transform UI questions

[Casper Boemann]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Boudewijn Rempt" <boud at valdyas.org>
> > the order of typical work is:
> >
> > - select
>
> Or not -- I intuitively try to use the transform tool to transform the
entire
> layer quite often.
Yeah well - I treat that as one big selection so the effect is the same

> > - choose transform tool
> > - drag/rotate/whatever
> > - drag/rotate/whatever
> > - drag/rotate/whatever
> > - drag/rotate/whatever
>
> Here I get horribly confused, because I expect the transform to happen
> on mouse-up, not on moving to another tool. That's because I tend to
> do two or three transformations, and I want to see what I have done
in-between.

It does happen on mouse up. After every mouse-up the the transformation is
done so that you can see what you have done-in-between.

> I want a "transform" button in the option panel of the transform tool,
just
> as we have with crop. It's the same kind of action, so the ui should be
the
> same. And just to make sure, both commands should be in the menu, too.

Well from a bug report and my own experience as well, this is very
unintuitive.

I had to ask you how to crop, and the other user didn't get it either. He
even filed a bugreport suggesting cropping on right mouse button.

> I prefer the button approach, because that way you can choose when to
apply
> the refined transform. The crop tool works the same way -- and we should
strife
> for internal consistency. And for a minumum of dependency on "the user can
> undo anyway" since that approach makes working with the history slider
> (once we have it -- I need to hack KOffice libs for that) harder.

??? Even when pressing a button it still needs to be undoable.

We are only talking on how to "commit" since the transformation is done on
every mouse-up

"commit" simply means adding to undobuffer and allowing the user to do the
next thing.

> Anyway, another reason for a button is that it's very counter intuititive
to
> have to select another tool between two explicit transforms.

well, if it's the same area you're transforming then you don't have start a
"new" transform.

And if its another area then you need to use the select tools anyway, so it
feels naturally to commit on tool change.

> > Now if those intermediate steps are not final steps, should they be
added to
> > the undo history? It would be kind of cool being able to undo the
> > intermediate steps, but the fact that they are not true steps, makes it
a
> > difficult task to implement (that shouldn't hold us back though).
>
> No, that would be confusing to the user.
Ok, no undo of intermediate steps

best regards / venlig hilsen
Casper Boemann