Thanks for your feedback!
On Wed, 2016-11-16 at 09:55 +0100, Sebastian Zartner wrote:
It took a bit, though here's my feedback. Generally the mesh gradient tool already works very well. So, congratulations and thank you a lot for that!
Though I have several smaller and bigger remarks on it:
- Double-clicking path with gradient tool selected causes program
crash If you select the gradient tool and double-click a path to devide a row or column, the program crashes.
Will fix.
- Toggling sides between beziers and lines or making them elliptical
deselects them When multiple corner nodes are selected and you toggle the sides between beziers and lines or make them elliptical, the selection of the nodes is removed. I'd expect the selection to be kept.
Will try to fix but not high priority at the moment.
- Edges display update delayed
While dragging around the nodes the display of the mesh is updated immediately, though the display of the mesh sides is updated with a delay. It would be better UX if they were updated instantenously
True. But may not be trivial to fix.
- Alt+B doesn't work
The shortcut Alt+B to toggle the selected sides doesn't seem to work.
Will try to fix.
- Hard to distinguish nodes and handles
With the only difference being the form of the node, corner nodes and bezier handles are hard to distinguish. A different color for corner nodes (like within the vector tool) would improve that.
Do you mean the Node tool? (Gray for nodes. Clear for handles?)
- Hard to associate handles with nodes
When bezier handles are near to each other it is hard to distinguish which one belongs to which corner node. Therefore bezier handles and their related corner nodes should be connected through a line like it's done within the vector tool.
I am working on a solution where hovering over a corner node will temporarily highlight the associated handles. Drawing lines doesn't work well when the mesh is dense. Jabier has a branch that changes the color of the handles for selected corner nodes. If I recall correctly (I am having trouble compiling it now) it worked well for sparse meshes but not well for dense meshes.
- Dividing rows/columns requires a corner node to be selected
To devide a row or column through a double-click requires at least one corner node to be selected. This is an unnecessary restriction and should be lifted.
This is a bug. It appears that the first click of the double-click often deselects the object and the second click reselects it.
- Snapping and preserving angle via Ctrl or Ctrl+Alt doesn't work
The status message says that Ctrl allows to snap the angle and Ctrl+Alt to preserve the angle while editing the mesh (like within other tools), though they don't work.
These are unimplemented features. The message should be commented out.
- Status message wrong regarding Ctrl+Shift
The status message says that Ctrl+Shift allows to scale around a center, though this doesn't apply to mesh gradients, or does it?
Again, an unimplemented features. The message should be commented out.
- Mesh tool is separate from other gradients
The mesh gradient tool is just another type of gradient, so it should be part of the existing gradient tool instead of having a separate button within the toolbar.
This will be hard to do. The editing the mesh gradient acts quite differently from the linear and radial gradients.
- Linear and radial gradient tool allows to change mesh gradients but
not vice versa When the linear and radial gradient tool is selected, you can also change mesh gradients, but when the mesh gradient tool is selected, you cannot edit linear or radial gradients. This inconsistency should be removed, i.e. you should always be able to edit the gradients. This goes hand in hand with the above idea of integrating the mesh tool into the existing gradient tool. (This also applies to conical gradients.)
This may be possible but may require a lot of work.
- Replacing mesh gradients by another gradient type requires to
switch to Fill and Stroke Unlike when switching between linear and radial gradients, to replace a mesh gradient by another gradient, you need to switch to the Fill and Stroke dialog. This is another part of integrating the mesh tool into the existing gradient tool. (This also applies to conical gradients.)
Will study.
- Creating a mesh requires dragging
To create a mesh you need to drag the mouse a little. It would be better if a simple click would create a default mesh (spanning over the whole bounding box of the object) and dragging would allow to put up a mesh like creating an object.
Double clicking also creates a mesh. There was a reason a single click doesn't work... I don't remember at the moment why.
- Clicking inside object hides mesh
The display of the mesh gradient is toggled when clicking inside the related object. This is different to the behavior of linear and radial gradients, which stay visible when clicking into the object. This is also an issue regarding the separation of rows and columns via double click, because the mesh gets hidden afterwards.
Will study.
- Toggling tensor points only switches the colors of the selected
corner nodes to a mixed color (there are no tensor handles) There are no tensor handles displayed on Alt+G. The only thing I see is that the colors of the selected corner nodes get a mixed color applied. (Though I'm not sure how this feature is expected to work.)
Enabling tensor points adds four new handles to each patch that control how color flows inside the patch. They should not be effecting the corner node color.
Tensor points will be disabled. They were an experimental feature.
- Color sampling hard to understand without example
Picking the colors from underneath the mesh is a very cool feature, though it took me a bit to understand how it works. I'm not sure whether this can be removed in the UI, but this should at least be described in more detail within the wiki.
Will update the description (but low priority at moment).
- Show shortcuts in button tooltips
Several buttons within the mesh toolbar have shortcuts applied. Those shortcuts should be displayed within their tooltips.
Will do (but low priority at moment).
For what it's worth, I tested the 64-bit version on Windows 7.
Thanks again for this great tool! I really hope mesh gradients get traction among the browser vendors!
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
Tav
Sebastian