rectangle tools
This discussion is connected to the gimp-developer-list.gnome.org mailing list which is provided by the GIMP developers and not related to gimpusers.com.
This is a read-only list on gimpusers.com so this discussion thread is read-only, too.
| rectangle tools | William Skaggs | 24 Feb 19:23 |
| rectangle tools | Jakub Steiner | 25 Feb 01:45 |
| rectangle tools | Jakub Steiner | 25 Feb 01:57 |
| rectangle tools | Raphaël Quinet | 25 Feb 11:43 |
| rectangle tools | shaneyfelt@juno.com | 26 Feb 08:20 |
| rectangle tools | Raphaël Quinet | 01 Mar 18:11 |
| rectangle tools | shaneyfelt@juno.com | 02 Mar 00:44 |
rectangle tools
Thanks to Dave, Joao, Michael, Sven, and others for feedback on the tentative new rectangle select tool I recently put in cvs. I would like now to consider where to go from here.
As Sven has said, it is desirable to make things simple and consistent by forming a base GimpRectangleTool from which several specific tools are derived, including Rectangle Select, Crop, Rectangle Shape, Ellipse Select, Ellipse Shape, and perhaps others such as Rounded Rectangle, Oval, etc. All of these could have a very similar ui, and the main question is what it would look like, and the biggest part of that question is whether there should be a dialog.
I think everybody agrees on two things: (1) there needs to be a way to enter information numerically, and (2) *if* there is a dialog, then it should be optional whether to show it. These constraints basically reduce the possibilities to two:
A) Use a dialog similar in general appearance to the Crop Tool dialog, and allow the user either by checking a Tool Option or by pressing a modifier key to enable/disable showing the dialog. Of course the actual contents of the dialog are subject to improvement.
B) Use the Tool Options as the place where information is entered, and don't have a dialog at all.
It is of course possible that there are other approaches that haven't occurred to me.
Personally, of the two, I favor A, for a couple of reasons.
First, the Tool Options dialog is not intended to be something that the user moves around, so using it will often involve a lot of eye travel back and forth between the controls and the image, which violates a major principle of ui design.
Second, the Tool Options were never intended to be used for active control of a tool -- they were intended as a place to store static information whose usefulness persists over time. At the level of source code, the Tool Options don't even know what tool they belong to. So, using the Options to control the tool would involve a significant change in philosophy.
In any case, if the dialog question were resolved, I think it would be possible for me to begin abstracting out code for the basic Rectangle Tool, so it would be nice to work this out.
Best,
-- Bill
______________ ______________ ______________ ______________
Sent via the CNPRC Email system at primate.ucdavis.edu
rectangle tools
On Thu, 2005-02-24 at 10:23 -0800, William Skaggs wrote:
A) Use a dialog similar in general appearance to the Crop Tool dialog, and allow the user either by checking a Tool Option or by pressing a modifier key to enable/disable showing the dialog. Of course the actual contents of the dialog are subject to improvement.
Personally, of the two, I favor A
Let me do a quick workflow, erm, "analysis". :) Feel free to ignore.
Popup window
------------
1) I want to do interactive select. If I have the popup window option
selected it is quite disturbing as it steals focus and gets in the way
between me and my canvas. If it's off, I can work straight away.
2) I want to be precise and enter the dimensions. I have to click on the canvas to bring up the dialog and enter the numerical size. If I eventually want to move the selection around interactively after typing in dimensions, which I do quite often to fine tune the soon-to-be crop, I have to move the dialog away first.
If the tool option for the dialog is off, I have to toggle it on first and then continue as outlined above.
Tool options
------------
1) If I want to work interactively, Nothing gets in the way.
2) The tool option dock is something I have open all the time. If I need to enter precise dimensions I have to move away from the canvas. Additional interactive tweaks mean moving the pointer back to canvas.
So if I had just the two options, I would favor B actually.
But the above comes from the fact I use the interactive mode a lot more than the numerical one. Interactive interface along with snapping to grid and enough visual feedback about the position and dimensions (statusbar) can get faster results than entering numbers. It would perhaps be good to enhance the grid functionality to take actual zoom ratio into consideration to make it even more useful. For more information about view-dependent snapping, see this Inkscape thread - http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=6533898&forum_id=37513
cheers
rectangle tools
On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 01:45 +0100, Jakub Steiner wrote:
If the tool option for the dialog is off, I have to toggle it on first and then continue as outlined above.
Sorry to reply to myself. One possible change would be to replace the dialog toggle check-box in the tool options with a button that would call a dialog. After typing in the numbers, you'd dismiss it with an enter and be done with it.
Another way to call this dialog could be a double-click on the canvas with the tool active.
cheers
rectangle tools
On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 10:23:08 -0800, "William Skaggs" wrote:
A) Use a dialog similar in general appearance to the Crop Tool dialog, and allow the user either by checking a Tool Option or by pressing a modifier key to enable/disable showing the dialog. Of course the actual contents of the dialog are subject to improvement.
B) Use the Tool Options as the place where information is entered, and don't have a dialog at all.
It is of course possible that there are other approaches that haven't occurred to me.
Here is one that you haven't mentioned:
C) Use the status bar for displaying and modifying the position and size of the selection.
Instead of displaying a simple text label with the size of the selected area, the status bar could automatically replace this text by two (width, height) or four (x, y, width, height) entry boxes when the user starts selecting something. The value in these boxes would change while the user is dragging the rectangle and modifying the selection interactively but it would also be possible to edit the values directly in the status bar.
