Hi,
As I keep adding engines the engine ordering seems suboptimal. I think
it is in the rendering order right now which is absolutely great for
debugging but not so good for normal users wanting to find engines easily.
Not sure if a simple alphabetic ordering would be best or some kind of
ordering based upon category. I know currently it appears to be
semi-random. May be a similar approach to the tools where a number is
used to order the engines and the engine developer can decide its order
in the list?
Would be good to know what other people think.
Thanks,
Marcus
Not sure if a simple alphabetic ordering would be best or some kind of
ordering based upon category.
I think for now, we should go for alphabetical. Now if we end up with
40 engines, that might be a different story.
I can also imagine if Donald adds “cloning” an engine, that we might
have some sort of hierarchy to indicate that there are two “Balls and
Sticks” engines currently active.
Anyway, that’s my $0.02,
-Geoff
Actually, there needs to be some ordering by default that sets it up so
things that tend to be rendered out farther are rendered later. For
example. when you do vanderwall transparent, it should be rendered after
ball and stick because of the transparency.
What I foresee is that eventually we should allow the widget to drag and
drop reordering so that the user can do whatever they want.
–
Donald
(Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 09:09:57PM -0500) Geoffrey Hutchison geoff.hutchison@gmail.com:
Not sure if a simple alphabetic ordering would be best or some kind of
ordering based upon category.
I think for now, we should go for alphabetical. Now if we end up with
40 engines, that might be a different story.
I can also imagine if Donald adds “cloning” an engine, that we might
have some sort of hierarchy to indicate that there are two “Balls and
Sticks” engines currently active.
Anyway, that’s my $0.02,
-Geoff
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On Nov 20, 2007, at 9:31 PM, Donald Ephraim Curtis wrote:
Actually, there needs to be some ordering by default that sets it up
so
things that tend to be rendered out farther are rendered later.
Yes, there needs to be an internal render order for transparency (and
other layering issues).
I think Marcus is talking about something else – the order of engines
presented to the user in the Engine list. I don’t see why we can’t
have an internal render order and show the user the engines in
alphabetical order. I think this would be more user-friendly.
Cheers,
-Geoff
Donald Ephraim Curtis wrote:
Actually, there needs to be some ordering by default that sets it up so
things that tend to be rendered out farther are rendered later. For
example. when you do vanderwall transparent, it should be rendered after
ball and stick because of the transparency.
Does the display order need to be linked to the render order though?
Can’t we use the flags already implemented to set the render order but
display the engines in the list in a more easily readable fashion?
What I foresee is that eventually we should allow the widget to drag and
drop reordering so that the user can do whatever they want.
That would also probably work but again most users will leave it as
default. Is the display order necessarily linked to the render order? I
think the flags work great for setting the render order and when
developing it helps to see that but a typical user would be more
concerned with being able to easily choose the engine they want.
This probably means alphabetically sorted or something like that. Would
the user dragging the engines into a different order also affect the
render order? I can see pros and cons to that approach. Just trying to
figure out what the best approach would be for us.
(Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 09:09:57PM -0500) Geoffrey Hutchison geoff.hutchison@gmail.com:
Not sure if a simple alphabetic ordering would be best or some kind of
ordering based upon category.
I think for now, we should go for alphabetical. Now if we end up with
40 engines, that might be a different story.
I can also imagine if Donald adds “cloning” an engine, that we might
have some sort of hierarchy to indicate that there are two “Balls and
Sticks” engines currently active.
We can separate display and render order. I don’t see it as a problem
and I think there is a “proxy” model that I used to manage the list of
engines for the tree view. I think there is EngineListModel or
something.
I just didn’t want to make the decision to “hide” something without at
least acknowledging that we’re doing it.
Quoting “Marcus D. Hanwell” mhanwell@gmail.com:
Donald Ephraim Curtis wrote:
Actually, there needs to be some ordering by default that sets it up so
things that tend to be rendered out farther are rendered later. For
example. when you do vanderwall transparent, it should be rendered after
ball and stick because of the transparency.
Does the display order need to be linked to the render order though?
Can’t we use the flags already implemented to set the render order
but display the engines in the list in a more easily readable fashion?
What I foresee is that eventually we should allow the widget to drag and
drop reordering so that the user can do whatever they want.
That would also probably work but again most users will leave it as
default. Is the display order necessarily linked to the render order? I
think the flags work great for setting the render order and when
developing it helps to see that but a typical user would be more
concerned with being able to easily choose the engine they want.
This probably means alphabetically sorted or something like that. Would
the user dragging the engines into a different order also affect the
render order? I can see pros and cons to that approach. Just trying to
figure out what the best approach would be for us.
(Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 09:09:57PM -0500) Geoffrey Hutchison
geoff.hutchison@gmail.com:
Not sure if a simple alphabetic ordering would be best or some kind of
ordering based upon category.
I think for now, we should go for alphabetical. Now if we end up
with 40 engines, that might be a different story.
I can also imagine if Donald adds “cloning” an engine, that we
might have some sort of hierarchy to indicate that there are two
“Balls and Sticks” engines currently active.