[Bf-funboard] selected/active/colours/etc.

[Matt Ebb]

> The selected object wire color transfers to unselected vertices, which
> then can be made selected too. Try it, with more complex selected
> objects that go into editmode, it feels very natural, and establishes a
> visual relationship. Instead of visualizing select/unselect it
> (especially) visualizes mode here.
>
> Strict semiotic languages for colors is something heavily overrated
> BTW. (Yes, I've been reading Raskin!)

Well, the problem is that it's not 'instead' - it visualises both selection
and mode. In Blender, the only kind of visual feedback for
selection/deselection is colour (either wires or center points), and also in
editmode (2 different vertex colours). Since this is the only way that one
can visualise what's selected and what's not, it's a very strong influence
to the idea that colour = selection.

While I can understand (though not really agree with) the reasoning for
keeping the vertices the same colours as the active object, the issue is
totally confused by reusing the 'unselected object' colour (yellow) as the
'selected vertices' colour. If you want to show the relationships, a better
system would use more than 2 colours, such as:

unselected object colour ->
selected/active object colour | deselected obData colour ->
selected obData colour.

By re-using the yellow again, (keeping 2 colours) and re-using it for the
visualisation of selections, it just reinforces the idea of binary off/on,
of two possible states, which reinforces the idea of selected/deselected,
and not of the more complex multi-tiered relationships of the objects and
obData. The hierarchies get confused if you try and represent them by using
only 2 different colours since when they are re-used, it prevents a clear
definition of what a colour means and represents.

Matt