On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 17:17, Alan Horkan wrote:
if the underlying infrastructure is already there then I would encourage you to add Menu items first which is relatively easy compared to adding a proper layers dialog.
Well, we won't have "layers" per se -- the "layers" dialog would just display a tree of SPItems. Layers are groups are layers, the only difference being maybe the flag I mentioned in the article which determines some details of selection behavior (layer-like versus group-like).
I would suggest it would look roughly like this
Layer New Layer Ctrl+Shift+N Duplicate Layer Delete Layer
Arrange Bring to Front Ctrl+Shift+] Bring Forwards Ctrl+ Send to Back Ctrl+Shift+[ Send Backwars Ctrl+[
View (this one you might leave out) Current Only All None Hide
Merge Down Merge Visible Flatten
Layer Properties *
We already have nearly all of these operations (which apply to anything, not just layers).
"merge down" and friends, however, might be useful to have for groups in general somehow.
- (at the very least this would put up a dialog allowing you to rename the
layer/group id)
That's already part of the object properties dialog.
We are missing a couple things, though, aside from the dialog:
* SPDesktop needs to keep track of one SPObject as the current "edit root" (in which its tools create shapes) -- it would of course default to the top-level SPRoot.
* the various drawing tools need to be modified so they create their objects under their associated SPDesktop's "edit root"
("edit root" of course roughly corresponding to the traditional notion of "current layer")
-mental