Playback and Looping enhancements

[LWinterberg]

• [ ] #1278
• [ ] Playback should be allowed to play indefinitely after the last clip ends, rather than stopping (resolving #2056 in the process)
• [ ] #2325
• [ ] #2405
• [ ] #2204
• [x] #2209 "Set Loop In/Out at current selection" and "Set Loop Region to Selection" should have default shortcuts (eg I/O/Shift+L?)
• [x] #2182
• [x] #1982

[SteveDaulton]

Care needs to be taken with "click mitigation" to ensure that it does not give users a false impression of a "good" loop position becoming a "bad" loop position on export or trimming.

[DavidBailes]

• "Set Loop In/Out at current selection" and "Set Loop Region to Selection" should have default shortcuts (eg I/O/Shift+L?)

@LWinterberg The shortcut I is already in use by the scrub forwards commands. I would also be inclined to only use up the remaining free single character shortcuts for actions which are going to be frequently used. It would be helpful if you could give one or two use cases which illustrate the use of the Set Loop in/out commands by keyboard users. At the moment it's not clear to me how they are expected to be used in practice.

[petersampsonaudacity]

I recently wrote this on Discord 3-2

Having listened to several complaints on the Forum about the automatic turnimg on of looping with an accidental/inadvertent click and drag in the Timeline - I am strongly mined to think that the user should have full control of the on/off status of looping with the use of the Loop button.

In particular: a) the user should be able to totally control when looping is on or off (via the new looping button) b) clicking and dragging in the lop region should not be a hidden mechanism to turn looping on c) with looping off it should not be possible to click and drag in the timeline to create a loop region d) once the user has turned looping on - then a click and drag in Timeline should create a loop region

e) And ideally if looping is off then there should be no loop region displayed, even if the user had previously created one when they had looping turned on. f) It would be reasonable for Audacity to remember and recall a previously set loop region for when the user turns on lopping again.

The automatic turning on of looping by click and drag in the Timeline creates yet another bear-trap for the unwary - and Audacity has plenty enough of those already.

See this Forum thread: https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=121230