Hi All,
Thanks for clarifying and sharing your thoughts about this.
I should take more time before sending out the first mail. I hope it is not
too late:
I didn't intend to JUST remove any UI elements. When I show synfig to my
students (adobe photoshop/illustrator advanced users), the are a lot of
feedback/concerns regarding UI, the toolbox is one of them:
a) File buttons in toolbox is really weird.
b) The defaults widgets layout is mess and is hard to understand at the
first sight, Opacity particularly. The most of my students complain that it
seems like a slider to change the Option above it (Layer Blender Method),
and some of them guessing it can adjust the Gradient setting bellow.
When I explain them, those two widgets are used to change Opacity and
Blender Method, then almost all of them complain why layer blend method and
opacity options are exposed on toolbox. In their world, when s/he would
like to draw an element with other opacity value than 1, s/he use a color
with alpha in a non-zero value. and they also have concerns about other UI
things but it is another topic.
Based on my experience, I never use Blend Method and Opacity. But yes, I
did see some demo from internet showing synfig studio users were using
those widgets during creating animation. So I raised this topic and would
like to get feedback from you. Thanks you all and now I can get more clear
idea.
We also should notice that these widgets' width. It will be a big impact to
implement a more flexible toolbox. As we can see, Layer Blend Method and
Interpolation widgets are quite long(width) and take more than 4 buttons'
width. I noticed the current toolbx "wastes" a lot of screen space due to 5
buttons each row design. My plan is to implement a auto re-sizing toolbox
as Gimp does. The outline/fill colors and gradient widgets will be
implemented as 2 button size's widget [1]. But for Layer Blend and Opacity
widgets, It will become useless if they are also in 2 buttons size. So my
conclusion is:
Remove them from toolbox, and place them in global toolbar (main window
toolbar) or in Tool Option Panel.
If they are going to be placed in global toolbar, then they will behave the
same as they do in toolbox, if they are going to be placed in Tool Options
Panel, then they will be available only while those tools such as geometry
tools being selected.
Regarding Simplified / Advanced UI options, My idea is to implement a
customizable toolbar/toolbox system, User can define which avaliable
tools(buttons) be exposed on each toolbox/toolbar( global toolbar, local
toolbars, like layer panel toolbar, history panel toolbar etc). And this
kind of ability should be a part of workspace system. I mean, Workspace
system is not only regarding windows position, size, but also taking care
the UI elements on windows. And then user can decide if Opacity and other
widgets should be exposed on his/her Synfig Studio.
[1] my toolbox/toolbar cleanup branch
https://github.com/jcome/synfig/tree/toolbox-toolbar
Cheers!
~ yu
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