Hi pior, yes usually the way to help out with that is to have a fairly long overlap period of several months between when a new beta is released and when the previous one expires. Usually that's what I try to do, but that didn't happen with this release, sorry about that.

I had been hoping for a while to have this be the last beta and trying to wait to release it until everything was all finished.

- Michael

Ha, understood - indeed I don't remember it happening during earlier beta periods, true.

- - - - -

Back to comments !

I find myself using the Image feature a lot as I mostly use Moi for 2D drafting these days. It works great overall but there are a number of little details about it that could be smoother.

- I think it would be great to be able to interact with images present in the scene without having to go back to the Image tool manually. Maybe some key combo allowing to select the image planes just like regular objects (key+click), or some clever mouse input (triple or quadruple click), or some UI widget which would enter Image mode from there.

- Once in the Image tool there should be a way to duplicate a current image. And even better, doing so in the scene state it is currently in. Either by somehow interacting with the image object itself by copy/paste, or through a duplicate button. Without that, making a duplicate of a current image involves importing it again and placing it in the viewport again, which is annoying and breaks the flow of work. At the moment if I need to have, say, 5 duplicates of a rough draft to make 5 clean variants from (which, as you might guess, is precisely what I need to do for some design work at the moment :D), I need to import and place the rough 5 times. I should really only have to import once and then duplicate from there. It seems minor but in practice it is quite a blocker, especially since each time the image needs to be "drawn in" from corner to corner meaning that for a perfect duplicate the user needs to remember to enable object snap too. It really does pile up :)

- The "Transparency" value (with 90 being very transparent and 10 being near opaque) is counter-intuitive. It should be labelled Opacity, with 10 being very transparent and 90 being near opaque.

- The numerical input field is error-prone, especially for fast users used to keyboard input. I understand that it is the same as everywhere else in the program and that many users are probably used to it, but imho it could behave much better (of course I don't know which part is tech limitation from the UI API and which part is intentional behavior here.)

First of all, there is really no need for the big keypad to show up for anyone using a keyboard (which I assume is 99% of the user base). It seems good in theory but in practice it is laggy (shows up a few milliseconds late) and visually distracting ; and any power user will just type with the physical keys of their keyboard anyways (either top row or keypad). I believe the visual keypad should be an option, probably best turned off by default. It is also stealing the cursor (making the caret disappear) which breaks the visual confirmation that the field is ready for keyboard entry so that's another way it goes against the habits of power users used to the subtle but universal visual clues of any OS.

Also, the visual keypad shows up when a field is highlighted and disappears when it isn't. It "makes sense", but it is strange for such a big UI element to be turned on by a positive input that is usually not a toggle (click), but *also* turned off by the same input (another click, removing the field highlighting). It gives the impression of a UI element that is always "just about to break" so to speak, which is problematic UX-wise.

An alternative (on top of the option to have it show up by itself or not) would simply to have a button that opens it up (see mockup). This would have the advantage of being more practical for tablet users, since hitting big buttons on screen is easier than hitting text entry fields.



Lastly in the case of the Image tool in particular, the entry field sometimes fails at displaying the current Transparency value of the currently selected image in the list.

I hope this helps !

Thanks for the comments pior!

It is possible to turn off the numeric input panel using a setting in moi.ini, it's in the [UI] section:

[UI]
<...>
DisableNumericInputFlyout=n

Set that to DisableNumericInputFlyout=y and it shouldn't show up.

- Michael

I would like to add that it is inconvenient to search for images when they do not fit in the list of inserted images.
When there are a lot of them, in order to find the right one, you have to disable/enable viewing of each image.

PS. Zoom with the mouse wheel behind the scene is this normal?

I've been thinking of having images listed in the scene browser instead of in a command like it currently is.

- Michael

Hi WN,

re:
> I would like to add that it is inconvenient to search for images when they
> do not fit in the list of inserted images.

