On 01-02-12 19:00, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
... I was thinking about the tiling thing for some time and I came to a conclusion that usability-wise the tiling dialog is a cruel joke (adjusting numbers by trial and error? seriously?). Manipulating the tiling should be done on the canvas using control points. We need an additional tool, Tiling, that would have 2 modes:
Can't wait :)
... The controls bar would contain a dropdown for the symmetry type with icons that illustrate what they mean.
It would be great if the symmetries could also be chosen on-canvas, at least to some degree. You already have the "control points", if we could select a control point and say that it should be a center of rotation of order 2/3/4/6 and/or select an "axis" and specify that it should adhere to reflection or glide reflection, then I think it should be possible to generate all 17 wallpaper groups intuitively, without actually having to memorize them, consult a cheat sheet, or even knowing that they exist. Also, if you want to have paths with certain symmetries, then it becomes even more logical to be able to control symmetries through control points/lines on the canvas.
The main catch is that obviously not all combinations are possible, and that control points could not be placed at arbitrary positions. So this would likely require a fair amount of "guides" to be placed. If you're interested, I would be willing to help figure out what would be needed (what control points/line we would need to support, what combinations are possible, what positions they can have, etc., etc.), and possibly make some mockups.