unique default new project names

This is a really small thing, but it comes up every time my M+ crashes.

Saving a new M+ project for the first time is relatively annoying! First of all, nobody wants to actually name any project "New Project". Ever. So at the bare minimum, you have to backspace 11 times to get rid of the useless text "New Project" which is the default project name. Then, you need to start typing your actual project name. I know, I know, it takes maybe 10 extra seconds. But truthfully, that's just enough pain for me to not want to save any new projects until AFTER I've decided that it's a keeper. Which means that if/when Maschine+ crashes in between the time that the project is a keeper, and the time that I realize it and actually do the "Save New Project" dance, well... I lose all of my work completely. This has already happened to me multiple times in the last week since I got my M+.

So what I'm suggesting is that I would like the default new project name changed from "New Project" to something else. To be honest, even changing it to an empty string would be helpful, since it would make it so I don't have to spend that 10 seconds hitting the backspace button over and over again just to replace it with something more meaningful. But even better than that would be a unique string, like the date, for example.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I like to prefix any project name with today's 8-digit date (in correctly alphabetizing format), like "20201030" and then maybe after that, I would type in something subjectively unique about the song. So if M+ auto-filled this 8-digit date string into the Save dialog, I would be very much happier. Not to mention much more likely to actually save the project sooner, which in turn would make me much less likely to lose all my work on a fledgling project that I neglected to save. So, that's what I'm suggesting it be changed to.

 

User-defined "wildcards" as per REAPER would be much preferable and I would really not want the date string to be it (and very much want sample-naming to move away from this too).

 

Yeah... Maschine uses date for sampling/recordings and my folder is filled with meaningless names, I hate it with a passion. It would have to use time besides date because you might make a bunch of new projects in the same day...

Wouldnt a couple of small keyboard improvements fix the problem? Maybe a "Clear" button to delete all text or a "Select all" followed by just one backspace?

 

Me too.

 

Well, the idea is that you're supposed to append something after the date prefix, to make it more meaningful.

But regardless of what it becomes, "New Project" is worse than meaningless. It's an obstruction.

 

Something like that would certainly help, yes. Maybe also a "Date" macro button to insert an 8-digit date, or a 14-digit datetime.

 

The way the tag browser screen works would be perfect for something like naming files/folders. Perhaps once a phrase is entered by the user it populates a database where you can access commonly used terms using the dials.

Although his opens a whole world of hurt once the database gets clogged with phrases entered once. I would settle for being able to create a database of shortcut phrases/time & date functions on the computer if need be.