When I use a drum map in the piano roll view, I wish I could see both the drum names and the white/black key used to trigger it. Is there a way to see both, with the key color either to the left or right of the drum name, or as a background color?

The keys are in a separate pane, below the drumnote names and on top of the controllers. You may have to drag it open (it may be at minimum height).

SidebySide would be nice but it isn't available, and also wouldn't make a lot of sense for drum maps where the note order isn't necessarily the same as the normal scale note ABCD etc.

Yep, just drag it open:

Most of the kits I use have drums spread over several octaves. Having to show the drum map at the top and then the keys at the bottom really makes things crammed vertically. That's why I was hoping for a way to see the drum names superimposed over the keys rather than in separate panes.

Has anyone found a way to do this?

I suppose one hacky workaround would be to rename the drum names to indicate which ones are black keys. For example:

-------------- crash 1
-------------- tom 4
XXXXXXXXX open hat
-------------- tom 3
XXXXXXXXX closed hat 2
-------------- tom 2
XXXXXXXXX closed hat 1
-------------- tom 1
-------------- snare 2
XXXXXXXXX click 2
-------------- snare 1
XXXXXXXXX click 1
-------------- kick 1

Of course, this won't work unless I can get X2 to stop sorting drum notes by name rather than note; see http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2674505

you got that dead on... that's the easiest solution i've found. i customize a lot of drum maps and change the names. the one thing you have to watch out for is if you change the bass octave for pitches for some kind of funky vst issue (speaking of, i'd love it if dim pro and sfz formats defaulted c-2 but that's just me i guess).

Do you have an example of one of your customized drum maps (with white and black keys simulated)?

i just usually use the map to state they key name. any flat is going to be pretty obvious.  i'll dig one up in a bit. 

drum maps needs an overhaul.. nice idea.. but takes an age to do something you should be able to do in 2 minutes.. e.g. take an sfz file.. and take the sample names out of it for a start

perhaps having the option to invert the black keys would be of help also

what do you mean by inverting the black keys??

hey... sorry i kinda vanished on this one. i'm taking a look at using instrument definitions (i've started using them for keyswitches), and they might be a better solution for what you're doing.  i'll post a couple of ideas in a day or two and an example.