select all and deselect

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Saturday 19 May 2007, Casper Boemann wrote:
> we have another usabliity problem regarding selections
>
> The effect of "select all" and "deselect" is exactly the same from users
> perspective.
>
> Sure from a programming pespective it's different because one has a
> selection mask attached and the other hasn't, but is this a concern of the
> user?
>
> Why would a user want to select all? 

Mostly, I guess, because they have learned a workflow where you first 
select-all and the de-select some areas, instead of selecting the areas you 
don't want and then inverting the selection. Besides, people are plain used to 
select-all -- all applications have it.

> It only slows down krita to have a 
> mask present. Sure we disable cut and copy when no mask is present but that
> is not nessesary.

No, but it is consistent with the way all other applications (not just raster 
image apps) work. That has been a consideration, too. Making the del key 
remove all of the contents of the current layer when the user has done 
nothing to select those pixels may be surprising. Of course, you could argue 
that selecting the layer in the layerbox constitutes a selection...

> Our problems stems from the fact that when there is no selection we
> suddenly decide that all is writable and we use the image as the "current
> selection".
>
> There is a difference after all: when selecting a rect after having done
> select all it doesn't make a difference because it's just added. but if
> done when there is no selection it becomes the selection.
>
> This is confusing, and I remember several users asking a new selection to
> default replace the current selection. Just as other image apps do.

Yeah, well, I don't care too much about that. Other paint apps default to 
replace because they start out with select all. They probably had the same 
discussion we're having and have taken the easy way out. I want a good 
solution, not a common one, and I think we can find a solution other apps 
will copy from us.

Besides, other paint apps too often suck in their handling of selections. For 
instance, Photoshop moves the selection if you click-draw with a selection 
tool inside the selection. That means that after select-all click-dragging 
with the rectangular selection tool doesn't replace the current selection, 
but moves it. I cannot imagine anyone actually wanting that.

> I must say I like our abillity to paint a selection, but it gives us
> problems with respect to select all / deselect.
>
> I propose that:
>
> - All select tools default to replace the selection

I was a bit surprised that we didn't have "replace" as an option in the 
selection tools option widget combobox, only "add" and "subtract" -- we 
should add it. And Krita should remember the last chosen option and default 
to that in the current and all new sessions. (Or we could have a preference 
option in the settings dialog, but I think it's better to just remember the 
last chosen preference.) I don't think we can do away with the combobox and 
rely on shortcuts or ctrl-alt-shift modifiers. Personally, I'm not going to 
give up my favourite way of working here, so there must be a way to 
have "add" as default, too.

> - They have a short cut to add or subtract

Gimp uses:

click-drag: replace
ctrl+click-drag: subtract
shift+click-draw: add

Still, that completely doesn't work for me.

> - We have a selection paint mode, or rather that you can choose a selection
> as the current paint device

Selection paint mode should be active when a selection (either the global one 
or one belonging to a layer) is selected in the layer box. Then you can use 
all tools on the selection paint device. We already did agree to do away with 
the special selection brush and eraser tools, in favour of this 
scheme, didn't we?

> - That Deselect is removed from the menu
> - That Select All actually removes the selection mask until needed, but
> otherwise the effect should be like you have selected the enitre image.

I'm still not sure, not even after a hard night turning and tossing in bed 
while pondering this problem, that that's going to work out in the end.

> - Cut and copy should be available when there is no selection mask

Yes.

> - Since Deselect is gone so should Reselect

I like Cyrille's idea of having a separate docker to save selection 
masks in. Reselect is only a special case of undo, after all.

Anyway... To cut short a long mail: I'm not sure we've nailed the issue yet. I 
think I can agree on having having the no-selection==select all, both for 
image and layer, that's easiest to code and easy to use. I'm not sure how to 
visualize that for the gui, though. I'm also not sure what the default 
behaviour of tools should be. 

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt 
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kimageshop/attachments/20070521/0f466121/attachment.pgp