The blue dot of death

    davidestevens
    Jan 05 2010 | 2:33 pm
    I've been slowly getting used to the blue/red dot thing on object ins & outs, and have occasionally found it useful for rewiring. However, I'd like to echo an earlier plea to be able to disable this functioning. A subpatch that has been working for months and months suddenly broke yesterday, and all I'd done was to replace one object via paste/replace. After quite some hair tearing, I noticed that there was a missing connection in the extremely neat rat's nest of wiring. I must have brushed it with the cursor as I was moving my wacom pen,and that was enough to reconnect it. I'm finding this accidental reconnection to be a general problem, but I usually notice as it happens. What this incident shows is that it's possible to accidently break a patch without realising it's happened, which then makes it pretty difficult to track down the problem.
    So if it's technically possible, could we have the option of turning the new connection functionality off?
    thanks
    David
    • pdelges
      Jan 05 2010 | 2:43 pm
      I had the exact same problem a couple of days ago. That's even how I discovered this new feature...
      p
    • Hugobox
      Jan 05 2010 | 6:36 pm
      same here!
    • the_man361
      Jan 05 2010 | 7:15 pm
      i think it would be nice if the functionality was changed to only repatch connections while holding a modifier key (i.e. alt).
    • pid
      Jan 05 2010 | 7:36 pm
      cannot resist: personally i think you are all the craziest crazy people on the planet. having waited almost 10 years for this basic feature i've been all loved up on max since its sly introduction. i not only love it, i want it times-10. i want to have blue circles in my brain, on my fingers, coming out my ears. i love them i love them i love them i love them i love them.
      now, can we please have also: right-click and change object to another object, retaining connections where possible / drag object between patch-chords and have it 'inserted' with connections where possible / any other cool features you get in those poor-siblings applications like audiomulch and ploguebidule. and more blue circles - anywhere, i don't care, i want more and more, even if they make me unpatch things sometimes (has no-one discovered the 'undo' shortcut or what?!). melodramatic. apologies.
    • pid
      Jan 05 2010 | 7:38 pm
      p.s. - @the_man: 'alt'+ click-drag from a blue-circle-enabled chord copies it to somewhere else, rather than just moves it.
    • seejayjames
      Jan 05 2010 | 9:19 pm
      I was also surprised to see the new "move cord somewhere else" functionality. Wasn't sure if I'd seen it before and just missed it. I don't like it, it's way too easy to make mistakes, and undo should only be used for real screw-ups. Please allow it to be turned off if possible...
      I do like the highlighted circles, and how the outlet highlights if you're closer to it versus the inlet. That's been handy to see where things are going, but being able to also click and move it has been more of a nuisance than a help, at least for me.
      I'd like a way to auto-highlight all cords that are attached to an object (without the alt-drag), that would be useful sometimes. You can delete object-->undo and the cords are highlighted, which is an OK workaround... though it messes with your undo/redo stack, a pain if you're a ways back and would like to keep your redos available.
    • Gregory Taylor
      Jan 06 2010 | 3:26 am
      No good deed goes unpunished. Or, perhaps no good deed is ever NOT accompanied by an undo request. :-)
      I'm hard pressed to think of a single recent improvement that has contributed to a greater degree to the quality of my life.
    • jvkr
      Jan 06 2010 | 9:35 am
      @ Greg
      And we're still waiting for this roundedness pref setting.
      Most complainers seem to agree however (and I must admit myself that I have been using it) that it is a useful addition, but that there are situations where it is undesirable to have it activated.
      I did not send a request to the manufacturer of my car to remove the spare wheel from it in future versions because I don't plan on ever having a flat tire. Neither do I keep it on the seat next to me because a flat tire can happen any moment now. It's stored in a proper place.
      We all love cycling.
      _ johan
    • davidestevens
      Jan 06 2010 | 9:42 am
      Tp expand slightly on what I said originally - I do mostly agree with Gregory and pid that this is a very useful function, and there are times when it has been a time saver for me. Equally, I've lost time having to delete or move back connections which have moved (jumped sometimes!) when all I've wanted to do is to select them, or I've accidentally brushed them as I move the cursor (I suspect this is more of an issue for pen/tablet users - which I will remain because I find it easier than using a mouse, and it keeps the rsi at bay (mostly)).
      I like the idea of a modifier key to reverse whatever the selected state is for this function (ie depending on whether it's turned on or off, do the opposite temporarily). In a very large patch, an accidentally moved connection can end up all kinds of places it shouldn't be and if, in the white heat of patching mania, you don't notice it happen, the possible consequences can be several hours of lost work (I lost half a day trying to figure out why my patch had suddenly gone wrong!) So I don't think I'm either crazy or ungrateful, but I _would like the option to _not have this functionality - in certain contexts it's actually losing time for me.
    • goodparleyandorfing
      Jan 06 2010 | 12:32 pm
      I too would like to optionally not have this, as well as the pop-up object palette and all the other functionalities seejayjames mentioned. In an ideal world all the changes from max4 to 5 would be implemented as optional choices, but they aren't. Well, some are..