[haiku] Re: Dial widget
- From: PulkoMandy <pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 11:10:11 +0200
A positive point for circular knob controls is screen space vs control
accuracy. I think that's also a main reason why they are popular in audio
software, besides the "model physical interfaces" thing. Audio tools often
have lots of parameters to control. If you add dozens of sliders, the
window gets very big and/or crowded. If you make the sliders smaller to get
in more things, you lose accuracy.
Knobs in audio software are usually implemented like the volume knob in
SoundPlay: when you click on it, you control its value by moving the cursor
linearly. (There has been software out there with knobs that actually
require you to move the mouse pointer circular to change them, but that's
indeed quite bad IMO ;-)
So the knob is more used like an "invisible slider": you still get the
accuracy of a large mouse movement range, you can still see the current
value immediately, but it doesn't take up lots of space.
See e.g. this screenshot:
http://media.soundonsound.com/sos/sep04/images/live1arrangeview.l.jpg
Each of the circular things in the lower part is such a knob control.
Imagine how crowded the UI would look if each one would have to be a
large-enough slider. Oh, and the UI style is the opposite of skeuomorph ;-)
But this is somehow unintuitive (unless you are used to this kind of
software), which is why I'm not convinced it should be part of the standard
controls in Haiku (that does not prevent having an implementation available
somewhere else for this kind of audio tools).
There are also other possible alternatives for this, I can think of at
least:
- Using our BSpinner widget, possibly extended with a similar "drag to
edit" mode (or allowing use of the mouse wheel to change values)
- Using a (small) BOptionPopUp with a (larger) slider inside the pop up menu
I still think none of these should be part of the standard control set
provided with Haiku. Or if we do, there should be strong warnings in the
HIG to not use them unless there is a good reason for doing so (such as
having to fit lots of settings in a restricted case).
--
Adrien Destugues / PulkoMandy
http://pulkomandy.tk
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