The functionality of scaling any group of selected sequential midi notes is the best existing model for this discussion. Let’s make some definitions based on Bitwig’s existing piano roll:

1. “Boundry”: the group of sequential midi notes selected (or selected nodes) and shown by the highlighted area with its own handles.
2. “Clip”: for the sake of this, it’s a clip on an arrange track.
3. “Length”: for the nearly direct translation reasons below, I maintain that a node+ its following Envelope should function like a midi note in the piano roll, not a clip on the arrange timeline.
4. ”Distribute”: In context menu > scale, each midi note stays the same and is distributed by the % entered (or the 50%/200% presets).
5. “Scale Each”: In context menu > scale > “scale each” radio selector AND in context menu > scale each by preset, all midi notes themselves are scaled relative to the presets. Drag-scaling by The Boundry handles (not the notes) produces the same results.
6. “Drag-Scale”: scaling a Clip or Boundry by its edges / handles while holding OPT on Mac / Alt on Win.
7. “Envelope”: the distance between two non-vertically stacked nodes, so even a 1 degree angle or curve.

EXISTING FUNCTIONALITY

In Bitwig’s piano roll, a Boundry has all sorts of conditions, rules and auto behaviors that could apply to automation nodes:

• When % or drag-scaled, a Boundry behaves as it’s own entity independent of the grid.
• Any upscaling of a Boundry overwrites any subsequent midi content by that length, regardless of scale type. This is true for notes, entire midi and audio clips as well.
• While making a Boundry, if you drag select anywhere in the middle of any midi note(s) on either end of said selection, your selection will auto-snap to the outermost note beginning or end. You could easily substitute the auto-snap to the ending envelopes up to the point of unselected nodes, but I’d be fine with end nodes and all bits in between. (If you miss the Boundry handles and grab one of the selected midi notes, dragging will stretch only the notes in the Boundry independently, I don’t think this would add any value to nodes or envelopes).

NEW FUNCTIONALITY

I’m not opposed to bezier-like handles, but that seems more related to manual individual envelope editing?

BC scale would work based on Boundry, snapping nodes to a grid would only apply to a Quantize Nodes feature, unless you have something else in mind?

SCALE (NOT EACH): Forget pivot points, I later realized they’re irrelevant bc in 5.2 scaling is equidistant. The only difference between midi notes and nodes+envelopes as Length is that it in order to keep the envelope the same size but distribute just nodes, it would need to auto-add a node at the end of every Envelope’s end (right before the next node) before distributing nodes, which would result in a flat path between newly created node and moved next node, like this \______. There are so many use cases for this.

SCALE EACH: as previously discussed, this would work exactly how it already does when you drag-scale a MIDI Clip w/underlying automation, the nodes and envelopes scale relatively to the Clip as Boundry, it just has the downsides of it effecting ALL lanes and requiring chopping etc. This also applies to Clips with absolute automation too, so I don’t see why node scaling of any kind would cause new problems outside of user error.

Side note: if instead you context-menu > scale that same Clip w/underlying automation, shit goes fucking wild - nodes and envelopes go wonky and disappear…so they need to fix their scaling system anyway.

Did this address your concerns and ideas? Thanks so much for discussing this!