Synfig Project Forum

Oh... I forgot to mention: since normal tool cannot have options, incorporating transform into normal means that smoothmove has to be left out.

I'm quite happy that you are working on this! It will hopefully ease usage of Synfig.

For Shortcuts I'm voting for the ones proposed by Genete.

If not possible to incorporate smooth move tool that's alright. With this system basic manipulation is handled by one tool. Smooth move is a little bit different and not as straightforward in function as the basics so it's alright to have a separate tool for that.

For being able to use the different modes only by keyboard modifiers I think this is not so good.
People will be confused and not find how to manipulate their objects. I think there should be tickboxes where you can set the tool in different modes. It will probably be just for newcomers but for those I think it will be a help.

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Synfig scripts, etc.

Yes, good idea, glad to see you're working on this. I think Genete's proposed bindings seem sensible.
Having keyboard constraints in the shape creation tools sounds like an interesting idea (though I'm not sure that I'd ever use them!)
My only concern is that the gui needs to remain intuitive - I agree with Rylleman.. I'm thinking of new users who've just fired up the program, as well as people who switch between programs a lot and can never remember the keyboard shortcuts. So my question... Are the the rotate and scale (and smooth move) tools going to remain in the toolbox alongside the new all-in-one transform tool? Or is there some way to make the keybindings evident without having to look them up in the manual?

Another thought, I can see this as a first step towards having control handles (which was talked about a few posts up)

Current master branch has incorporated the new Transform Tool code by nikitakit.
Although it is a development version I encourage people that knows how to build Synfig Studio to try to use that version in production. Ubuntu 9.10 users can follow the tutorial I wrote to build and locally install Synfig using the master branch in git repository Read it here.
We need some feedback to find any possible bug or improvement. Thanks!

-G

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Hi all!

What a great improvement on the "Normal tool", I love it, it makes it more intiutive to work with However the short cut for "scale" does not work on my mac build (alt-button), is it a bug or do I have to use some other key instead of alt since I'm on a mac?

regards / Ulrik

There must be something that has to be coded. Probably something has been missed. In which other part of Synfig Studio under mac is used the ALT key and it is working? maybe we can steal the code from there. Did/Does it work with other tool?

And just for help to the mac community, maybe possible that you retry to follow the current build instructions and correct whatever you see wrong in them? I know that it is tedious and not easy because dooglus helped you once to solve some build issues but you know that we haven't a mac to test those build instructions, so only lucky people like you can keep the hope

-G

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Hi my friend! Well I have to investigate the alt function on osx for other functions, I'm not animating much at all for the moment but I'll dive in to it from time to time. I am indeed interested and willing to help with the mac build, I just wish I understand more of what I am doing, I will dive in to that too when time permitts.
I hope you're okey Genete and I'm very glad to see you from time to time on different forums!

I'm very busy as well and trying to keep the Synfig hope alive! I'm glad to have news from you too. I don't have so many news or post from you either. I'm sure that you're fine
-G

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The last changes that has been introduced by nikitakit in the unification of the Translate, Rotate and Scale tools into the Normal tool still having some things to fix. The current master version allows to reach the null state tool when you change the layer selection. This null tool shouldn't be reached never because it cannot have options. It was the old Normal tool.
I asked him to fix the code to return to normal tool when the layer selection changes instead of return to the null tool.
The changes that he has made are in the nikitakit_ducks branch and they works as expected.
But before apply to master I've noticed that it is possible to continue going to null state by pressing the STOP button or the ESCAPE key.
Fix those last bugs is very easy, but I would like to do it right.
This is the chart for the current tool event handling:


As you can see there are some tools that still allowing to reach the null tool after pressing the STOP button.
I have the followings doubts:

1) When you change the layer selection some layers return to Normal tool and some other don't. Why? Which one should do that and which one don't and for which reason?
2) The STOP button is obviously a reason to leave the current tool and reach the normal tool. Should be disabled in some tools? why?
3) It seems that the BLine tool was born with the STOP button enabled but used to reset the bline creation. For that usage it is already a button in the Tool Option panel (the clean icon). It is worth to keep it or can the STOP button allow to return to Normal tool? Same comments to Polygon.

I would like to listen users opinion on that.
-G

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Also, I think that Rotate tool and Scale tool should return to the toolbox.
I think that a new user should have the option to have a tool that works as the old style although once the user masters his abilities the usage of the Normal tool will be increased.

What do you users think on this?

-G

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I second that!

G.

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1) That is a special feature, previously known as "egress_on_selection_change". (I have replaced the egress part with entering the normal state). It is enabled on all of the object-creation tools, probably with the idea that when you change the selection, you will want to edit those layers rather than (for example) creating another BLine.
2) I guess the rest of the tools deserve to react to the stop button as well.
3) I believe that in all drawing tools except polygon and BLine, the layer is created as soon as the user lets go of the mouse. Thus, there's isn't much for a stop button to do. On the other hand, being able to cancel BLine construction with the escape key is handy. Maybe have it clear the canvas on the first stop event, and return to normal if it's already empty?

Just to be clear, the so-called "null state" in my latest commit is really the normal state. All keyboard shortcuts should work as expected. The actual problem is that the toolbox refresh event is never called. I could either use the same minor hack as with the selection change (a quick solution, though I think it causes the normal state to reinitialize over the same chunk of memory) or add a refresh function to the normal state that will be called from the state manager (this will require modifying ETL, but all states except normal would return to the way they were before I decided to mess with everything).

So I propose to modify this code for all the tools except BLine and Poly:


with


Does it make sense?

-G

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I third that.. besides helping beginners, another reason, when you've got a heavy scene and the computer is becoming slow, it might good to be able to select rotate and scale tools first, incase the computer is too slow to respond to the key presses.

I've got a computer again, and I just tried the new combined transrotascale.. very nice, thanks )

One quirk to report, sometimes the ctrl and art keys are "sticky" and it stays on rotate / scale, and other times it doesn't (personally I prefer when it doesn't)