I just stepped into BIAB in Jan. 2010, so I do not know how these two approaches of entering chords originated, but IMHO, that tiny and easily overlooked text area below the style button can be omitted.

When typing into the chords window, a newcomer will expect the text to appear in place - like when having pressed Ctrl+F2 just before, but without the need of pressing Ctrl+F2. Cursor keys should still navigate to other bars in this situation and pressing enter should move to the next bar. But when pressing Ctrl+F2, there still should be a text cursor that allows moving within the chord symbol.

This would be way more intuitive IMO.

When I started to work into BIAB, I thought something was broken with the GUI as I "blindly" entered chords which appeared just after pressing enter. It really took some frustration and research for me to finally discover that text area below the style button.


Also, I would replace Ctrl+F2 with F2, like in-place-editing is accessed in MS Excel or renaming is accessed in Windows Explorer. Of course, that would lead to a conflict with the Save command. But many Windows apps used Ctrl+S instead as a shortcut for the Save command and BIAB allready has Ctrl+S as an alternate Save shortcut.

Alternatively, use the Insert key to trigger in-place-editing.

Both shortcuts would be more ergonomic.

Cheers, Andi