Note that these entry boxes would only need to be there while a selection is being modified (i.e., after the first click and drag). They do not have to be there all the time while a selection tool is active, so the status bar can still be used to display some other useful information as text when the user is not currently editing a selection. This also means that the box and drop-down list with the zoom ratios can be temporarily replaced in order to gain more space in the status bar for these new entry boxes.
In addition, a small icon or expander button could be added to the status bar while such a tool is in use; clicking it would pop up a dialog box containing more options. There are always more options that could fit in the status bar, such as constraining the selection to a fixed aspect ratio, etc. A little button in a corner of the status bar would provide a convenient way to display this dialog with advanced options only when needed.
Personally, of the two, I favor A, for a couple of reasons.
If C is not accepted, then I favor B. Although you are right that the Tool Options were not intended to be used for active control of a tool, I think that the disadvantages of having a window that gets in the way outweight its advantages. By the way, the status bar is part of the image window so unlike the additional dialog or even the Tool Options, it will never get in the way of the interactive selection.
I think that option C would be the most user-friendly: the important information is visible without getting in the way, the interface is easy to understand, and there is no need to remember special key combinations for showing/hiding the dialog with extra options. The disadvantages of option C are that it would require more coding due to the modifications of the status bar and it would not be possible to display all entry boxes if the image window is too narrow. On the other hand, it would be easy for the user to make the window wider whenever necessary.
-Raphaël
P.S.: I hope to see some of you at FOSDEM on Saturday and Sunday in Brussels. As I already mentioned on IRC in #gimp, I'll try to offer some good Belgian beers to any GIMPers who come and say hello.
rectangle tools
]> A) Use a dialog ...
Dialog boxes that get in the way are annoying (like popup ads).
]> B) Use the Tool Options ...
Good choice. People already look there for similar control.
]C) Use the status bar...(x, y, width, height) entry boxes... ]...A little button in a corner of the status bar ...
Tool Options would be more consistent than the status bar, as is evidenced by the type of work required to modify the status bar. Most arguments for C are also arguments for B.
D) If you want a button like option C to activate a dialog, it could go in the Tool Options instead of the status bar.
This is preferable to A and C, but I prefer B over all. If you must hide some options you can make them collapsable, but I advise against having these options collapsed by default.
I vote for B, D, C (in that order).
_-T
____________________
rectangle tools
On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 07:20:29 GMT, "shaneyfelt@juno.com" wrote:
]> A) Use a dialog ...
Dialog boxes that get in the way are annoying (like popup ads).
]> B) Use the Tool Options ...
Good choice. People already look there for similar control.
]C) Use the status bar...(x, y, width, height) entry boxes... ]...A little button in a corner of the status bar ...
Tool Options would be more consistent than the status bar, as is evidenced by the type of work required to modify the status bar. Most arguments for C are also arguments for B.
Not really. There are some differences: for example, the controls in the status bar are more likely to be visible when you want to use them (*) because they would be part of the image window and would not be in a separate window that could be partially hidden by the image window (or vice-versa). Also, they do not take space in the Tool Options dialog box when they are not needed, so this makes the list of options smaller (easier to understand for the user, no need to scroll if you have a small screen, no need to collapse some options and hide them with an expander).
I like the idea that the user would only see the controls and options that make sense for the current task: this simplifies the interface and makes it easier to learn. So the idea with (C) is that when you switch to a selection tool, you get the general options in the Tool Options tab and nothing special in the status bar (except maybe for some nice help text like for the Path tool). As soon as you start creating a selection, then you automatically see the controls allowing you to set precisely the position and size of the selection. Note that these controls appear where you are currently seeing the position of the pointer and other information, so this will look familiar. Also, the coordinates in these entry boxes are updated automatically when you drag the selection, which is something that would be a bit more unusual to have in the Tool Options tab (IMHO).
I think that it would be nice to have such a solution for the selection tools, the crop tool and all transform tools.
D) If you want a button like option C to activate a dialog, it could go in the Tool Options instead of the status bar.
The idea about the little button in a corner of the status bar was just in case we need more space for the controls that could not fit in the status bar. But if all we need is some space for four entry boxes and maybe one toggle for the constraints, then I am not sure that we need extra space so this button may not be necessary.
-Raphaël
(*) Always visible as long as the status bar is visible. One could hide the status bar, but one could also hide the Tool Options.
rectangle tools
]> ]> A) Use a dialog ... annoying (like popup ads).
]>
]> ]> B) Use the Tool Options ... Good choice.
]>
]> ]C) Use the status bar...(x, y, width, height) entry boxes...
]> ]...A little button in a corner of the status bar ...
]>
]> Tool Options would be more consistent
]Not really...likely to be visible...space in the Tool Options...
]
]
]I like the idea that the user would only see the controls and
]options that make sense for the current task...
]
]Also, the coordinates in these entry boxes are updated automatically
]when you drag the selection, which is something that would be a bit
]more unusual to have in the Tool Options tab (IMHO).
There are tools where the controls in the Tool Options box change on their own (mode buttons for all of the selection tools change state as you work with the tool), so automatic updating of controls there wouldn't be entirely new.
]I think that it would be nice to have such a solution for the ]selection tools, the crop tool and all transform tools.
I don't really mind option C. (I'm only pointing out some observations) If we do use option C, would it be possible to locate both the coordinates and the size in the area to the left of the unit-selection instead of where status messages belong?
| [100],[100] | [px] | [100%] | 4.2 MB selection | | [420]x[300] |
vs.
| [100],[100] | [px] | [100%] | Selection: [50]x[200] |
(The status line seems to be tall enough for 2 boxes, since the drop-down boxes take up that much space.)
This would help keep the status message area on the right of these numbers available for status messages, with a consistent size and usage. Careful attention to details like these could make option C a good choice.
_-T
____________________
