Tools

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Wednesday 05 November 2003 01:54, Patrick Julien wrote:
> > In this scenario, why would the view even need to know which is the
> > current tool?
>
> However, I don't advocate neither of these since they don't buy us
> anything, at least, nothing obvious that I'm seeing except more code.

I see... As long it's possible to have a set of current tools, one of which is 
associated with the current X cursor -- but each of them associated with an X 
pointer.

> Hmm, well, when you select a color, you're actually selecting one for the
> entire application, not just a tool.  I think the alternative could really
> get confusing.  You would get presented with a dialog for each tool
> (probably different instances of the same dialog) to actually select a
> color.  Add to that the dialogs should be modeless, you could be plowing
> tru you windows just to find the right color selector.

No, I'm more thinking like the way you work with real paint or ink; there's 
one ink well, palette or however you'd like to visualize it (I'd prefer a 
palette where you can mix colours by using the tool to mix amounts of colour, 
as done in http://www.cs.unc.edu/~geom/DAB/). So there's one source of 
colour; when you touch a color with your tool, that becomes the color of that 
tool. No need to find the dialog with settings for that tool, just the 
palette.

>
> No, but your shuffled paper probably has different content.  I think your
> analogy holds if you have multiple instances of the same application open.
> However, this is really multiple views of the same document, I just think
> it's limiting to have all your views be identical.  What's the point of
> multiple views otherwise?
>

I thought I could have different images in different windows? But the point of 
having different views is different -- well, views. Zooms, channels, current 
layers. 

I've never been able to really make the transition from real paint, ink, 
pencils, paper or board, to paint applications. Apps tend to confuse me 
because they don't treat a tool or a medium as as real an entity as the 
image, but as abstractions derived from the internal structure of the 
application. When you paint, your brush has state; it holds a certain amount 
of a certain paint. Which paint your brush holds is independent of which 
image you work on, or which part of the image you work on.

Not that I'm already able to figure out how to model that; but I've ordered 
some relevant books from the library :-).

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org/index2.html
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