The “keep” word in the second sentence makes me think about absolute positions (seconds), not relative (musical notes / bars that obey a given bpm).
"Keep the absolute position or… not?
For me, this could be better: You have modified the bar offset! Do you want to keep the project content where it was relative to the origin?
clicking yes = the project content will stay put (only the bar numbers will shift)
clicking no = the project content will be placed farther or closer to the origin, but the same bar/beat/half beat/4er beat position of the events will be kept
I find the message unambiguous, albeit oversimplified. After the change, material will either start at the same bar number(s), (meaning it would have to be moved in time) or it will have a new start location based on the modification that was made, meaning it stays at the same location in the context of minutes:seconds.
While there might be a better way to say this grammatically, the meaning is clear to me, as a native English speaker.
Have you checked what it says with the interface in German? That might be interesting.
I guess it’s not very obvious that the material will be moved in time (for me, at least)
The terms “new start” and “same start” should refer mainly to seconds (absolute values), not bars (relative values).
Even though one can understand in the end what the term “bar position(s)” is about, it’s still ambiguous because it takes a bit of time until you get the meaning of it (you shouldn’t have to think in order to understand — I know this is a bit weird to say).
Another alternative would be: Do you want to move the project content so that it starts at the same bar number as before?
English You have modified the bar offset! Do you want to keep the project content at its bar positions?
German Sie haben den Taktversatz geändert. Sollen die Taktpositionen beibehalten werden?
Google Translate (from German): You have changed the clock offset. Do you want to keep the measure positions?
It’s still ambiguous/confusing…
Anyway, I don’t want the message in the dialog changed. I just wanted to express my opinion.
I think the problem is that the concept is a bit difficult, and the devs want the error message to be understandable to all users, including new users. So without regard to the wording, the user has to understand the underlying concept to fully understand what the whole thing means.
I’m all for re-evaluating dialog box messages’ clarity-- there are some strange wordings in some. Also, the exclamation point isn’t needed. (there used to be an exclamation point in every dialog back in the 90s!)
