge" and a numeric field labeled
"Nudge value." I had never seen this before and was stunned. To my astonishment, having selected
the nudge value field, I purposely stopped interacting with the control to see where it was nested. To my
surprise, it was nested in the "Nudge Controls button." Well, of course, a VoiceOver user would
never think to interact with a button because that's not the function of a button. In fact, upon retrying
with another session, simply navigating to the Nudge Controls button and interacting with it simply interacts
with the title of the button itself rather than its alleged contents. Bringing up the Item Chooser, however,
indeed exposes the hidden controls. Further, once accessed, interacting and exiting interaction with the
button seems to traverse the levels repeatedly.
Bottom line is, if you need to type a custom nudge value, and I promise you,
you will at some point, use the Item Chooser to get to the Nudge Value numeric
field, click once and type the custom value, hit Return and be on your way.
This is an issue of nomenclature mostly but also the non-standard manner in
which a control was defined. It's really not a button but a group of controls
or a cluster, if you will. So, it's confusing until you know what it truly is.
I'm explaining this so that, when others ask, more people on the list know
about this quirk. That said, I'm relieved that the issue of access to the nudge
value was addressed, albeit in a non-standard way, because it's truly one of
the quality-of-life issues that kept me from moving to Pro Tools 11 full time.
For me, this was a big one. There are a few others that are being addressed in
beta that will be resolved soon, I'm sure.
Anyway, just sharing the info.
Slau
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