Hi Nick,

> I want and like the info right where the mouse is so
> I don't have to switch focus between the mouse and
> info center. I find that incredibly distracting.

The problem with that is that if you are just trying to draw something where you're focused just on its shape and not wanting to enter in any numeric coordinates, having all those coordinate boxes floating around by your mouse doesn't give you any benefit and instead they actually detract from being able to clearly see the object's shape on the screen.

I mean I don't see how you could not consider this to be distracting and getting in the way:



It's pretty easy for HUD "Heads Up Display" to become more like IYF "In Your Face" in this way - in MoI there is generally an emphasis on not getting into the IYF level of stuff. This helps make MoI more friendly for the kinds of uses where someone just wants to draw and not even type in any coordinates - the type in stuff is available if you need it but doesn't overwhelm the UI.

What's the point of having the "Specify next point" text floating around next to your mouse when you're drawing a curve like that, anyway? Surely there isn't any confusion that you are picking the next point in the curve...


The other thing is that kind of inputs floating around with the mouse mechanism is kind of limited to pretty simple input types because trying to put something like 5 or 6 controls floating around there would make it really bad - so it can't quite "scale up" very naturally for situations where additional options or inputs could be useful...


I can see how you could like it if you are more often drawing lines and arcs by entering in numeric input though. But to me that comes with some pretty negative side effects for the "just drawing and looking at shape" type workflow, and it just doesn't make very much sense when you're drawing freeform curves.

- Michael