Hi Michael,

The object properties panel idea looks great.

For another object organization example, Xara has a simple naming concept, having cross-grouping functionality.

In the example, I have assigned the name "two rectangles" on two gray rectangles. (See picture)

When I select only one of them of them, only half of the red circle displays next to the name shows. If I click on the empty circle next to the name tag, the corresponding objects will be selected.

I could have created another name tag with the magenta rectangle and one of the grey ones.

The name gallery also serves as a selection filter as it contains many parameters of existing objects in the current file. For example, if I were to click on arial, all the text of this type would be selected.

This is a relatively misunderstood feature in Xara and few people use it as I understand it.
But I found it quite a good idea and it widely surpass layers as an organization concept.

Marc

>>I have 2 21" screens here and MoI is limited to only one of them. Modo, Photoshop, etc, let me drag panels out of
>>the main interface and onto the other screen so they don't clutter the main window.

For two monitor people here is a possibility.

There is the optional left side panel which possibly extends the full depth of the MoI window. When the MoI window is extended partially onto the left hand monitor, that left panel will be on the left monitor.

I'm really thinking of the way the UI works in Blender...any arrangement of multiple windows can be set up within the main UI which can then be stretched over multiple displays. So the UI can be simple or busy as you like.

>>It may be possible in the future for me to focus on something more limited than that, like only being
>>able to tear off large panels that take up a whole edge of something rather than trying to stack small
>>pieces together. But even that will probably be a ways out.

May be worth taking a look at the Blender UI.

Hello Michael,

>One thing that I don't quite follow is the position part.

>>A general object doesn't particularly have a single special "position" point on it... Like for example what would you say is >>the position of this object:

Well of course you've picked the one object where having this info doesn't help much :-)


My thoughts on this come from using software that has propeties panels like CoreDraw a lot. In CorelDraw there is a properties panel that let's you both see and change parameters for whatever object is selected. It has size, position, scale, and various other parameters that change depending on the selection.

I use it for accurate placement and visually checking of construction lines, text, boxes and circles/ellipses. So I quickly drag a construction line onto the page which puts it at say -39.3897 mm. then type 40 in the x position box and it will move to exactly x= 40 mm.

Create a box at x 30, y 50 (centre) then I can move it 10 to the right by typing 40 in the x coord field. Easy, quick and accurate without eyeballing it, or counting the grid squares or finding out later that I overshot slightly on my grid that was set up for 0.25 mm on the last drawing ;-)


Before the properties panel was introduced I used grids, construction lines or sometimes even drew another item and used that. Now I use the properties panel almost exclusively to do this kind of manipulation.

If I can't see the position or size then I can't act upon them. And is best if I can type the desired value right there in the field.


Carrara has a similar properties panel but in 3 dimensions, it also includes seperate fields for the hot point. This is very useful when placing objects in relation to other ones. I use it quite a bit to check placement of trees on the ground for example.

Also check out Silo 2 for a similar thing - they call it the numerical editor but it does the same job and includes position, rotation, scale, and size.

Modo has an editable properties panel for position, rotation and scale but not for size. I wish it did have size and it is an often requested feature on the Luxology forums to be able to define the size of an item in the propeties panel as well as the other parameters.


IMHO it makes positioning and re-sizing objects faster and more accurate that dragging with the mouse/pen. Or one can use a combination depending on the situation.

MoI didn't have this facility and I missed it. But it was a V1 and there was more to come. When you talked about properties I was very pleased that this was coming but it is not what I expected :-(


I hope this explains better where I'm coming from on this subject.

>>For two monitor people here is a possibility.

>>There is the optional left side panel which possibly extends the full depth of the MoI window. When the MoI window is >>extended partially onto the left hand monitor, that left panel will be on the left monitor.

Is is an idea Steve, and in fact is what I do at the moment. But if the PC is locked then, when I unlock it, the windows are back on one screen only again and then I have to re-size back onto the second one again :-(

If you know of a way to stop this happening then i would love to know it :-)

Hi Tony,

> But if the PC is locked then, when I unlock it, the windows are
> back on one screen only again and then I have to re-size back
> onto the second one again :-(

I don't think there is anything in MoI itself that is doing this... I just gave it a try over here and that doesn't seem to happen here.

My guess is that you've got some kind of multi-monitor "helping" software running that is making that happen.

Try looking in your system tray and see if there is anything in there that says "multimon" or something along those lines, you may be able to disable it or tell it to avoid messing with MoI.exe .

- Michael

Hi Anis,

> When I can use object properties ?

Just as soon as I have finished coding it! :)

- Michael

Yeah Tony, I don't have that happening either...and when I close MoI, it opens again the way I left it.

How do you currently spread MoI across 2 screens? do you put Top and Front on the left and the other two on the right?

Hi Marc, thanks for the feedback re: Xara.

I actually did spend some time looking at Xara about properties, although I was not aware of that name gallery part which is pretty cool.

It was after looking through Xara some that I was starting to notice a pattern of "named style" type batched properties (in Xara I think this a "named color") being kind of grafted on to various programs in addition to individual property editing more directly on an object.

I think historically editing individual properties directly on an object came first, and then later on "named styles" get added to try and make it easier to update a batch of objects just by editing one style template.

That kind of convinced me to try and emphasize the "named style" or "property template" type approach more as the main way to do things...

And yes - enabling a kind of "select by style" mechanism allows styling to be used as another kind of batching or organizing concept. It will be a kind of parallel organization system in a certain sense to the grouping mechanism.

In fact, I was thinking that it may be a good idea to let you choose what is exported as a "layer" to other formats - whether it should be the grouping structure, or whether it should be by visual style...

The way it is turning out for MoI I think is the "grouping" is a more structural and hierarchical thing and will be more focused on operating on a batch of objects for hiding and showing things.

Then styling is for visual appearance.

- Michael

Michael, Steve,

I just drag the panels bit out onto the other screen leaving the viewports on the left and the panels on right screen. I like to still see some of the desktop and have icons and shortcuts arranged so they aren't covered.

I don't remember this happening until I started locking my PC. Screen saver didn't change anything. So, yes, must be something with my setup. I must have a look at the NVIDIA controls to see if anything is set for this.

Cheers.

Hi Tony - nVidia has a kind of multi-monitor helper app called nView which is probably running on your machine.

I'm pretty sure that is the thing moving MoI's window around.

On this nView feature page here
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_8400.html :



Probably in your system tray there may be a little icon which says "Nview" when you move over it, you can probably click, double-click, or right-click on that to get at some options.

- Michael

Well I've been through all my nvidia settings and nothing changes the behaviour. I've had nview on and off. I found the setting:

>> Enable/disable window from spanning across displays

but this just stops windows from going onto the second monitor if off or allows them to be dragged if on. I have no problem dragging the window to the second screen.

My only problem comes if I lock the computer - either with 'Windows Key + L' or when the screensaver kicks in.

Screensaver with no lock/password keeps the window where it should be, partially over onto the second screen. On the other hand, panels/palletes from Photoshop, Fireworks and Modo stay where they should be.

So I'm stumped. It's like the system treats a locked system as different from an unlocked one and wants to put the windows back on the monitor they were opened on. Very strange but I suspect is a quirk of my system. Perhaps an update to the drivers will help - but I'll leave that for another day :-)

Thanks for all the suggestions folks.