transform UI questions

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Wednesday 18 May 2005 16:03, Casper Boemann wrote:
> ----- 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
>

Ah, okay -- I just cannot do much because the handles coincide with the 
view borders.

> > > - 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.

But why doesn't anything change when I release the mouse button? I see no 
changes, except for a selection mask that shows that the entire area is 
deselected.

> > 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.

Well, Photoshop only crops when you select the crop command in the menu, as 
far as I can tell, and the Gimp has a crop button in the tool properties 
dialog. We need that dialog anyway in the end, in order to show the new 
dimensions and other data about the transform -- the same with transform for 
the Gimp. The transform is previewed, but only carried out on pressing the 
transform button, not on tool change. Of course, we haven't got the 
wherewithal to do actual previews on the main image window pixmap, which is a 
pity, because I think that without those getting interactive speeds with the 
transform tool is going to be really hard.

My point is: a tool change is not a commit action.

> 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.

True, and the same goes for the LWN reviewer... So you have got a point, but 
on the other hand, I have never grasped what was needed to actually make the
transform tool work. I want something visible that tells me that what I want
to be done, is going to be done explicitly.

> > 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 strive 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.

But if you don't press the button and select another tool, then there is no 
action done, and no undo history. Or at least, there should be none.

> 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.

Hm. That would make it impossible to do a complex transform (say, a move 
and a shear) from the original data, isn't it? I want to be able to nudge
the transformation in a few ways, having the image transformed every time from 
the original to the current state of the transformation -- and then when I'm
satisfied have it done definitively and then go on with a new transform.

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt 
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi
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