firstly, this program rocks! i'm surprised by how easy nitrotracker is to use, and i'm so pleased that people went through the trouble to create it!
the most significant feature that would help me is the ability to write notes at the top of any pattern. in order to compose, i need to have a physical notebook beside me to keep track of what pattern is for what part of the song, which channels represent which instrumental lines [ie i use four channels sometimes to play chords for one instrumental line], etc. being able to write this information within nitrotracker itself would be awesome.
That would require creating a custom module file format or tying a text file with an xm filename (which could easily get messy) and adding 'bookmark' code to accesss certain areas of the text file for each pattern. Seems like it would be a hassle to include, but an interesting idea nonetheless.
other features that would be nice (but aren't what i care about as much) :
1. ability to change BPM anywhere (this was already suggested http://modarchive.org/forums/index.php?topic=1565.0here)
2. ability to change how many cells are in a "bar" [ie currently it is 8 cells]. this would make composing in 3/4 time easier. actually, even better would be to have not only horizontal lines indicating a "barline", but also (less emphatically-coloured) horizontal lines to separate beats. that is, in 3/4 time i might have two cells for every beat, for a total of six cells per bar; and of the six cells that make up a bar, two horizontal lines would separate the three beats (of two cells each) in that bar.
It's easy to make 3/4, 2/4, even 7/8 time signatures already. Just change the pattern length and (when you start editing it) make a constant quarter or eighth note hihat or other sample beat to denote where each beat lands. Also, say for a 6/8 time measure, set the cells inserted after every note '6' and that should make it easy to divide the quarter note in eighth notes (3 cells), triplets, etc. It might take a little bit of work, but it's really not that hard at all.
3. ability to switch between having pitches notated with sharps or flats.
anyhow, keep up the good work!
This is an interesting idea for different key signatures, chords, and proper notation, but I'm sure you can figure it out without too much trouble if you're asking for this. (I'm assuming you have some music theory knowledge to ask for this feature, and so you know which flats are which sharps, etc.)
