Re: [artworks] Ideas for new version
- From: Martin Wuerthner <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: artworks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:30:50 +0200
In message <4ea3058d34gav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Gavin Crawford <gav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 1. New View
> The 'New View' from the iconbar menu to obey the Alt key to open the view
> with wysiwyg set to zero.
Good idea - done. Both for the icon bar and document menu entries.
> 2.PathTool:
> from the !ReadMe
>>- Minor new feature in PathTool: Holding down Shift while selecting
>> anchor points suppresses other possible actions (insert new anchor
>> point, add new line/curve segment), thus making it easier to just
>> select points without accidentally editing the path.
>
> I feel that while the Shift is being held bezier handles should still be
> movable. [...]
Yes, I agree. Done.
> 3. Sprite and JPEG dialogue windows:
> allow the DPI to be writable, so scaling can be perform by supplying the
> required DPI.
Yes, that sounds useful. Maybe I can squeeze it in.
> 4. Unused Sprites
> Include a 'Quiet' button on the unused Sprite warning, when saving
> (similar to the missing font warning). Sometimes, I want to keep the
> unused sprites within the document but don't want to have to keep
> clicking the error window for each sprite.
Yes, good point. Done.
> 5. Object Stacking
> As well as moving an object forwards or backwards through the stack (or
> to the extreme front or back) allow a move to place an object either in
> front of the (top most) selected object or behind the (back most)
> selected object.
I agree that it might be useful to move objects in front of or behind
a specific other objects, but I do not think the exact function you
propose is the way to go. Your approach has two big weaknesses: First
of all, it does not allow you to move one or more objects to the front
of some other object if the target object is further down the stack
(or likewise, behind some other object if that object is on top).
Secondly, in general, it is hard to see which object of a selection is
the topmost/backmost, so in most cases, the outcome of your proposed
"move selected objects to the front of the frontmost object" function
would be rather surprising.
I think it would be better if the user could mark a certain object as
being the reference object and then select the objects to be moved and
move them in front of or behind the reference object. That removes the
ambiguity and allows objects to be moved in front of an object that is
further behind or behind an object that is further to the front. I am
not quite how to do the marking though. So far, there is no concept of
an object being marked as some kind of reference object and I do not
think there is a way to make that property visible. The best I can
come up with is to have a menu entry "Object => Mark as reference",
but that is not very intuitive.
The big advantage of the "reference object" approach is that it could
be used by other functions, too. For instance, the alignment box. At
the moment, the position to align *to* is implicitly derived from the
objects. For instance, when aligning to the left, the left edge of the
leftmost object is taken as the position, so you can only left align a
group of objects to the leftmost one, not to, say, to the second one
from the left. And who, when doing centre alignment, has never
wondered which of the objects is going to move and which one is going
to remain at its position? So, in many cases you have to move objects
around before aligning to make sure that the one you want to stay
remains at its position. With the "reference object" approach you
could mark the one you want to stay fixed as the reference object,
select all the others and enable an "Align with reference object"
option in the alignment box.
Martin
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