Any chance a 'read only' mode tick box (or whatever you prefer) could get added to MoI?

thanks,

Nick

Hi Nick, I guess I'm not quite sure how that would be handled.

Would you expect for an attempt to save to just do nothing, or would it put up a "Save As" box asking for a different filename?

It seems like a kind of strange thing to set up.

Is there any other modeling program that you use that has a "Read only" type mode, so I could see how it behaves?

I just did a quick look at several other modeling programs like Rhino, ViaCAD, Silo, SketchUp - none of these seemed to have a "read only" open mode so I'm not quite sure what you would expect with the behavior of that, it just does not seem to be a very common option?

- Michael

I was wondering about this post also. What came to my mind was a model I could post and pass to others but could not be edited or re-used in another fashion!???? Kind of a copyright or protection with the ability to still share. a file lock. I'll post that and still wait to hear the original question also.

Thanks.

Hi Michael,

The intent was just to not be able to overwrite the originally opened file. I open drawings a lot to copy objects from them or maybe get some dims, but when I'm finished, I dont want anything to have changed. One slip of the "File" button and 'oh dear', you just saved (being that 'Save' borders 'File').

Dang, I would have thought it would be easy (what the he77 do I know :-P) to code:

-----

if checkbox is ticked

then

msgbox ("Read-only mode")

else

business as usual

------

Easy for me to say! Once again, Nick makes a goofy request. :-)

Or maybe if the box is ticked, the 'Save' button is inactive (greyed out). just a thought, anyway.

Hi Nick, I just wasn't really sure what the expected behavior would be.

So if you try to do a Save, pop up a message box...

What about if you do a "Save As" or "Export", should those be allowed? What if you pick the same file name (that you opened as read-only) when you do Save As or Export, I guess catch that and not allow it?

Would you expect to not have the "Save changes?" dialog that shows up when you try to close MoI when the current file has not been saved?

I was actually thinking that instead of just putting up a warning, that maybe a Save could work the same as when you do a Save the very first time before there is any active file name set, which is to pop up "Save As" instead... and maybe only do a warning if you actually happen to type in or choose the same name as the "read only" current file.

- Michael

Honestly, any safeguard would be welcome. It's just that the Save button is (rightly) a live wire. I was hoping for any chance or warning to bail out of an unwanted save.

Thanks for your attention, whatever you decide. :-)

-Nick

Hi Nick, I've got something set up for this for the next beta. Some details tomorrow. But basically if you set the "Read only" checkbox when opening the file (you'll have to enable this in a moi.ini option since it kind of makes the file dialog look slightly odd), then when you try to do a "Save", it will prompt you for a filename same as Save As rather than doing the save immediately as per normal.

And also at the Save As part (whether you did a regular Save As or got there through Save), the current filename will not be filled in by default so that the only way you could overwrite it would be to pick the file and then say Yes to the overwrite prompt.

I figure if you explicitly picked the file and then say Yes to overwrite it, then that means overwrite it anyway...

I did not worry about Export since that does not fill in the current filename automatically like Save As.


I guess that's most of the details there actually, but I need to test it a bit tomorrow to make sure it works as expected.

Once you actually write out a file or do File/New the "opened with read only" flag gets reset so that it doesn't interfere with saving out to the new file that you just created.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

That all sounds great. I will be grateful to see it. Thanks for listening.

-Nick

Hi Nick, I've got this set up for the next beta now.

You'll be able to enable it with this setting in moi.ini :
[FileDialog]
EnableReadOnlyCheckbox=y

When that is set to y then a "Read only" checkbox will appear on the regular File open dialog:



If you check that box when opening a file, you will then get the behavior described previously, where hitting "Save" will pop up the "Save As" dialog instead of doing the regular immediate Save, and also the Save As dialog will have a blank name instead of starting out with the current file name like it normally does.

The only other issue is that if you later on open the file from the "recent file" list instead of by "Open", it will not remember that it was opened as read only and instead use standard Open behavior.... But I think I will take a look at fixing this up as well to remember that flag since I kind of need to do that anyway for a related concept of opening a "Template file", and it seems like a good time to add some of the infrastructure for that now.

