Trackpad Settings
This page is only available on macOS. It is the Trackpad tab of the Navigation settings, next to Pointer & Selection, and it sets how VoceVista responds to a pinch on a Mac trackpad.
VoceVista understands two trackpad gestures. Both act on the view under the pointer, without clicking the view first:
- Pinch
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Zooms. Move two fingers apart to zoom in, or together to zoom out.
- Swipe with two fingers
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Scrolls. Swipes follow the scroll direction set in macOS and have no settings of their own.
How a pinch zooms depends on the view:
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On the spectrogram it can zoom time, frequency, or both (see Directional or Simple Pinch).
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On the spectrum it zooms frequency or intensity.
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A view or scale with a single axis, such as the Waveform or the frequency scale, zooms that axis whichever way you pinch.
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The video zooms its picture evenly.
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The Vowel Chart zooms evenly in both directions. The settings on this page do not apply to it.
Changes on this page apply from the next gesture.
Pinch to Zoom
If pinching is turned off for your trackpad in macOS (, Zoom in or out), a pinch does nothing in VoceVista either. The tab then says so at the top of this group, and the pinch settings are unavailable until the system setting is turned back on. Swiping still scrolls.
Directional or Simple Pinch
- Directional pinch
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A pinch zooms the axis you pinch along. On the spectrogram in its usual orientation, a horizontal pinch zooms time, a vertical pinch zooms frequency, and a diagonal pinch zooms both. On the spectrum, a pinch along the frequency axis zooms frequency, and a pinch along the intensity axis zooms intensity. This is the default.
- Simple pinch
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The direction of the pinch makes no difference: any pinch zooms the view’s primary axis, the one the mouse wheel zooms. That is time on the spectrogram and frequency on the spectrum.
Keyboard Modifiers
This table is a reminder of what a key does to a pinch. There is nothing to set.
- (no modifier)
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Zoom the axis you pinch along (with a directional pinch), or the primary axis (with a simple pinch).
- Option
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Zoom the other axis. With a directional pinch, a horizontal pinch then zooms the vertical axis and a vertical pinch the horizontal one, and a diagonal pinch zooms both either way. With a simple pinch, the pinch zooms the view’s second axis instead of its primary one: frequency instead of time on the spectrogram, intensity instead of frequency on the spectrum. On a view with a single axis, Option makes no difference.
Hold Option before you start the pinch. VoceVista reads the key when the pinch begins, so pressing or releasing it during a pinch has no effect.
Gesture Help
- Show help overlay
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While you pinch or swipe, show an overlay on the view with arrows for the gesture and a short description of what it changes, such as "Zooming the time axis". The overlay disappears when the gesture ends. For a pinch, the arrows also show which directions the view tells apart, with the direction you are pinching in highlighted. This is on by default.
The same switch is on the Help menu, as .