[ANSWERED] Paste Over Menu Command - Not Working as I Expect...

Bennnid

Hi, I use to paste over to change controllers, but when I right click on a box and click paste over (even if it's like a new edition of a macro with same in/output) it doesn't work...

keyboard shortcut either
it makes Isadora really difficult to use...

do you have the same pb?

thanks

DusX

@bennnid

I am unsure what you expect Paste Over to do. If you select an actor, and Copy it, them use Paste Over, it will add a copy of the Actor exactly on top of the copied actor. This differs from the regular Paste function which offsets the new copy from the original.

mark

@bennnid said:

when I right click on a box and click paste over (even if it's like a new edition of a macro with same in/output) it doesn't work...

Here's the difference between choosing Edit > Paste and Edit > Paste Over:

The regular Paste command offsets the pasted actor, 10 pixels down and 10 pixels to the right. The Paste Over pastes in exactly the same spot as the original.

Paste Example

If I select this Calc Brightness actor and choose Edit > Copy:

and choose Edit > Paste, I get this

Past Over Example

But if I choose Edit > Paste Over instead of Edit > Paste, I get this:

which looks like nothing happened. But if you then click on the selected actor you see and drag, you'll see that the original is underneath the copy.

I hope that helps you understand what Paste Over does.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Armando

@mark

Hi, how paste over is pretty straightforward. What I don't get is what is its intended function.

Thanks

mark

@armando said:

Hi, how paste over is pretty straightforward. What I don't get is what is its intended function.

I made it because when I I wanted actors to line up visually when I was patching. Goes back to Isadora 1.0... which was before the days of the auto-align grid. I still use it myself along with shift + arrow keys to organize as I'm creating a patch, but with the auto-align grid maybe its usefulness is less obvious.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Armando

@mark Thanks, In fact, I remember it (I started to teach Isadora at my university when numbering version was 0.7...) but I never really used it. Especially after auto align. A "replace actor' command with first input output auto connect, though, would be nice. For video chain, for instance :0 Just saying.

Hugs

Bennnid

@mark

I use duplicate a lot ( Cmd+d) for this and autalign works nice

Although I think it s a bit dangerous to have actors being duplicated in an invisible manner which is what paste over does...

A replace command to avoid rewiring all in/outs of the box you wanna substitute could be great !

mark

@bennnid said:

I really need a replace command to avoid rewiring all in/outs of the box you wanna substitute updated...

@Armando said:

A "replace actor' command with first input output auto connect, though, would be nice.

This has come up before, but I can't see how this would work unless you were replacing the actor with the exact same actor. How would Isadora know what connections to make if you were replacing a Movie Player with an Add Alpha Channel or to replace a Smoother actor with a Calculator? Can either of you better explain or give a few concrete examples of what you mean? I'm afraid I don't get it.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Bennnid

@mark

Indeed when same number of in/outs could work with same placement , which is useful when

-you are lucky in that in/out configuration for a different actor

- you wanna update a user actor avoiding save and update all but need to choose which you wanna update manually

Thanks so much for your work

Bennnid

@mark, one last thing about paste, I wonder if it could be easier to paste clipboard content where we right click on the patch:
at the moment , what you paste is placed at the position of the original copied content ( which could be used with menu edit / paste or cmd +V )
but it could be really convenient for me, to set the new position of pasted content with the mouse right click coordinates (use to get contextual menu / paste) as a reference position.

Bests

Bennnid

@bennnid

another solution could be to be able to rename a user actor "updated" with the same name than another "former" one,

and then "save and update all" on the "updated" to change all the former one, but that doesn't work...

mark

@bennnid said:

I wonder if it could be easier to paste clipboard content where we right click on the patch:at the moment , what you paste is placed at the position of the original copied content ( which could be used with menu edit / paste or cmd +V )but it could be really convenient for me, to set the new position of pasted content with the mouse right click coordinates (use to get contextual menu / paste) as a reference position.

That's good suggestion. Please add it to the "Feature Requests" topics in this forum and we'll get it logged.

But RE: this comment:

another solution could be to be able to rename a user actor "updated" with the same name than another "former" one, and then "save and update all" on the "updated" to change all the former one, but that doesn't work...

