Re: Modifying properties of several objects at the same time

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On 22 Oct 2003, Ben Hetland wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 14:24:19 +0200, Daniele Pighin wrote:
> The idea is perhaps a variant of the following proposal:
>> method 3 - popup oriented: when selecting several objects and then
>> clicking on "properties", present a popup with the appropriate
>> widgets to edit any property which is common to all selected
>> objects. All of these widget would initially be disabled (each would
>> be enabled by an appropriate checkbox): when enabling one or more
>> fields, editing and applying, all of the selected objects would have
>> the corresponding property changed.
>
> Instead of being able to edit only the common properties, which is
> merely the intersection set of the all sets of properties for the
> individually selected object, one could present a popup dialog having
> a selector at the top (e.g., combo box or tabbed dialog widget). The
> selection available here would be the type names of all kinds of
> objects included in the current selection.
>
> The rest of the dialog box would be the same dialog as the Properties
> dialog for the selected object type in the selector. The size of the
> dialog window could either re-adjust itself on every selector change,
> or it could simply be the maximum size required to fit in the windows
> below the selector.
>
> This would now enable us to manipulate the _union_ set of all
> properties.

That is a useful possibility.

> But if for example "Standard - Line" was selected, its property sheet
> would be displayed. Consider now that there happened to be several
> such objects included in the selection:
>
> Now, some of the properties have the same settings in all objects;
> Those fields can just be enabled and the common setting shown.
>
> If the property in question does NOT have the same value in all
> selected objects, however, then the field should still be enabled
> (i.e. modifiable), but doesn't show any real value. It could also be
> "dimmed down" or something to visually aid in the concept that there
> are really multiple values around. If the user does not touch this
> setting at all, then the properties should remain unchanged in all
> objects. But if the user sets a different value, then that will be set
> in all objects of that type.

This is the hard part.  Suggestions or even patches for this would be most
welcome.

There's also a problem of figuring out which ones have the same setting,
but that's mostly a problem of understanding properties.

> This solution is the most flexible, I think, and it also handles the
> case where different kinds of objects happen to share a property name
> which isn't really the same property. But I'm not sure that it really
> handles the situation that some common property among different object
> types might be better handled if it's only displayed at one [common]
> place (and not repeated on every type's property sheet).

It's essential that different kinds of objects can be changed together.
Currently, the properties dialog for a group only shows the intersection of
properties.  We could imagine a number of more or less confusing solutions:
One page with common properties, selection of what types of objects to
affect, etc.

However, this is not very useful without proper handling of multi-value
properties.  Anyone willing to work on this should probably start by
looking at the multi-value problem.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HĂ„rdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?