PRV and Midi Channels
When the 'select track' issues get resolved, there will still be the difficulties with midi channels in the PRV controller pane.
Right now, you can have at maximum one section of PRV-CP (Controller Pane) dedicated to any one individual MIDI CC. Say you work a lot with CC11, and you are working with 8 tracks in the PRV. If all those tracks have all events set to Midi Channel 1, then you will see one active CC11 line in the PRV-CP. In a shadowy way, you'll see all the controller messages for all the other tracks in that same CC11 line. You can't distinguish one from another, and you can't create a new line in the PRV-CP in order to have just one of the non-active tracks in view.
That's problem 1: if all tracks use the same default channel, channel 1, then you lose visual information.
Problem 2: if you fix problem 1 by making each track use a different channel number, so now you have channels 1-8 in use in your 8 PRV tracks, then you have the horrible 'pick tracks' problem: every track's controller of every distinct channel number gets a line in the PRV: the ludicrous sight of 64 tiny controller lines, impossible to click on their close buttons because they are so squashed.
Problem 3: if you manage to close 60 of your 64 controller lines, and use 'Lock Contents' up in the top left corner of the PRV, then you have a managable if inflexible set of 4 visible lines, and you can change any one of them to select any of the current midi CCs in the selected tracks. You still cannot select a controller for a NON-selected track, but you can at least make you desired non-selected track Selected, briefly, and then select a controller for that briefly-selected track, and then return to your original selected track, use a different line of the PRV-CP, and now see your active controller, for the active track, in one line, and the reference controller, for the non-active track, in another line. AS LONG AS **this is the problem** the two tracks do not use the same channel and controller number!!! Because the PRV will not allow you to select two lines in the CP for the same controller number for the same channel, even for different tracks.
Problem 4. You resolve to use different channel numbers, as above. Then you do something like click on a note on one track, followed by mouse-entry of a note on another track: you've just created a note with the WRONG channel in the second track. Or you copy a section of one track, and paste to another track: you've just created a section with the WRONG channel in the pasted track. Suddenly you're back with problems 1-3, and there's more.
Problem 5. You think all your controllers, say CC11, for a given track, track 7, use channel 7. You have an active line of the PRV-CP dedicated to CC1, Channel 7. You copy or cut and paste a section into this track from another track. Now you have any CC11 values from that copied section AFFECTING YOUR MUSIC but they are NOT VISIBLE. You didn't notice that the notes of that track went silent? That's because there was an invisible CC11=0 in the pasted material. This may sound like a minor thing, surely you'd notice missing notes? But no, in a large project with a lot of aural contributions, you probably would not. Until later, reviewing the finished? product you realize what you thought you'd made is no longer what's there.
How to fix these: address the issues of midi channel versus sonar track, in connection with the work on the PRV GUI.
I would suggest, as a simple start, that the PRV Controller Pane be additive, with a usable 'pick controller for track' selection dialog with the option to show multiple midi channels independently, or to show ALL midi channels of the same controller on the same line, or better, perhaps, to optionally force all midi controllers present in the track to use a given midi channel.
Another solution might be to use Sonar track numbers INSTEAD of midi channels: allow the input of CC11 for track 108, rather than for channel 3.
Another related solution is to work out the visual issues of multiple channels for different tracks' controllers obscuring each other by being forced to share the same line.
A start would be to do what other DAW's do: let the view of a collection of individual controllers be additive, not subtractive.
Let the size of one controller's line be independent: it's so natural to need the size of the pitch wheel line to be one height, while the note velocity line is another height, while the sustain pedal is yet another height: they have different visual information, they need different amounts of space.