yeah, CHOPs definately work better with procedural tasks. I think the interface is great for what it does, if Houdini was to add clip-block-editing I would think it would go in the animation tools/dope sheet and not in Chops.
The really great thing that CHOPs does have going for it in the animation-block editing department would be it's ability to use triggers.
For instance, the user could
set up different animations of varying lengths with the character and import all the different channels into chops, then use a “trigger” or a one sample spike to determine when that channel will start playing. Yes a trigger could be entered manually, but the way Houdini/Chops works is that this could be created out of just about any type of event or condition.
The value of the trigger could determine what animation would play. The animation could even be scaled so that it finishes exactly when the next trigger starts, or blends to the next sequence.
This of course would take more setup but that's what DA's are for. A few things out of the box that could work would be the Trigger, Copy, Shift, Trim, Stretch, and Lookup.
here's an example (animation is generated based on music)
http://www.andrew-lowell-productions.com/andrew-lowell-productions/download/02_valueControlledTargeting_VelocityBlendIntensity_RandomLoopSelection.mov [
andrew-lowell-productions.com]