[Bf-funboard] Converting toggle buttons to pie menus

Tue Apr 29 03:51:55 CEST 2014

Hi Jude,

I'm another of the devs for pie menus, although I haven't made any real
contribution in quite some time.

Re: Gear Shifts -  " it's sort of assumed that every option in the pie menu
proposal will be a direction in a big daisy of choices, but that doesn't
seem very conducive to an efficient workflow"

That is a good point.  Menus of 8 or more are not efficient per some
research and anectdotal evidence and general user feedback.  I'll need
someone to check my sources on that :-)

For our purposes when deving the python addon, we assumed (enforced
loosely) that pie menus should have 8 items or less for exactly that
reason.  As far as gears,  I agree that they are great way for users to
interact (at least from the perspective that I've read about them and
imagined it.  No real use in day to day). There was some discussion that
there might be some patent on that type of interaction (marking menus) but
we will leave that for another discussion.
https://www.google.com/patents/US8136045?dq=marking+menus+maya&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SpRaU7qzGrK_sQT_8IKYDA&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAQ

To me, the marginal utility of gears over regular pies is small in the 8
menu items or less scenario.  Since most of our pies are 8 items or less,
the effort to go in and rework them is a hard sell.

Re Tap vs Hold:  Great idea and one that we did explore at length.  I don't
think there is any technical reason why we couldn't do that with current
implementation of pies.  I think we tried it with the mode (TAB) menu and
maybe ran into some stumbling blocks programming wise.  My python API and
general knowledge was a year younger back then so I don't know what exactly
the hold up was.

-Patrick

On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 8:29 AM, Sean Olson <seanolson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm one of the author's of the pie menu addon, and psi-fi is working on the
> implementation in finalized blender.  I don't mind your gearshift idea, and
> it would be possible in the addon to create such a menu.   It might be a
> good idea in menus that have lots of items.  (more than 8).  The reason
> that the daisy wheel is used is because it corresponds directly to the 4
> cardinal directions and the in-betweens.   N, S, E, W, NE, SE, SW, NW.  You
> then can press, hold, and swipe a direction with your mouse.  You don't
> have to read the menu entries at all and you don't have to have any actual
> accuracy.  You don't need to "click" on any particular button - the whole
> screen in your given direction is technically the button.   This makes the
> "daisy" configuration tremendously fast.
>
> I drive a manual stick in America too, and of course you don't use your
> eyes on that either, but the big difference is this: Tactile Feedback.  You
> can feel the gears in place, the position of the stick.   We don't have
> access to this on a screen, so the fallback is to use your eyes to see the
> position.   Of course using your eyes is fine, but it requires more
> precision than to just swipe a direction.
>
> As far as tap vs hold - it's been brought up multiple times in the pie
> menus addon thread.  At first it sounds like a good idea, but how do you
> determine when to do tap functionality and when to do hold?   How many
> miliseconds?  If somebody gets really fast with the pie menu are they going
> to hit the tap functionality by accident?  I'm pretty sure this has been
> discussed here in more detail in this monster thread:
>
> http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?267414-Pie-Menus-(2-66)-Update-01-28-13
>  There might actually be some technical issues in implementing such a
> feature in the addon(Patrick Moore coded that part), but it could fly in
> final version.
>
> -Sean
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 11:54 PM, Jude Jackson <syzygy6 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Well in that case, I'd be interested in a discussion around the idea of
> the
> > gearshift menu itself. Right now, it's sort of assumed that every option
> in
> > the pie menu proposal will be a direction in a big daisy of choices, but
> > that doesn't seem very conducive to an efficient workflow. Personally,
> > maybe since I'm one of the rare Americans who drives a manual
> transmission,
> > my gearshift idea seems intuitive, but I don't know what its limits are.
> It
> > might work well with 2-8 options, but beyond that it might be too clunky
> > (of course, it's not like a big daisywheel stands much better).
> >
> > Anyway, a couple other keys that could be expanded:
> >
> > *A* - Macro selections (select all, select none, select all of X type,
> > deselect X type)
> > *C, B* - Condense into a single key, add circle select, box select, lasso
> > select, &c.
> > *H* - Hide, hide group, hide everything else
> > *O* - Choose proportional editing falloff (or disable)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:07 AM, Bol Bib <bollebib at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I think they're still implementing the pie menus
> > >
> > > They have been in the release notes off and on for a few times now
> > >
> > > they need to be worked on some more,I guess.
> > >
> > > > Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 20:42:44 -0400
> > > > From: syzygy6 at gmail.com
> > > > To: bf-funboard at blender.org
> > > > Subject: [Bf-funboard] Converting toggle buttons to pie menus
> > > >
> > > > There was some talk for a while about introducing pie menus to
> Blender,
> > > > which to my knowledge never really got off the ground. I'm just going
> > to
> > > > throw this out, since it's a way that pie menus could be implemented
> to
> > > add
> > > > functionality without changing any current use.
> > > >
> > > > Just for example, we have tab to switch the 3D viewport between the
> > > current
> > > > and the last-used mode. That's fine, but if you hold tab all it does
> is
> > > > rapidly flash between the Object and Edit modes as fast as your
> > computer
> > > > can accept input. My proposal is to add to that: If you tap tab, it
> > would
> > > > still switch to the last-used mode, but if you *hold* tab, it could
> > pull
> > > up
> > > > a pie menu giving you access to all of the available modes. Simply
> move
> > > > your selection to the preferred mode and release tab to select (note:
> > the
> > > > last used mode would always be in the center, so tapping tab would
> have
> > > the
> > > > same function).
> > > >
> > > > http://i.imgur.com/Rd7W0AZ.png
> > > >
> > > > I haven't tried prototyping this so I don't know how it would feel
> best
> > > to
> > > > use, though I imagine that for menus that would be frequently used,
> and
> > > > require more than four options, a gear-shifting menu would work
> better
> > > than
> > > > a big multi-pronged daisy menu; it's easier to make simple
> directional
> > > > gestures with the mouse than to move it in a very precise direction.
> > This
> > > > same type of system could be added to other keys, providing more
> > > > functionality on fewer keys without being more difficult to use.
> Well,
> > in
> > > > theory anyway, I haven't tested it so I wouldn't know.
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