Kylotan
Beepster
I get it though. It's hard enough to create a program that can perform all these tasks but it's WAY harder to design things to be user friendly enough to anticipate what MOST people would be attempting to do with such maneuvers.
Then there is the matter of changing things this late in the game which would inevitably disrupt many people's workflows.
The thing is... although I wouldn't bet $20 on it, I'm pretty sure that Sonar used to do the thing I expect, which is to preserve the time location when cutting/pasting. It's some point more recently - Platinum? The X series? - when it started dumping it at the Now time.
Same goes for other operations that used to operate on wherever I clicked, like Split Clip - I used to be able to click a clip in the middle, choose split, and it would split it there. Now, it splits at the Now time. Probably someone is assuming "Click to set now time" is always on, in which case you never notice the change in behaviour.
Well IDK what pre X series was like but quite often I find Sonar's "helpful" default settings and actions are contrary to how I would like things and I generally have to change said settings or alter my behavior to accomodate new stuff.
It's like new features get shoved to forefront because the designers are proud of them and want people to see/use them but often times, to me, they are contrary to how I'd like to work.
The most glaring example of this is the Smart Grid Snap resolution feature. It drives me bonkers and it is extremely pervasive in its attempts to make me use it. It seems I am always having to disable that thing (but I guess maybe it's just every time I start a new project... not sure).
I can see how it would be useful but I would much prefer it was one of those things you have to turn ON instead of OFF and based on the amount of threads here that get resolved with the simple answer "Turn off Smart Grid" it probably should not be the default. People don't expect that type of behavior unless they are aware of it and intend to use it. When they aren't aware it is an extreme "WTF is going on?!" scenario.
Again... that's not to say it isn't a great option to have and I can see the loopty loopers and MIDI guys/gals really getting a lot of use out of it but for me, doing endless hours of live guitar session tracking and editing (and my penchant for micromanaging the EXACT Snap Resolutions for clips and MIDI on a case by case basis) it is not a useful feature in most cases.
I also REALLY wish they'd unbind the Auto Scroll function from the Scroll Lock Key (which is a toggle that needs to be set EVERY time I start my computer) and allow it to be a global setting. At least until they implement "Smooth Scrolling".
Just common sense stuff like that. Then again I probably work in very different ways than the majority of Sonar customers. I don't think so though considering most of us seem to be either long in the tooth guitar hounds noodling away in our home studios and/or MIDI composers going for more "realism" than hardcore electronica.
Cheers.