[Bf-committers] Two details that got away from Blender design concepts

[Daniel Salazar - 3Developer.com]

This are two simple details that are in blender for some time. I
woudn't pester about this if they weren't getting in the way all the
time. I'd like to have another discussion about them and hopefully get
to a solution.

1) Node editor release confirm

The tweak (right mouse drag) behavior in the node editor is the only
place in any other editable part in blender where "Release Confirms"
is forced to the user, like it or not. It forces the user to re-think
the tweak behavior every time he/she switches to another editor. This
is wrong because tweak is something we should do naturally and
effortlessly.

More importantly we have an editing preference for those who like this
behavior but it's ignored in the node editor:

http://www.zanqdo.com/tmp/ReleaseConfirm.png

This hack also fails interestingly on the Detach node operator
(Alt+Tweak) where it reverts to obeying the preference after the tweak
so you do have to click to confirm!

Please let it respect the preference again so everyone can have it as we prefer


2) Dupli Visibility

Dupligroup layer visibility toggles work different than any other
layer toggle in Blender.

Normally clicking on a slot disables the rest, while shift-clicking on
a layer adds to the selection. This is in line with everything else in
blender. But Dupligroup visibility is different. You click on a layer
and you toggle it while shift clicking does exactly the same.

This change was made (to my understanding) because of an assumption
that you usually just want to disable 1 or 2 hidden layers. This might
be the case for some people but that's just a personal preference. In
my case for example, for better clarity and cleanness I prefer to only
enable the layers that have dupli-visible geometry while keeping all
the rest nicely disabled like this.

http://www.zanqdo.com/tmp/Dupli_Visibility.png

So there you go, the assumption is now invalidated and we still have a
counter intuitive widget that forces the user to click *18 times* in
order to disable the hidden layers. With the standard system this
would only take 2 shift clicks.

On the other hand, for those who still prefer to only disable the
hidden layers it would also take only 1 or 2 shift-clicks! I can not
think of a real reason why the standard behavior is ignored here just
to save a single key press to some users

thx

Daniel Salazar
patazstudio.com