Talk:Brainstorming/UI

Drawing and measuring guide
That's clearly more for image editing or printing, not for painting; thus it doesn't fit into the current MyPaint goals. maxy 17:48, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

[note] It is necessary to be able to determine the size(format) and the resolution when one paint something who must be printed. The impression(printing) of high quality requires a resolution of 300 dpi. When made an image for one a magazine where a book, we also have to have marks of size(format). The absence of these functions prevent from being able to use the software for the production of works others than numerics.

For the size and format of the image, this is not the best solution. The current status, and a link to the progress on a better one can be found here. For things like having to make certain graphical elements a certain size, that is clearly on the design side of things, and thus not our main focus area -- Jon

For now, an image template with the proper dimensions and can be made in another program and opened later in MyPaint for painting. After painting, the image can be loaded in a image editing program to fix the DPI setting. While I dislike the idea of MyPaint becoming too bloated with uncommon features, you bring up a good point about DPI. It's important to be able to judge how big you need to paint when printing. Although as a rule of thumb, you always create the original too big, so you can scale down to whatever size you need later. For now at least, the workaround I mentioned can be used. -- DementedSnake

- My workaround is a folder in my nautilus favorite named 'Template' where I keep various templates ( ex : a sized full alpha A4, 300dpi with a black mid-transparent 1px outline around ). After open it, I can still change the background color in Mypaint as I want, and keep a 'visual limit'. This is not really long, and good when I need to sketch. Maybe a template system could be integrated with a list of commons size ? A kind of menu 'Templates' behaving like 'Open Recent' ( with a little arrow and a list in a submenu ). For the content of the list, reference/inspiration to what Gimp have as default 'New file template' could be wise... but please don't include as them 'Toilet Paper'. --Deevad 22:55, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

-That's a good idea. I've just not bothered with it and cropped after-the-fact when I needed to. Maybe the template could be another kind of "invisible layer" like the backgrounds are. You just overlay that on the background layer, centered on creation of course, and it has borders to define the image size. Maybe it could even have a little watermark in the top-left corner showing the DPI. I think it'd be trivial to add, plus you have the benefit of having the template repeated. That would make it easier to (for example) draw many pages of a comic in one file. --DementedSnake



Mouse Gestures
No question, mouse gestures are a great way to control MyPaint. I personally use easystroke; gestures are simply mapped to key presses like z for undo or w for picking the context at the cursor. The question is, what are the advantages/disadvantages of implementing them directly in MyPaint? Out of my mind: Maybe some other app/library could be integrated into or coupled tighlty with mypaint? At the minimum, by providing presets that work well with MyPaint. Maybe even bundle them together. I don't like the idea of maintaining a custom gesture recording widget. --maxy 17:33, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * (+) discoverability and setup cost - many users either don't know about this possibility or don't bother setting up an external app
 * (+) pie-menus and the like could be crafted such that there is a natural transition between using the menu and the gesture
 * (-) implementation and maintainance effort for a problem that is already solved (and probably better than we could) by other apps
 * (-) with multitouch technology on it's way, gesture recognition is probably going to be more and more device specific

- Thanks Maxy for point the software 'Easystroke', I didn't knew a solution like this existed for my system. I agree this feature depend more on the operating system with mapped key than for being included in Mypaint. --Deevad 22:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

-Maybe a good compromise would be to add some kind of tooltip or comment when using or installing MyPaint that recommends an open source gesture program that the user can go get and set up independently. That, and add a link to the wiki which shows some examples and a short generic tutorial for using gestures. That way, we can get the idea out there, give some helpful info for setting it up, but not have to deal with maintaining and integrating the code. --DementedSnake

-I just compiled to latest development version and I feel kind of silly now. You were already working on a much better method for controlling the canvas; and it is very nice. I can't believe I overlooked the "hold a button and move the cursor" method. Good work. I'm looking forward to trying this new feature out. --DementedSnake 17:14, 28 Jan 2011 (UTC -0500)

Brush size
-Brush size! Why not add the option to adjust brush size the same way you can zoom (in the GIT dev version), by holding a mouse button and moving the cursor up or down? Brush resizing is certainly one of the most commonly used functions and making it quicker and easier couldn't hurt. (That or maybe to option to assign brush size to the touch ring on the tablet, instead of zoom.) --DementedSnake 11:15 (UTC -0500), 30 Jan 2011


 * -I should note that with current improvements to X11 tablet drivers, assigning an arbitrary keyboard key to your pad's touch ring works correctly, negating the need to have in-program coding for assigning functions to specific tablet buttons. The code for assigning functions to the pen/mouse buttons is still needed, as well as a great idea. But I wonder...X11 might be dieing off soon, will Wayland tablet drivers be ready in time or is Wayland never going to be an issue? --DementedSnake 02:18, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

-Or maybe the option to click one of the mouse buttons to switch between the last two tools used. Ex. Click Button 3 to alternate between Pencil, Eraser, Pencil, Erase, Pencil... Sorry, I'm trying to work on something, but I keep thinking about ideas for MyPaint. --DementedSnake 12:06 (UTC -0500), 30 Jan 2011

