So it’s all in the title really. I’ve looked and looked through the search engine of the forum because I really thought this had been voiced out and answered to before (it probably has been and I just couldn’t find it) but since the scripts count is rising substantially every week and I have a tendency to try out everything in short burst sessions where I create raw material, I now have a considerable number of norns scripts on my device.
I was wondering if there was a way that I somehow missed to sort them out into subfolders? It would be especially easy because https://norns.community/ already provides a super comprehensive list of everything sorted out and classified, and it’s so well made I just miss that kind of clarity once I open norns and I just end up scrolling through a confusing list of things where I’m not completely sure what does what.
I think it would be helpful to have a category system (also : it would allow scripters to keep doing what they do, which is giving lovely esotheric names that are indecipherable to their equally strange scripts) on the device, and if there’s one already then I’m eager to find out where it is.
this isn’t possible presently but is certainly something that can be developed.
do you know about the “favorites” feature? highlight a script and turn e3. an asterisk will appear next to the script and now that script will appear at the top of your list:
I would love to be able to get a rough category level idea of what a script does, on the device, without having to navigate to read the description of every script.
That’s not currently possible, so I just use the matron library to read descriptions and see tags, which isn’t ideal, but it does work.
Yes it’s super handy but it’s got the downside of not pushing me to use alternative apps and only ever use the ones I know best and part of the beauty of norns is often discovery of new scripts. It would help a lot I think to have categories sorting so that whenever you want to have fun with a delay or sequencer or whatever you’re like “oh I have all those alternatives!” right now whatever it is I’m looking for I need to open something outside of norns to check my scripts or read every description.
Anyhow I’ll keep using my workarounds but I hope it’ll be added someday in the future!
I have no idea how one could find a classification system which would cover all the norns scripts and wouldn’t impose limits on the creativity.
Anyway what i actually wanted to say is that i have a special little notebook for norns things and I doodle in it and also doodle a sketch of th main UI for some of the scripts and this is a great memory resource for myself.
The system I miss from the organelle is the ability to create a folder with whatever name (synths, sequencers, fx, generative) and put the patches into the folder as a way to categorise them.
Very different machines, so no idea if this would be possible or desirable to implement.
for what it’s worth: yes, you can absolutely organize scripts into subdirectories on norns. the script selection inferface does not care and will display each script with the parent dirs. I make use of this fact often.
(That’s not the same as being able to browse the dir tree on device of course, but that’s a pretty simple modification to menu/select.lua if anyone wants to try it out.)
Big drawback of course that maiden afaik would not be able to manage things structured that way and they must be managed from the shell or remote filesystem directly.
Certainly possible to add a user tag feature, this would be metadata stored apart from the scripts themselves, analogous to current favorites feature. Dunno if this is gonna be a high priority though.
My 3c is that subjective categories only useful if user determined. But there is also the empirical fact of which modules or features a script uses (midi out, grid, custom engine, etc) and these things can actually be determined programmatically.
Actually that’s the drawback that made me stop doing that when I realized all my scripts were not seen anymore by the library after doing it that way !
And I agree it needs to be user defined, would it just be to avoid having all the script makers having to update to add the right tagging etc. My desire is to allow for more possibilities for organizations not to add more work for everyone (especially if in the end, they use tags that are maybe not aligned with how some users percieve the script, some of them being pretty specific and strange to defined)
If the classification is user defined there’s no problem, I don’t think the category tree in https://norns.community/ is imposing limits on anyone.
I make extensive use of notebooks as well, but not for sorting out purposes (or it would just end up being even longer than browsing through the list of scripts on my norns) so it’s not a solution for me at least.
I’m ok to wait as long as I need to because I hate to ask for features especially if the dev team doesn’t feel it’s a priority (part of the beauty of norns is the freedom from user demands the devteam has on the project and the fact you’re all working towards what you think is interesting), but it would definitely be an important feature addition for me.
UI wise, it could simply look like the parameter lists sections (aka. everytime you add a user tag, it displays all the scripts with this tag under a line+title section)
Since getting my Norns I felt like the scripts should be labeled. I use a little notebook on my desk to remember what scripts do though so problem solved!
Is there a way to categorize or tag the installed scripts under the “select” menu, to bring a bit of order to them? I often can’t remember what exactly a scripts does when I browse them. I then look them up on lines or norns.community.
For me an ideal solution would be something like Folio but integrated into the “select” menu and/or with the ability to hide scripts that are not installed. Additionaly it would be helpful if one could display a short description of a script, e.g. after turning an encoder or pressing a knob, like the first line on norns.community “punch in tempo locked repeating” for clks.
As I guess these features are not available at them moment: Would it be possible to add them with a “mod”? Is it possible to change what is shown after the “select” menu with a mod?
Edit: Thanks for moving this post to the existing thread which I missed. Nice to hear others has this idea as well - and also use notebooks.
Thank you very much! This was super helpful . It took me maybe an hour to lable and categorize around 80 scripts. Now I have a handful of nice categories and short descriptions.
The one thing I did not understand was this:
The automatically added "metadata" is simply a scrape of the first 2 lines of the script. It's certainly not perfect, but it's a start :)
Glad it was reasonably helpful. The text that appears on the right side of the script name is automatically pulled from the first 2 comment lines of a script, as a means to offer a kinda-sorta helpful description of what the script does in an automated way. Does that make sense?
Anyone have any additional or new tips and tricks for this? I would love folders. Fx, drums, synths, loopers, sequencers, grid-compatible, etc. One elegant option might be favorites with different icons so you scroll with encoder like you do now but choose a plus, asterisk, minus, exclamation, etc.
. It took me maybe an hour to lable and categorize around 80 scripts. Now I have a handful of nice categories and short descriptions.