Cage tool

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Revision as of 14:41, 18 December 2010 by Guiguru (talk)
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Work in progress on the new cage tool. This is more a description of the solutions model than a true specification.

note to nitpicks: no, the ‘i’s have not been dotted, but usability is up by a factor of 18.

goals

The main goal of this interaction design is to make the mode switch—of either editing the cage (a polygon) or deforming the underlying image—as natural and unnoticeable as possible.

before the polygon

The only user-noticeable state shall be the polygon creation state. Some guidelines:

  • creating the polygon shall be analogous to creating one with the free-poly select tool, including:
    • hit backspace to erase the last created poly-point;
    • adjustment of the position of any poly-point while creating;
    • closing the polygon by hitting return; double-click to create a final poly-point and close; hit the starting poly-point;
  • really, really really check out the spec, source and developer (Enselic) of the free-poly tool to get this right.

after the close

After the polygon is closed, user shall be able to edit any poly-point or deform the underlying image (layer) in any give order, by simply doing it.

image: click here (until Ankh enables file upload)

note: edit handles and edges shown in current experimental and really not working fat-3-pix style: to be solved

The core of the solution is that each poly-point has two handles attached to it:

  1. the edit handle, same as used for creating the polygon;
  2. the deform handle:
    • looks both in shape and in fill color (only black and white allowed, btw. for max contrast) different than the edit handle;
    • the diamond shape (a square, 45° rotated) gives a good shape contrast and move kind of feeling; also only block 1/4 of the edit handle;
    • always positioned on the outside of the polygon, its angle being half the angle that the two edges leading up to the poly-point have.