- interresting discution about Brushsize ; since Ramon and me create brushkit adapted to the 50% viewport, an option (checkbox?) to decrease _all_ the brush size ( by 2 size ,radius -2 x 0.30 ). Or inverse, to increase the 100% viewport brushkit. Linking zoom and brush size can be an interressant experimental idea, as an option. --Deevad 19:36, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Tablet Button Control
I didn't think this was important enough to make a new section on the actual Brainstorming page, so if it's out of place, forgive me. Is it possible for MyPaint to assign functions to the buttons on a tablet (similar to how you can with mouse buttons) without it interfering with any other programs? I doubt it, but wanted to ask anyway. --DementedSnake 06:16 (UTC -0500), 15 Feb 2011
 * -This is no longer an issue. --DementedSnake 02:20, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this picture above will answer you DementedSnake, and it's a nice feature for the next release :) --Deevad 15:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

-Thanks for responding Deevad. I already know about the new mouse/pen button functions. It's really great! :D I was thinking more along the lines of these. --DementedSnake 12:16 (-0500 UTC), 15 Feb 2011

Online collaboration?
-Hello *_* I'm not sure about online drawing apps, but I tried MyPaint and it was awesome enough offline, I especially appreciate how I had the endless canvas for myself (I tend to paint randomly and the process of adding more size in my other paint programs was tiresome) I tried online drawing like Shi-chan's PaintChat and others, so the idea hit me, is it possible to do it on MyPaint to collaborate with others? (renoa)

- Well, technically it's a possibility; although I don't know how the developers feel about the idea. MyPaint multiplayer (essentially) would be an interesting and fun feature, but it might be hard to implement and maintain. As far as I understand it (and I could be wrong), MyPaint is focused on intuitive and distraction-free painting. It's supposed to be (as far as I know) only about painting/sketching. There isn't even a copy/paste function. So adding in online collaboration might be stepping out of the bounds of this program's purpose. But keep in mind I'm not a dev, so I can't be sure. I will say, however, that artistic collaboration is always fun. It is a good idea, but perhaps not right for this particular program. But if you want, you can see if you can convince the devs to try it out. Just keep in mind they have a few side-projects for MyPaint already and might not want to add in another. --Demented 06:13 (UTC -0500), 27 April 2011

Markup Pie Menus
Edit- I just want to add this link to explain why pie style of markup menus are not the best choice for a quick work flow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtH9GdFSQaw The best example for marking menus is Autodesk Maya, where it doesnt matter if the cursor is on the menu item, as long as it managed to touch it once. See video.
 * -I finally got around to watching the video. This is actually a great solution. It may not be the prettiest, but it works. (It's also a bit like the mouse gestures idea that I had a while ago, so that makes me happy too.) I think a good hovering menu would make use of these marking menu techniques but have a radial menu style. A simple implementation might be to click to initiate a single point, and then the angle (0-360 degrees) the cursor moves next determines the 'activated' menu item, regardless of cursor travel distance. Such a system would also be easy to customize.


 * Thoughts? --DementedSnake 03:25, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Great Selection Feature
-Sorry if I'm being dense, but I'm not sure exactly what this is. Can you elaborate? -- DementedSnake 18:36 (UTC -0500), 28 Feb 2011 -Sure DementedSnake, I've been working on it! I hope you like what I did!

Frame manager and frame editor
-Isn't this essentially the same as cropping? Just that you're doing more than one at a time and saving it? It's an interesting idea, although I don't know if the devs would consider this an editing feature or not. FAQ#2 FAQ#14 All is not lost though. GIMP has as 'export layers to images' plugin you can try. I haven't though, so I can't say if it works or not. If there's any other aspects of this idea you'd like to talk about, feel free to discuss then here. --DementedSnake 09:23, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

TabletPC Menus
When drawing, floating toolboxes and menu bars get in the way. I like the Tooldock idea but having used similar interfaces in SketchbookPro and ArtRage I feel this should not float, it should be docked as this maximises the usable screen area. If it is to float could it (and all other floating windows) disappear when drawing?

I.e. The normal interface exists, but when the pen touches the screen anywhere on the drawing canvas all the floating toolboxes (or even all the toolboxes and menubars) disappear (or fly off the the screen as in OS X when using expose) to make the maximum available space for drawing. When the pen is lifted (i.e. the mouse button is released) the interface elements reappear. To prevent accidental clicking of interface elements when drawing with multiple strokes, the toolbox or menubar that would have reappeared between the cursor and the canvas should not be clickable until the cursor moves off that toolbox (so to select something in that toolbox the cursor should move off that toolbox then return before clicking). Inactive toolboxes could be rendered at 25% opacity to indicate they are inactive and to allow the user to see the part of the drawing that would be edited if they were to recontact the screen without first moving the cursor off the toolbox. Moving the cursor off the toolbox would make the toolbox active and fully opaque like the other elements, until another drawing stroke starts, at which point the toolboxes would again disappear.

The idea being to maximise the drawing space (as tablet screens are small) while keeping all the toolbox elements only one click away. Presently at least two clicks are needed for most toolbox items when using a tablet: one click to show the toolbox, then a second to select the tool, the Tooldock proposed retains this problem for the majority of tools.