Insert Item .. Smart?

Development Feature discussions
1

Hi!
As you probably know I’ve been working lately on improve the splinepoint tangents handling. Now the tangents can be separtated/merged in radius and in angle individually, giving to the user more flexibility at the design time.

As consequence of this, the insertion of a new splinepoint in the middle of a bezier section has been improved as well, allowing to keep the shape of the original curve.

With this improvement, the “Insert Item (Smart)” action always modify the tangent’s radius of the surrounding splinepoints.

See it in action in this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=LBUmEJKY4-s

But since the comment from Jcome on G+ about the lack of meaning of the “Smart” word in the action definition, I been thinking on the meaning of that word and why was there.

The action of insert one item was called smart because it add the needed off/on waypoints on the List to not remove or insert a new splinepoint if we are in animation mode and the point is currently going from ‘off’ to ‘on’. I think that the “Smart” word doesn’t refer to the fact of keep shape or not.

On the other hand, there is one action defined called, “Insert Item” that doesn’t perform those kind of off/on insertions, but that action is hidden by definition and only used by the other action.

Now that I’ve reworked the “Insert Item (Smart)” and now it inserts the item in the smart way and also keep the shape, it becomes that there are four possibilities of insert one item in a dynamic list:

  1. Insert Item not smart and not keep shape
  2. Insert Item smart but not keep shape
  3. Insert Item not smart but keep shape
  4. Insert Item smart and keep shape

Currently there are actions to do the 1) and the 4) versions but I wonder if it is worth to create, rework the actions to make possible to perform the tasks of the points 2) and 3).

So, do the user need the four possibilities? :question:

Another doubt is the naming of the actions:

That’s my proposal.

  1. “Insert Item Simple”
  2. “Insert Item Smart”
  3. “Insert Item Simple (Fit)”
  4. “Insert Item Smart (Fit)”

Opinions please.
-G

2

Thanks, Now I get it.

Are there any reasons to expose 1),2),3) to end users? or any use cases for these three options, since the 4) is good enough.

This is similar to Advanced Outline Layer and Outline Layer, as a user point of view, I would prefer to just keep the most advantage one, at least on the UI.

3

The problem with only expose version 4) to the user is that it always splits the tangent radius of the neighbor spline points and modify the closer tangent, always reducing its length. In certain cases, the use might have those parameters already animated or simpy doesn’t want them to be modified.

I have to confirm it but the Smart operations are only made if you’re in animation mode, so then we can reduce to two options, 1) and 4)

My proposal is to simply have 1) “Insert item (Smart)” and 4) “Insert item & keep shape (Smart)”.

I know the second is long but the better explained it is the easier to understand.
-G

4

Do you think we can remove the word “smart”(for menu only as we did for duck->handle) :

Insert item and Insert Item & keep shape

5

“Smart” somehow indicates that the insertion of the item acts differently in animation mode than in not animation mode.
I have not preference o remove or keep it if it is clear what each action do.
-G

6

I’m with jcome here, smart doesn’t explain what the feature actually do. Insert item and Insert Item & keep shape is precise and self explanatory.
Also using only 1 & 4 is enough. We have to walk a line between being as feature rich and as user friendly as possible.

7

Ok, I’ve included two possible actions:
“Insert Item”
“Isert Item & Keep Shape”

Both are internally “Smart” (add on/off waypoints when invoked in animation mode).

-G