Sounds simple and intuitive to me, Craig. I have this problem too ...
 
It also sounds like your suggestion would solve the other insert/delete issue I always have, which is, if there is any MIDI clip info spanning the area to be deleted or appended, it usually just gets nuked ... or badly maimed at the very least.

VariousArtist
Here's what I have to do now to get around this (it's clumsy, time-consuming and nearly but not quite perfect, but I have it down now):
- I place markers at the boundaries of the region to be moved or deleted (easier to select thereafter)
- I add dummy midi data to blank areas and boundaries in that region (sometimes I add dummy silent audio too)
- I select everything in all tracks (CTRL-A)
- I split all the tracks at the start and end section
- In tempo view I add a redundant tempo change right at the boundaries, just before and just after the splits (at both ends)
- In time signature I do the same as with tempo (very important to do both if there are tempo changes and time sig changes)
- I select all tracks again
- I select the timeline region between markers
- if moving the region I will first make all the selected clips part of one group
- then I use the Cut... dialog and make sure everything is checked off
- if moving, I first paste the clips sometime after the song and then revisit the problem of moving
- I cleanup and cross fade clips at the boundaries
- then I listen to see if it worked
- later I might deal with sudden tempo changes etc.

Can't we just get a Macro for this?  

sharke
I think a general philosophy to pursue would be that everything after the deleted region should sound the same as it was before the deletion. ...

+1 ... this makes total sense to me. If we had a simple command to delete a block of time starting at a certain point, and everything after that block sounds just like it did before, that would be great!

sharke
I think a general philosophy to pursue would be that everything after the deleted region should sound the same as it was before the deletion. ...

+1
That's what makes sense to me too.

Yes, except if the area to be deleted contains instructions for what the area after the deletion is supposed to sound like, how is SONAR supposed to know that you aren't deleting those instructions on purpose because you want the part after the delete to continue on from what was happening before the delete? Clearly, in the example of the gradual time change I gave above, the intention was to have a slight change over time. So if at the cut point you now have a jump to the new tempo, that's not what was intended.
 
The core of the issue seems to be that there's no "rule" that's going to work every time. I think the best anyone can hope for is a rule that works most of the time, but that manual editing is going to be unavoidable in some, maybe even many, cases. 
 
The problem re tempo changes as I see it is if you check Tempo Changes when doing a Delete Hole, and there are tempo changes within that hole, the results aren't consistent. I think the only possible solution is to choose a consistent result for what happens, but realize that a lot of the time, it's not going to be what you want. However, at least you'll know in advance it's not what you want rather than finding out afterward.

I think what's obvious is that there would have to be a handful of options to check, just like there are with delete special and paste special. If the user checks the box to delete tempo information, then the tempo after the cut will be the same as the tempo before the cut. If the user checks the box to delete time signature information, then ditto. If either of these boxes are left unchecked then Sonar will presume that the user wants the audio after the cut to play exactly as it did before the operation, and will thus insert the last tempo or time signature event within the deleted area at the cut point. 
 
I think, however, that it's logical that all tempo and time signature events after the cut should be shifted to the left when the gap is filled. After all, if you wanted those events to stay fixed in absolute time then is a "delete time" operation what you're looking for? A simple lasso and drag or the existing slide operation would move the clips if that's what you wanted, and all of the tempo and time events would remain intact. 
 
I have a similar feeling about locked clips. If you want clips to retain their absolute positions then would you really be looking for a "delete time" operation? Look how the "slide" function handles locked clips - it's simply grays itself out if all selected clips are locked . Perhaps "delete time" would be disabled if there were locked clips after the cut, or perhaps it would come with a pop up warning the user that any locked clips would be shifted along the timeline after the operation, or perhaps "locked clips" could be one of the options. Either you want them to take part in the shift or you don't. I don't think it's getting too complicated really - look at the paste special dialog. I'm sure we could get by with fewer checkboxes than that. 

sharke
I think, however, that it's logical that all tempo and time signature events after the cut should be shifted to the left when the gap is filled.

 
Well I think I have some good news. I could get tempo but not time signature to slide over properly when I first started with a blank project, but now it's happening exactly the way it's supposed to. Not sure what I did to make that happen; this is part of the testing to which I alluded. If I can provide a recipe for both making it happen as expected and the conditions that don't make it happen as expected, I bet the fix wouldn't be too hard. I have a feeling it might relate to the presence of markers, because once I tried deleting hole after experimenting to see what markers did, things started working correctly.
 
Now it's becoming a puzzle...I like to solve puzzles , wish me luck. 
 

groovey1

sharke
I think a general philosophy to pursue would be that everything after the deleted region should sound the same as it was before the deletion. ...

+1 ... this makes total sense to me. If we had a simple command to delete a block of time starting at a certain point, and everything after that block sounds just like it did before, that would be great!

+1 ... this makes total sense to me too.

It may seem that "tempo change", "key signature change", "patch change", controllers, etc are simply events, but really they are boundary markers for properties of the music that remain constant between events.  With that concept, wherever some musical time is deleted, the following music should retain the properties it had before the deletion. Sonar already knows how to "chase" such events.

bvideo

groovey1

sharke
I think a general philosophy to pursue would be that everything after the deleted region should sound the same as it was before the deletion. ...

+1 ... this makes total sense to me. If we had a simple command to delete a block of time starting at a certain point, and everything after that block sounds just like it did before, that would be great!

+1 ... this makes total sense to me too.

It may seem that "tempo change", "key signature change", "patch change", controllers, etc are simply events, but really they are boundary markers for properties of the music that remain constant between events.  With that concept, wherever some musical time is deleted, the following music should retain the properties it had before the deletion. Sonar already knows how to "chase" such events.

I think you're actually asking for the reverse, which is what I had mentioned. When they say "before the deletion," I think they mean "what that section sounded like before you did the deletion," not "the sound of the section that occurs on the timeline prior to the section you deleted."
 
This is why I think "rules" about a composer's intentions are going to be wrong a lot of times. And the rules change for different genres. The "rules" for a rock song might be very different from a music bed for a kiosk video.

I said literally "the following music should retain the properties it had...", so yes I means it should sound the same as before the deletion was performed and also have the same nominal meter and key signature. So I think I am agreeing with the statement I quoted.
 
By properties, I mean the result of applying all the tempo, meter, key, and controller changes that occurred in the piece before the deletion was applied. It would use the same logic Sonar uses to chase tempo, meter, key, and controller changes when you begin playback in the middle of the piece. In this case, think of the point were time is deleted to be equivalent to the point where playback begins when Sonar does chasing. At that point, the most recent values of those properties, as they appeared within the deleted material, would be inserted, just as Sonar would invoke the most recent values of all those properties when starting playback.