General note and suggestions

[Wookey]

After the last week or so I have come up with qiute a few small problems and
interface improvements.

Here they all are for discussiona and consideration.

This is part of my reaction to Stacho asking about year ago for a
suggested list of extra keystrokes.

A couple of these have been mentioned before, but here is the whole list
anyway.


Whilst loading a new file in map editor it says 'noname0x.th2' in a slightly
confusing manner. It should show nothin or the name of the files that is
being loaded.

Can't create a point if it happens to be where the yellow direction tick is
(or the control handle of previous point). Makes it difficult to do small
stuff like rocks. I think this is a bug.

You can't move two points together (e.g if you have ended two lines at the same
point but want to adjust them, you have to do them both separately). Not
sure how the interface should work for this, but it would be an improvement.

'water-flow conjectural' does not show up in plans. I want to show this.

It is very hard to tell that you have loaded the wrong thconfig file.
Some sensibe error like 'cannot find foo' would help.
e.g:
My data is in subdir 'bluemoon'
load thconfig from dir above (soundriver)
load bmb1.th2 from bluemoon dir
hit compile - gives 'error' but doesn't show what error.
run 'therion' in the bluemoon dir and things are fine (of course).

There used to be an entry: "It would be really useful if there was
something showing the name of the current scrap", but after using it for best
part of two weeks I noticed this was in the title bar! Should be in the
tips/FAQ I think so people notice faster.

It would be _really_ useful to be able to do graphical joins: click on
something and say 'join this to foo'. Difficult to do between two .th2
files, but at least for joins within a .th2 file being able to do them
graphically like areas would help a lot (especially if you have to name
lines - same automatic naming as areas would help enormously).

inserting line points happens _after_ the current point
inserting file entries happens _before_ the current line
inserting scrap happens at the start of the file
this is confusing.
inserting after the current position always would be good (then things appear
in the file in the order you draw them, not reverse order

Difficult to add several points to the end of a line (i.e. carry on a line I
accidentally stopped). First new point happens at end but then next point
happens one back from end, which is never what I want.

Check to tell you you are entering line outside a scrap would be good.

Splitting lines that are part of areas is tricky. Does label get removed
from both halves of line?

Need to be able to find areas and lines better (especially after splitting a
line). e.g if I click on an item it is highlyighted, but if it is currently
off-screen then there is no clue where it is. maybe double-clicking would
move the selected item on-screen?

Docs need explanation of 'scrap distortion' numbers. What do they mean? Mine
are around 70% - is that as bad as it sounds?

Debris rocks look daft on 1:1000 plans. Thye look OK on some of the 1:200
maps martinS showed me. This may be rectifiable by using the base-scale as
well as scale options, but I haven't yet got both the rocks and the legend
to look sensible.

When you insert an area it is always 'water' not the last area you inserted.
The line type gets defaulted to whatever you set the area to last time.

When you start a line or area and don't add anything to it you end up with
an empty entry in the file. It would be smart to tidy these up.

What is difference between floor-step and pit?

Button for 'invisible', indeed a list of available subtypes in general would
be useful. I've found it very easy to mis-spell '-subtype invisible', and
having a list would save you needing to know which ones were available.

Why do newscraps go in at the top of the file, not bottom of file? This
results in scraps being in reverse order in the file. I'd naturaly expect it
to be the other way round.

After creating the first scrap the cursor is left at a position such that if you
enter any lines/points they end up outside a scrap.

0.3.3

keys needed:
scroll up/down in side panel (pageup/down?)
scroll up/down in file commands window (shift pageup/down?)

Shortcut for insert area is needed _very badly_. having to switch between
the 'insert area' and 'insert scrap' action is just not good enough as an
interface.
insert area  ctrl-A
insert scrap ctrl-S

Shortcuts needed to select common types:
wall
rock-border
rock-edge
pit
floor-step

A very useful thing to be able to do would be right-clicking on an item on the map and
selecting a point or line type.

Making the point type selector taller so that you don't need to page up
_twice_ to get from 'wall' to 'border'.

some way to select a whole load of lines and move them to a new scrap.


bugs:

(present since at least 0.3.1 - still in 0.3.5)
If entering a line then use ctrl-D to abandon it, one char disappears from
current text field (eg pillar becomes illar, contour becomes ontour or
cntour (depending on cursor position)

prone to crashing - still present in 0.3.5. Need to test with tcltk
recompiled without thread support.


Wookey
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