[Bf-funboard] Blender Pie Menus Prototype Addon

[Sean Olson]

Thanks for the feedback Alberto - I'll tough on our logic on each point
inline.

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 3:59 AM, Alberto Torres <kungfoobar at gmail.com>wrote:

> I just tried it, some suggestions:
>
> - Try press, left, release; then press, right, release... this should be
> very natural. A problem that sometimes arises is that with few options you
> still have to be as precise as having 8 options. In the mode menu for
> armatures, pose mode should be at the top or the bottom (i.e. replacing
> sculpt mode or texture paint) to have a wider space selecting an option.
>

I could get on board with about half of this.  On menus that are auto
generated, I could see giving more "angle" to options.  (So if you had a
pie with 2 options 50% would go to each).  On changing positions of items I
disagree though.  We are forced to choose between two evils here - 1.
 Change positioning of items of Pie  2.  Not having key items on cardinal
directions of pie.  I would argue that #1 is the greater evil, since it
greatly interfers with "muscle memory".  Changing it to be swapping places
to cardinal directions might make things easier to hit with mouse movement,
but you are going to have to read every option every time, and overall this
is much more of a hassle than moving the mouse NW.

After testing it a bit more I noticed the problem is the left/right options
> (which should be the most frequent ones) have too little area: it seems it
> was changed to accomodate the visual space of the menus. I also prefer the
> round menus because the areas are much clearer. My proposal: to put icons
> only when pressing the key with the 8 slices clearly in view, and then
> drawing the text when releasing the key, at the further side of the icon.
> That also has the advantage of cueing the users that fast selecting is
> possible without releasing the key.
>

I'm not really following how you are saying this should functionally work.
 Perhaps a mockup?
On smaller angles to the left/right on the pie - it maybe could use some
slight tweaks, but we made it this way purposefully.  Here was our logic -
the left/right angles are much much much easier to hit than
the diagonal angles.  We figured if we could give the diagonals a little
more space they would be easier to hit, and the 90 degree angles would
still be pretty easy to hit.  I know everybody is different, but this
solution made the diagonal pie slices bearable to hit, and the cardinal
directions still are not bad at all.


- Some actions (such as wireframe/solid) are better with a default action
> (when pressing-releasing the key without movement). It would be nice to
> have a checkbox in the menu (a bit far from the rest and selectable only by
> clicking) that enables or disables the "default mode" (it would mean e.g.
> cycling between the last two options). I would use it for mode change and
> probably most of the non-destructive menus.
>

Not sure if you noticed the Pie Menus tab in the "N" properties panel.  It
allows you turn on/off any individual pie.  For instance, you could turn
off the "shading Pie" and then have the default Z functionality toggle
between wire/solid, then turn it on if you are hopping over to textured or
material view a lot.