Hi interested,
A lot of interesting ideas! Let' see what came in...
I will comment many of the previous posts in one mail, so please scroll
down to see if Yours were commented...
Leonard Mada wrote:
> method I: solid/ dashed border
> - advantage: should be easy to implement, as it is needed only to put a
> border/ change the existing border of the objects/shapes.
CON: With non-dashed, the current line style (if hairline) will not be
WYSIWIG -> hard to change
CON: When hairline, hard to see at all (if not at least animated)
That's why i extended the line width and pained it transparent.
> method II: drop border/ shadow
> - relatively easy to implement; not always as clearly what is selected
CON: Not easy at all. The paint hierarchy (the order of paint) would
need to be changed, splitted in paints for selected/not selected. The
shadow creation would be easy, but objects already may have a shadow.
> method III: arrows to selected objects; more complex
> - one can more easily distinguish the boundaries of the objects because
> they are NOT overlapped by borders or ghosted
PRO: Maybe a good way to do something with the whole selection, e.g.
grab the point where all the arrows emerge and drag. There may be more
useful.
CON: There may be technical paintings which already have a lot of
arrows, not good to distinguish
CON: The arrow head is intended to point to the center of the selected
object. Think about a shape in the form of a big "C" or "O" -> pointing
to something completely different. Finding a good point for the arrow
head will be hard (some KI ? :-))
Jörg Wartenberg wrote:
> Nice playground!
Thanks :-)
> What do you think about this example, with my system selection color and
> 50% transparency. I think it helps with overlapping selections:
PRO: With overlapping (i removed it by purpose) i agree, it gets even
more distinguishable.
CON: With many objects, transparent paints will get more and more
unclear. Normally, there are 256 mixture steps maximum.
Leonard Mada wrote:
> 1.1 SPECIALIZATION of BORDERS:
> - see the 3D effect I created (in my previous post)
> - DO NOT draw a complete border, BUT ONLY 40-70% of the border
Do You talk about transparence or dashed? I already offered those.
> - ADV: better visualisation of border area, relatively easy to implement
> - DIS: it may be difficult to recognize some objects as beeing selected
> or not (see my example - NOT easy to see, BUT for non-overlapping
> objects should work fine)
>
> 2. FILL: change fill colour; there are various flavours, eg.
I would generally not change object props at all, may it be line or fill
style or something else. I think we should agree in keeping the object
visualisation as it is, keeping WYSIWIG. Let's look at the selection as
extension of that visualisation -> Overlay.
So i would prefer to 'Overlay' with something transparent or 'checkered'
or so where the WYSIWIG object shines through.
> 3. SELECTION ARROWS: my preferred method
> - DIS: more difficult to implement
> 3.1 SPECIALISATION:
> - allow users to change position of CENTER => adjust arrows
> automatically => very good visualisation of selected objects
See my comments above. I do not think it's a very good visualisation in
all cases.
> 4. SELECTION MASK (ala Photoshop)
> - in PS you can click the selection mask, then all selected objects get
> filled
> - IF you now disable the RGB channels (all 3), the selection is white
> AND the non-selection is black (or opposite, I don't remember it anymore)
> - useful for some more complex configurations
> - DIS: still fails for overlapping objects
I would not offer the user another kind of view, the
selection-mask-view. There are already enough views, for many users OOo
still looks complex. We putted (and put) a lot of work to make things
easier, so i dont think there is demand for a special view for working
with the selection
Leonard Mada wrote:
> 1. TOUGH TEST CASE
> =================
> I have designed a new test case, a *very tough* one.
> What will happen if one object is *hidden* by an *overlapping object*?
In my example using the fatted, transparent outlines, it would work. All
those outlines are painted as overlay over the visualized objects, so
You would have a fat outline for covered objects, too. You will know
there are some completely covered objects in the selection.
> Using my method with arrows: allocate a *different color* to the arrow
> pointing the hidden object, to show that *NOT* the foreground object is
> selected, BUT one hidden behind the visible object.
Still the arrow is pointing to another object. With the whole arrow
idea, the association between the arrow and the object is not direct
enough for me. The arrow is referencing only one point of the selected
object. That point is hard to define. Not only "O", "C" shaped objects
(no filling at their center), but also unfilled objects (ellipse
outline). Still point to the center? The arrow head may point to an
object behind the ellipse, there is no visual clue that the arrow
references the ellipse outline.
Think about a med-sized obejct covered partially by many others, so that
only the top.left corner is visible. Intuitively,the arrow head has to
point there, not the center. This is hard to calculate, You have to take
all visible objects in the range and their order into account to
calculate a good reference point.
> - the arrows should be pointed toward the center of the visible surface
> of selected objects
> - IF this surface is very small (or non-existing) => point toward the
> actual center AND use a different colour
As written above, there are more exceptions.
> 2. REVERSE MASK
> ===============
>
> Why do not draw an overlay on all objects that are *NOT* selected?
> (instead of those selected)
> This way the user has a perfect view of the selection: both size and
> colours are accurately visualised.
Well, we do something similar when a group is entered (did You try?).
Problem here is that by default (nothing selected), all objects would be
'ghosted' initially -> we are even more away from WYSIWIG than before.
> Hope you find these ideas intresting.
Yes! Let's go on, maybe completely new ideas emerge which give good,
never-seen methods which will make selection handling more easy for the
normal user than ever!
--
Greetings, Armin Le Grand
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