From kde-kimageshop Tue Dec 12 05:36:11 2000 From: John Califf Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 05:36:11 +0000 To: kde-kimageshop Subject: krayon commit update and gui suggestions X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-kimageshop&m=97660099226333 This is an update on the latest changes to krayon and on a proposal that may make those who want toolbars instead of tabs happy while also using tabs for the multiple images in the main workspace. There have been many cosmetic improvements such as assignment of icons for everything we now have that should use icons, more tools, and a few fixes to the gui. The crash when closing a split view has been fixed (it was related to toolbar placement). Also, several new classes. One for selections and another for a painter. The painter allows use of all the Qt drawing classes for tools where that would make more sense than doing them from scratch. For example, lines, circles, polylines, text, fancy inclined text, etc. How this works is that the graphic is simultaneous drawn on the canvas the user "sees" - and on an transparent offscreen pixmap. What is drawn on the canvas is never retained with the krayon image normally. For example selection outlines go away when you scroll or perform another op. However, with these qt based tools the graphic is then pasted from the offscreen pixmap which has a transparent background (a pixmap is also a paint device to Qt) into a krayon layer after the operation is finished, blending in with what's already in that layer. These operatios are usually performed in discrete steps so deciding when to "commit" the drawing is easy. It is then retained with the layer in its channel data and can be further manipulated with native krayon tools (blending, selections, separating by color, etc). Most of our "painterly" tools based on layers, brushes, and blending are custom built and don't use Qt. But some, the "hard" tools like geometric shapes and text, are more suitable to Qt and it would take years to duplicate them with custom code. In other news, we now have a bucket fill tool, which is usable but needs a little more work. The pippette or dropper tool is now functional. Selections work better and "cut" now cuts the selected area accurately - it was off a little in the last commit. Regarding the gui, after much discussion by others in another thread I am now leaning towards replacing the tab buttons in the sidebar - all of them, with toolbars containing tool items (icons). When an item is selected from an appropriate toolbar, then its action will display appropriate content in the sidebar, filling the entire sidebar. These toolbars would be like other koffice toolbars. Also, most tools will need settings dialogs, and when a user right clicks on a particular tool its settings interface would occupy the sidebar, and perhaps on a middle click open a in a real dialog with the same content. In other words, only one thing would occupy the sidebar at a time, except a small strip across the top showing the current colors, current brush, etc. - which is now placed in the middle of the sidebar. It should be at the top - just a status indicator strip that also allow you to access some things. Anything which could open in a dialog should also be able to open in the sidebar area. This is easy to accomplish as each can have a container widget which can be parented either by a dialog or the sidebar as the user chooses. Such an approach will please those who want separate windows or dialogs and those who like the sidebar approach with little extra work. (Note that the sidebar can be completely hidden at any time and unhidden). We need a toolbar item for hiding/unhiding because it will be used a lot. Currently you can do this only from the "settings" menu. Tabs are needed for accessing the multiple images in the main workspace for many reasons. You never know in advance how many images you will add so toolbars with a fixed set of items to choose from are not feasible. Also, the tabs with the names of the images look nicer and take less room than a separate toolbar for each image (yuck!) and are more like sheets of paper you can overlay. Like a real artist would use. Well, I hope this is long enough for you, but it may encourage someone else to help out with the coding as there is a lot yet to do. I am behind on my email again, working backwards from today's mail to where I left off a few days ago. Any constructive mail will be answered, eventually. Krayon is moving right along slowly but surely! John _______________________________________________ Kimageshop mailing list Kimageshop@master.kde.org http://master.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kimageshop