If it helps, it is possible to enlarge the image list. To do that edit the Image.htm file which is in the Commands sub-folder inside the MoI install.

The list height comes from this CSS at the top of the file, the line marked with >>>> <<<<

			#FilenameContainer {
				width:100%;
>>>>			height:5.1em;       <<<<
				-webkit-box-sizing:border-box;
				margin:0.05em 0.15em;
				overflow-x:hidden;
				overflow-y:scroll;
				border:1px solid #AAA;
				background:white;
			}

If you change that to something like height:15em you'll have a larger image filename list area.

Lists of things that might get long like this are probably better to have in the scene browser rather than in a specific command. The Image command pre-dates the existence of the scene browser which is why it didn't go there to start with.


re:
> PS. Zoom with the mouse wheel behind the scene is this normal?

Sorry, I don't understand this part. Could you describe what's going on a little bit more please?

Thanks,
- Michael

If you move the cursor behind the scene, for example, over some button, and rotate the mouse wheel, you can see the zoom change in the scene.
I just saw it now. It seems to have always been so, my inattention, sorry.

>If you change that to something like height:15em you'll have a larger image filename list area.

Michael, thank you so much, it's much more convenient.

Something has become wrong! :)

Wow, nice update, thanks very much.

Hi Pilou, inside your %appdata%\Moi\Startup folder there will be files named XX Scripts.js and/or XX Scripts Full.js , can you please post them? maybe you have an old version.

Oh, also please let me see what you have for your %appdata%\Moi\Scripts.menu.htm file.

Did you happen to recently add a script and have any punctuation characters in its filename like a ' quote character?

- Michael

Here the 2 files...
https://moiscript.weebly.com/uploads/3/9/3/8/3938813/2scriptsmenus.zip

Don't remember to add some special names of scripts..

Thanks Pilou, those seem to be ok.

Can you please go to a command prompt window and use this:

dir %appdata%\Moi\commands > output.txt

And then send me the output.txt file? It will have a listing of all the files in your appdata commands folder so I can see if there is a problem with any of the names.

- Michael

where must be this output.txt ?

Not more easy for me to send you the commands folder by mail? (810 Kb )
because my Windows CMD says dir is not found! :)

Hi Pilou, it can be anywhere, that command line will write it to the current directory of the command line.

Maybe try these 2 commands on the system command prompt window:

cd %appdata%\Moi\commands
dir >output.txt

The first line will set the current directory to the Moi appdata commands folder, and the second one will do the "dir" directory listing command and send its output to a text file output.txt which will be created in that same folder.

If you can then send me that then I may be able to recreate the problem over here and fix it up.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

re:
> Not more easy for me to send you the commands folder by mail? (810 Kb )

That would work fine too.

- Michael

Don't find CD! :)
I send you the Zip of my Folder commands from the Appdata

Hi Pilou, I think Michael's saying use windows command prompt to find the "hidden" %apps% moi directory and put the output text file there. If this is just a question of "pasting" a file once...
might navigate manually through windows explorer but you need turn "hidden files" off 1st...

Open File Explorer from the taskbar.
Select View > Options > Change folder and search options.
Select the View tab and, in Advanced settings, select Show hidden files, folders, and drives and OK.

Hi Pilou, are you maybe putting in dir or cd into the Windows "Run" dialog? That's not the same as an actual command prompt.

To get a command prompt you would need to first run cmd.exe .

Then inside the command shell that's where you put in dir or cd. But sending the .zip file is fine.

- Michael

Yes I suppose that is the SHortCut for my Windows 10 (Logo Windows + R) for have the command system

but after it's a mess Windows cmd don't find your dir etc...
So I send you by mail the commands folder with pain again because Gmail don't want my zip ! :D
I have found an other way! :)

Hi Pilou, it seems to be a bug in the menu code. Try updating to the attached versions, these are in %appdata%\moi\customui .

- Michael