[leveller] Folding views into documents
- From: Ray Gardener <rayg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: leveller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 22:19:05 -0700
Hi everyone,
One thing that's always been cumbersome is that view information (see
the list below) is stored in .LVW files apart from the document's .TER
file. This was done so that if more than one window on a document was
opened, one could have different view types (different colormaps in each
window, or one textured and the other plain, one with water and one
without, etc. etc.). It's been like this since day one, and, well... it
just seemed like a good idea at the time.
If no one really needs this functionality, then in the interests of
simplifying Leveller (and also increasing its robustness) I'd like to
just have a 1:1 doc-view system (you can still open multiple windows for
a document, but they would show the same view style in each). All the
properties of a view would become document attributes, and LVW files
would either go away or be used to exchange those attributes between
documents or enable rapid switching of a heightfield's appearance (so
the convenience of alternate viewstyles isn't necessarily lost).
The benefit is that when you save a document, all the view parameters
get saved as well. When you open a doc, all those settings would be
applied automatically.
The downside is that if you richly texture a terrain, and then want an
untextured view style with which to edit, you'd have to switch the
texture off during the edit instead of just being able to maintain a
second "for editing" window.
This is a simple enough change work-wise that, if desired, can make it
into Leveller 2.5. And 2.5's document format is a different version
already anyway (in for a penny, in for a pound).
This is what's currently stored in a view file:
Normal rendition style
Main camera
Colormap
Lightsource position and visibility
Reference shapes
Heightfield texture
Texture transparency
Water level, water texture, and transparency
Selmask visibility in scene
Map zoom level
Map pan (scroll) offset
UV geometry mapping (sphere, conic, etc.)
Marker global visibility toggle
Ray
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