I am not sure what you're saying here. Can you not do the following:

Duplicate an existing User Actor
Open it and make your changes
Choose "Save and Update All"

Does this not update all existing instances of that actor? I'm quite sure this works. (And I am not clear how this is different from simply double-clicking on an existing User Actor that is already patched and making changes.)

I mean, from Isadora's point of view, you really can't make a new User Actor and then have it "figure out" how to redo the connections. For example, let's say we have "User Actor AAA"

input 1 = text
input 2 = number
input 3 = text
output 1 = text

Then you make a new "User Actor AAA Updated" (as you propose), with the input structure like this:

input 1 - number
input 2 - number
input 3 - number
output 1 - number

How can Isadora know what to do in this case? If there are output links carrying text data to "User Actor AAA" Inputs 1 and 3, what do you do with those? A text connection cannot be connected to a numeric input. So then the inputs 1 and 3 would be disconnected throughout the entire patch. But this is already what happens when you do "Save and Update All" for an existing actor if you made similar changes.

I'm not trying to be difficult with these questions, but there would have to be some logical system to update the existing actors, and -- having thought about this a lot already -- I don't see how Isadora could do this.

If you can be really specific about how this system would work, I am happy to consider what you're proposing as a feature. But I really don't get it yet.

@Armando -- do you have a proposal for a procedure, since you also said it would be useful?

Best Wishes,
Mark

Bennnid

@mark

Hi, yesterday I sent an actor to light technician, with his midi controller input ( 3 pages), I already linked all of the 100 inputs in the patch,
but he noticed a few mistakes, so he changed the user actor without modifying its outputs order not nature...

but I couldn't load it in my patch, cos I didn't make the modification on the original actor...
so I tried copying content but the 100 outputs where not in order and linked were broken,
I tried renaming the updated version of the actor with same name than my buggy one and tried to move a box to do a save and update all but it couldn't update my former controller user actor.

I can imagine this would create incoherence in case of not matching inputs nature ( vid, num, sound), but what about disconnecting incompatible links only in case of replacing a box to conserve all valid links?
hope I'm clear !

all the best!

Woland

@bennnid said:

he changed the user actor without modifying its outputs order not nature

How exactly did he change it without modifying anything? From what I understand the technician has a new version that you want, but don't have, so you need the new version from the technician.

If you want the changed version your technician has, ask the technician to:

Open their version of the patch
Open their version of the User Actor
Change anything in the user actor (even dragging an actor inside up and down)
Close the User Actor
Save and update all the User Actors when prompted
Save a version of his new user actor
1. Either save to document toolbox with the right-click menu
  --or--
2. Save to Global User Actor Folder
Save the patch
Send you the patch and the User Actor

Before you open it up, you may want to:

Go into your Global User Actor folder
Compress your version of the User Actor (to make sure it doesn't try to load in that one)
Delete the uncompressed version of the User Actor (so you still have the compressed copy but so that Isadora doesn't try to load in your version of the User Actor)

In this way you can still have your version in the right place should you want to unzip the archive and get it back later, but it should prevent any confusion over which one Isadora will try to load.

Bennnid

@woland

Thanks that will spare me lot of time!

Bennnid

@bennnid
but alt+cmd+V to replace a user would save even more ;-)

mark

@woland said:

If you want the changed version your technician has

@Bennnid

but alt+cmd+V to replace a user would save even more ;-)

Actually the workflow is even simpler than @Woland described. All you need to do is to pass the modified User Actors back and forth, placing them in the Global User Actor folder. When you open the patch, the User Actors inside the patch will automatically be updated to reflect the User Actors saved in the Global User Actor folder.

To clear this up, I wrote a Knowledge Base article entitled "Keeping Global User Actors In Sync When Collaborating" - that includes example files you can use to make the workflow super clear. Please have a read.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Woland

@mark said:

All you need to do is to pass the modified User Actors back and forth, placing them in the Global User Actor folder.

I just suggested sending the whole patch and the User Actors because I was unclear if there were any other useful modifications made to the Patch that @Bennnid might want.

Another handy trick is if you and your collaborators install Dropbox on both your computers and have synched folder for User Actors that you set as the Global User Actor Folder on all the computers on which you're working. (Also a good trick for synching all your user actors between all your own computers.)

Bennnid

Thank you for the knowledge base ( I always need some! ) and the veeery good advice about file management !