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Author Topic: Editor Enhancement  (Read 11197 times)
Offline (Male) Goombert
Posted on: September 07, 2015, 08:11:23 pm

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So we are all aware of the traditional GM style editors:



We are all very comfortable with this to some degree, you save in the top left etc etc. But there's a problem here.

The tool bar buttons are never aligned with the content being edited. I propose that for LateralGM we move all the side panels on the room editor, path editor, sprite editor, and background editor to the right instead of the left.



With this change all of the toolbar buttons are properly aligned with the content area and requires less mouse dragging to click. What does everyone think about doing this? Since I realized this I've really come to like the idea. An alternative would be to move the toolbar in the content area (but this is gross if we keep it the edit panel on the left because I'm used to save being in the top left of the window). The other alternative is to simple right align the toolbar (though this also moves the save button to where you wouldn't expect it to be). Please let me know what you all think if I don't get enough feedback I may just end up doing this anyway.

The alternative looks like the following. To eliminate the whitespace we could put the save button in the bottom left like it is on the font editor and object editor then move the toolbar into the content area. I don't like this though because I am really used to the save button being in the top left.


As a preference it could also move the tree. The IDE would be either left or right oriented.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2015, 11:24:52 pm by Robert B Colton » Logged
I think it was Leonardo da Vinci who once said something along the lines of "If you build the robots, they will make games." or something to that effect.

Offline (Unknown gender) Darkstar2
Reply #1 Posted on: September 07, 2015, 11:28:35 pm
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My take on this:
Moving to content area, bad idea, your alternative, bad idea.

Moving the panels to the right, sounds like a good idea to me, cleaner, although if I have to be honest, I wouldn't mind left or right OR you could convert the LGM into a ribbon interface LOL !  ;D  (kidding !  ::)
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Offline (Unknown gender) TheExDeus
Reply #2 Posted on: September 08, 2015, 06:00:31 am

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Can't you just make everything draggable so people can decide?
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Offline (Unknown gender) egofree
Reply #3 Posted on: September 08, 2015, 06:03:29 am
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Hi Robert,

I think the best solution would be to let the user choose where he wants the panel. In modern IDE, usually it's possible to do it. For instance, in Eclipse, you can drag and drop the panel and dock it where you want. Now i don't know if it can be easily done right now with LateralGM. But we know that you've worked on this : http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=2571.0 (oracle contributor).
« Last Edit: September 08, 2015, 06:58:30 am by egofree » Logged
Offline (Male) Goombert
Reply #4 Posted on: September 08, 2015, 07:12:45 am

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Darkstar2, yeah pretty much. I don't want it in the content area it has too many buttons to be there and it makes the frame not compact as easily from the right.

TheExDeus, yeah I could do that if we REALLY wanted to, I could just port my docking library I just wrote on GitHub. However I've come to not even like docking managers and I feel they just make a cluttered UI. I never dock things in programs, I leave the tree on the right in Visual Studio and the tree on the left in Eclipse, doesn't bother me. Only thing I care about is having my tree and my class hierarchy, but the class hierarchy is on every object frame in LGM/GM so that's not really needed. I've considered ways to just combine the search results tree with the normal tree too, I am not sure about doing it yet, probably not going to.

egofree, yeah. For reasons above I don't want LGM to have full docking, I feel like it makes a cluttered UI. At this point in time I'd like to just go with a simple preference that makes the layouts of all the editors right oriented instead of left oriented. The only thing I personally care about is that the save button on editors stay in the absolute top left position of the frame (I've grown used to it being there).

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I think it was Leonardo da Vinci who once said something along the lines of "If you build the robots, they will make games." or something to that effect.

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