Re: Rotation GUI

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, avp@cad.ru wrote:

> Lars Clausen пишет:
> > On 26 Aug 2003, MÃ¥rten Svantesson wrote:
> >
> >>Lars Clausen <lrclause@cs.uiuc.edu> writes:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Yeah, rotation is one of our weak (read: non-existant) points.  As soon
> >>>as I figure out a good UI for it, though...  I'm glad that you were able
> >>>to work around it.

Cant see the link mentioned right now (console interface) but if you have
the backend done then the sooner you could add the following the better:

Object
Rotate Right  Ctrl+R
Rotate Left   Ctrl+L
(and maybe Rotate 180 too)

Presumably Hub still intends to move Flip out of the context menu and into
the object menu (Mac user) and there is the general principle of trying to
avoid hiding things in context menus.

And yes, i realise the programmed objects unfortunately dont yet
flip/rotate but that is a flaw in the programmed objects that may
eventually be fixed by future refactoring, or perhaps will be solved by
seperating the visual representation (style) of programmed objects into
SVG shapes and keeping the programmed logic (content) as is.  who knows!?

Alternatively you might reject specifying rotate right and rotate left on
the basis that some unknown number < 50 % of people will guess the wrong
Right/Left the first time and be so utterly traumatized by it that they
wont be able to figure out what is going on, and that that alternatives
are so much clearer:
Rotate 90 degrees clockwise       Ctrl+R
Rotate 90 degress anticlockwise   Ctrl+Shift+R
                                  [different keybinding maybe?]
ick!
if one really must use Degrees then it should be Rotate 90, 180, 270 which
makes the items more distinct and even then the direction of clockwise is
only marginally less confusing than Rotate Right, I urge you emphatically
to choose the simpler concept!
It is also what Visio some Microsoft products happen to use, I forget what
SmartDraw and iGrafx and Rational Rose use))

/me is very bitter about the GIMP which seemingly as a result of my
prodding went and changed it from the slightly sensible (90,180,270) to
the distinctly worse (Rotate 90 clock|anti degrees).

> > That would do for a first implementation (shouldn't be too hard to make a
> > little rotate widget), but I'd like to eventually have it in-diagram.

In diagram widgets would be great of course but I would like to believe
that simple 90 degree rotations will be the major use case for this.

> Then you might like to take a look at how it is implemented in Sodipodi.

The shape handles in Sodipodi are a bit odd,
I much prefer how StarOffice/OpenOffice Draw behaves.

Hope that made some sense, new job, busy all day, tired and hungry now.
Goodnight.

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/