- Michael

Haven't tried but what happens if you simply set the file attribute to read only and attempt to save the file again? Shouldn't that have popped up a warning or error?

I can appreciate adding the checkbox but I would have thought making the file itself read only would have prevented accidental overwrites?

-Will

Hi Will, yes setting the actual file itself to read only should work.

But not very convenient if you sometimes want to edit the file but most of the time not.

One other new thing for this in the next v2 beta is the concept of opening a "Template" file which you will be able to do by a right-click on Open.

That will open the file but set the current file name to be blank, so you will get prompted for a new name when you go to save. It's pretty similar to the "read only" option.

There is also a new option for choosing a startup template file, which is a file that can be loaded as a template when MoI first starts, or when you do a File/New. If you have some things that you always want to have set up when you start a new model, you can put them in a template file and set it as the startup template.

- Michael

Sounds like all of this will be a nice addition!

I had asked a while ago if it would be possible for you to open up the export dialog when right-clicking the save button (similar to Rhino as a quick way to get to mesh exports) - is that something you still plan or was that decided against?

If I remember correctly you had said you would add it in eventually.

-Will

Hi Will -

> I had asked a while ago if it would be possible for
> you to open up the export dialog when right-clicking
> the save button (similar to Rhino as a quick way to
> get to mesh exports) - is that something you still
> plan or was that decided against?

Yup, I added that in for the current Nov-21 beta! :)

Now when you right-click on "Save" in the bottom toolbar, it will do a "Save As", same as if you went to the File menu and picked "Save As".

Does that do what you were asking for?

- Michael

Yes, I did notice that but I wasn't sure!


Perhaps I was thinking it would go straight to the export dialog (depending on previous format selection.)


But I see that it at least remembers what format was previously selected so that's good - thanks!


-Will

Hi Will, sorry maybe I misunderstood what your request was about.

When you say "Export dialog" I was assuming you meant the file name Save As dialog, but do you mean the "Meshing options" dialog that comes up after you have picked a filename to save to?

In your previous message (here) you mentioned that you needed to go to the File menu to get at the "Save As" button to do what you want, so I made the right-click to be a shortcut for that...

Could you maybe describe a little bit more about what you wanted to happen with the right click?

- Michael

Dont I remember you making a script that just jumps straight to the meshing options for someone wanting to do mesh checks while working on the model?

Hi Burr,

> Dont I remember you making a script that just jumps
> straight to the meshing options for someone wanting
> to do mesh checks while working on the model?

Yup, you can skip the file name dialog by making a shortcut key that runs the SaveAs command and also gives it a filename, like this:

SaveAs c:\test.obj

I actually use that all the time myself to check what the export mesh is going to look like.

But it is not so good for actually writing out files since it uses the same file name every time. For using it to just look at the generated mesh I just cancel the dialog without actually writing the file.

- Michael

OIC.

That might be something good to have when you set up that "surface test mode" you were talking about. A temporary switch to the mesh options without actually doing the export. Kind of like a pause, switch view, return like you had mentioned.

You spoke about this here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2208.2

Hi Michael - "Being able to right-click the Save icon and get the export dialog would bring that nice shortcut..."

I was looking for the behavior that Rhino had (which I forget now, it has been a while since I used it) but I believe I was expecting (depending of the previously chosen export format) that it would bring up the Meshing dialog (if that was needed for the format I was exporting to.)

Typically I'm only going to use OBJ or LWO with MOI so for me, going straight to the Mesh dialog would be the point of convenience - for others of course it would be different.


The way you have it now, you request the file name first (resolving any name clashes) and then open the mesher, I believe what I was used to is the opposite (or whatever Rhino did?) - open the mesher, set the params and then resolve the filename as the final step.


It's not a biggy though - I'd rather get my surface names (and making PAQ happy) first before this if it required any serious code changing... ;-)

-Will