[Bf-funboard] (reply to David Cuny & Groo) Ctrl-T, Ctrl-P, etc

[Luke Wenke]

David Cuny wrote:
> I always had trouble remembering the order of this operation. Does it mean
> that you are going to make something *into* a parent, or make a parent
*for*
> it?
> Perhaps the language could be clarified.
----------------------------------
Yeah that was exactly my original problem.... and also my initial
solution... then my solution involved separating the parents and the
children more.

Currently the "Make Parent" popup says:
--------------
OK?
Make Parent.
--------------

My suggestion would be something like:
--------------
Make activeobject the parent?
OK
--------------
Where you click on "OK" to confirm, rather than "Make Parent".
"activeobject" is the name of the active object (light pink).
==============================================

Groo:
> Not to butt into the discussion, but I think that while your intents are
> honorable you might be barking up the wrong tree.  IMO, the
"active"/"selected" thing needs to be > clarified a bit.
> 1. "Active non-selected" probably shouldn't exist as a state at all.
I agree, but I was pointing out that currently in blender it is a state.
(Though it is pretty hard to find that out)

> 2. There should be a strong visual representation of that.  The Red and
> Blue idea you suggested is a bit drastic, but it's the right idea.  We
> can probably do something with the existing colors for selected objects,
> but make the Active object even more distinguished (like white, since we
> all ready use that for objects we are acting upon - like when
> translating, rotating, or scaling).
Yeah, I think white is the next best colour besides red to show that it is
the focus.... the other selected objects could be their regular pink I
guess...


> As far as your list of objects popping up when doing a Track or Parent
> action, I think the intention is good, but it will probably confuse more
> new users than clarify things for them.
I thought it would be self-explanatory.... the title of the pop-up menu
would say "Track..." and to complete the sentence they'd just pick one of
the objects. (This means "track that thing") The parent one could be "Choose
the parent...." or "Make parent from..." and they just choose the parent,
etc. I think it clarifies things a lot compared to the present situation. At
the moment you can do ctrl-p with nothing selected - or just the active
object selected and nothing else... and you can go to "Make parent"... and
then notice that the object doesn't behave any differently. Or they could
select one object and do ctrl-T and "Make Track"... that could mean that the
selected object is a "track". (They just made a track - "track" should be
used as a verb in the pop-up menu) And blender doesn't tell them exactly
which selection (the light one or darker ones) does what in the tracking...
(unless they test it later)... (see the beginning of this message for more
about that)

> Currently, it's pretty straight-forward: select the stuff you want to work
on, select the
> active object, issue the command, confirm.
But it isn't clear (especially if you're only used to using 2 objects)
whether the active object tracks the other object or vice-versa - and
whether the active object becomes the parent of the other object or
vice-versa... it just says "Make Track" and "Make Parent" ("Make Track" is
particularly ambiguous)

> A user (new or otherwise) would initially view your pop-up list and say
"Whoa!  What's all this
> stuff?"
See earlier reply... the title of the pop-up would ask them a question or
say "Track..." and that implies that the user has to complete the sentence
by choosing a thing to track.

> You're giving a bunch of extra options and information that you don't need
to.
The active object name would be at the top and separated from the rest of
the names. If the objects are physically all bunched up, it would be easier
to pick the one you want using the menu (you could also see the objects
being highlighted as you go through the list)

> The fact, also, that many users (especially new ones) don't give their
objects meaningful names also > confuses the issue, with or without visual
feedback like the highlighting you suggest.
The user can just move the cursor over the list until the right object is
highlighted - even without reading the object titles very closely. Or they
can choose the active object before they press ctrl-t, etc, like they'd
currently do.

> I think clarifying what is active and selected as well as making the
> confirmation dialog a bit more clear (but keeping it simple!) would
> effectively make this a non-issue.
Note that the active thing can be selected as well (you make it seem like
active and selected objects are mutually exclusive...) when you're using
g/r/s, etc the active selection acts just like any other selection...

> Then again, that's just what I think.
Well thanks for your thoughts... as I said, white would be my next best
choice for the selected active objects... (maybe when it is active but not
selected it could have a white centre).

- Luke.