[Kde-games-devel] Palapeli: a belated review

[Matthew Woehlke]

@Stefan: did you see my mail on the slicer changes? I never heard back...

Ian Wadham wrote:
> Firstly, picking up pieces is a bit uncertain, especially when they
> are small.  I think the hand thingy is supposed to cover the piece
> (as in grabbing a door handle), but for a long time I was trying to
> use the tips of the fingers (which is more intuitive for picking up
> or moving a jigsaw puzzle piece).  Then, if the hand closes, I think
> you have actually missed when you may think you have got it.
> Worst is that if you miss and the view contains only part of the
> table, the whole view shifts and you lose sight of the piece you
> were trying to pick up.
> 
> I see that the RMB now moves the view, so I would suggest
> removing the LMB move of the view, maybe with a popup to say
> to use the RMB.  Also I would suggest a  more "positive" mouse
> pointer than the hand.

I've been meaning to mention this also since I noticed the RMB panning. 
Yes, please remove LMB moving the view. (Also, THANK YOU for RMB moving, 
it is so nice to be able to combine moving a piece with moving the view; 
very useful for moving a piece a long distance without having to do it 
at small zoom!)

Also I have to agree with Ian, either there is something off about the 
hotspot for dragging pieces or it is too sensitive. If there is a way to 
make this more forgiving, e.g. grab closest piece within so many pixels, 
even if you are not actually on the piece, I think that would be a big help.

> Using the mouse wheel to magnify the view quickly is excellent,
> but please could the view remain centred on the mouse-pointer,
> so that the area you are working in remains visible, even when
> you are working near the edges of the table?

I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand it is convenient to not have 
zooming make the view jump around. But it also means... you cannot move 
the view around with zooming. Also, center-on-mouse seems to be the more 
intuitive behavior. (Probably because that is what Inkscape and Google 
Maps do.)

Actually... one comment here. It's not unusual for me to want the wheel 
to scroll, and I think this will be a bigger issue with touchpads and 
fancier mice that have also a horizontal wheel. Inkscape has an easy 
solution, the wheel itself doesn't zoom, but wheel plus a modifier 
(usually ctrl). Plus ctrl-wheel for zoom is fairly standard (used in 
most web browsers, besides aforementioned inkscape).

> Several people have suggested a multi-piece pickup and that
> might be the single greatest way to improve the GUI. 

+100 :-D

> With the
> larger 1000 piece puzzle I find myself continually searching for
> and picking up pieces with some common characteristic, such
> as timbers for the house in the center of the scene, edge pieces
> for the left side or even pieces with the same color and similar
> shapes (e.g. tabs at top and bottom, sockets at left and right).

+100 again :-D

I think I mentioned this somewhere, the idea of picking up a stack of 
pieces (pick up one at a time, hold in a stack in your hand) and then 
putting them down somewhere close together. I still think the baskets 
idea is great, but I would give this highest priority. Right now puzzles 
with many pieces (1000+ certainly, but even 200+ to an extent) are 
difficult to play for exactly this reason

> So I would like to suggest a "magnet" mode for the mouse.  When
> the magnet is on, every piece you click on sticks to the mouse and
> is carried along with it.  When the magnet turns off, the pieces are
> dropped wherever the mouse then is.  As the pieces are dropped,
> they are spread out into a small rectangular array in much the same
> excellent way as when the puzzle is started.

Well. That sounds oddly familiar ;-). Except the use of "magnet". I 
still think of it as picking up a bunch of pieces and making a stack in 
your hand.

> There might be various
> ways to turn magnet mode on or off.  The Ctrl key is an obvious
> choice, but maybe there are better ways.  It would be up to the user,
> of course, to make sure there was space where the pieces are
> dropped.  If not, he/she would only make that mess once ...

My thinking was to have a small side bar. This would hold the "baskets", 
and also a pop-up preview of the finished puzzle (i.e. "the box lid"). 
But most importantly it would show a preview somehow of the pieces in 
your hand.

My thinking was, use LMB+drag as now. If you ctrl-click, piece moves to 
your hand. If you click empty space, top piece in your hand is placed 
there. (Maybe use shift-click on empty space to drop pile.) This lets 
you lay out pieces in neat rows (e.g. I often lay out a row of pieces 
along an edge of a puzzle). Basically, same as Ian's idea except for how 
you put pieces down again.

> Maybe someone asked for this already, but could we have a readily
> accessible view of the picture we are aiming for?  At present, I open
> one in Gwenview, but have to keep shuffling windows.

Having multiple monitors is great :-). Palapeli on the main one, 
gwenview on a secondary... (otherwise I am doing the exact same thing).

I think I mentioned this, but the "box top" should be a separate window 
for exactly this reason, so I can park it on a second monitor.

> My suggestion is to have a "magnifying glass" mode for the
> mouse pointer (using the M key perhaps?), so you see a magnified
> image of the piece under the pointer and maybe also the edges of
> neighboring pieces.  Magnet and magnifier combined could be
> a fast way to find and collect related pieces.

That's an interesting idea; something else that could go in the sidebar 
area. Hmm... I think both sidebar and box top should be docking windows; 
that way you can park them if you have one monitor (or just want them on 
the same monitor), or pull them off if you have multiple monitors.

Personally I haven't needed it, and Ian notes kmag as a sort-of 
workaround. So probably a .1 feature rather than .0. Likewise box top 
mode (since you can use gwenview as a workaround). I'm really thinking 
that 'piece stacks'/'magnet mode' should be .0 though... it would be 
great for .0 to be usable with 1000+ piece puzzles!

> Just a few more minor points:
>   - Can we change the properties of a puzzle in My Library?  I gave
>     one of my puzzles the wrong name ...

@Ian: well you can always edit the rc directly ;-). But being able to do 
it in UI wouldn't be a bad thing, I think.

>   - Could the tab be called "My Collection"?  "Library" is for books and
>     programs I would say.

+1

>   - How do you get access to the example puzzles?

@Ian: not sure what you mean? (I can probably answer this if Stefan is 
slow on mail, if I understood the question...)

>   - Could the minimum size be 2x2?  I'd like to get my 3-year old
>     grandson started on Palapeli ...

@Ian: I'd guess the slicer doesn't break, why don't you propose a patch? ;-)

>   - Long-term we may need ways to be not so obvious when a fit occurs
>     and to tear a piece loose if it is in the wrong place.  I've seen puzzles
>     with that level of difficulty ...

Hmm... hadn't thought of this. Actually I /have/ sometimes wanted the 
ability to tear pieces apart again. It's not unusual for me to take, 
say, a long section of edge, see if it fits, then take it off again to 
work on apart from the rest of the puzzle. (Mostly because having to 
clear out space from the middle of the puzzle can be inconvenient. A 
good example would be check if an edge goes with the corner, then pull 
it away again to work on just that edge.)

>   - Talking about real-estate, do we really need the scroll bars, progress
>     bar and gadgets at bottom right.  I would rather be able to see more
>     pieces ... and it is not hard to estimate jigsaw puzzle progress visually.

Personally I don't think I would want to drop the scroll bars. IMO that 
would make it harder to see where the edges of the puzzle are.

However if we add the sidebar, a PS-style navigator could solve this. 
Basically you have a thumbnail of the entire table with a rectangle 
showing the current view. This might even be better than

I like the progress bar! :-) But it also could fit on the side bar 
instead of taking up the entire width of the window.

In the shorter term, what about combining the bottom scroll bar, 
progress bar, and zoom widget?

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
-- 
Patent litigation: last resort of companies whose business model has failed.