Hi Thorsten,

finally a response from me, too. ;) Since Bulia already replied to pretty much everything you said/asked, I will just make a few general comments, trying to sum it up.

I think I can understand your concerns very well, since until rather recently I shared your attitude. My first brainstormed attempt for a proposal used an approach very similar to yours. I asked myself who would use this tool and tried to tailor it to this target audience. The result was something which would probably have been quite usable, but mostly for people who want to draw 2-point perspectives with a horizontal horizon. Users who are interested in more complicated and/or unusual things like the second picture on the website could certainly use it, too, but with a lot more inconvenience since they would have to start with the restricted case. On the other hand, the more general 3D tool can with minimal overhead be made behave like one that was specially designed for 2-point perspectives.

Bulia managed to convince me that it is much better to allow for maximal flexibility while preserving maximal simplicity. I think the described tool satisfies this. You can quickly draw any perspective you like. And if you are not perfectly satisfied, you can change it easily. The size of the box can be changed by dragging the corners (which makes them "glide along" the viewpoints, preserving the perspective). On the other hand, the perspective can be changed either by dragging the vanishing points or by dragging the perspective lines themselves.

==> My point was not about a technical limitation, but the common practical approach to drawing in perspective: you draw a box and the VPs remain in your imagination only. The angles of the edges step into the foreground. <==

Hmm, after rereading your email I finally understood your objection. And on second thought I agree that it would probably be good to include an option which allows the user to drag PLs separately, without necessarily moving them together (as would be the case when using the method described in the third paragraph). On the other hand, what you have in mind essentially results in a rotation of the dragged PL around a specific corner and within a plane spanned by two of the VPs. I could imagine that in unusual perspectives it's not totally obvious which one that should be and how the user should be able to change it (in most cases, though, it will be the plane containing the VP for the "up" direction, which lies at infinity in the first picture, as well as the one on the PL being dragged). But I will give that some further thoughts, thanks for the suggestion!

On third thought ;) your desired behaviour can almost be achieved using the method in the fifth paragraph. Just shift-drag the PL to constrain the movement of the VP to the horizon. This adapts the angle at the corner in a way which should be sufficiently intuitive. It certainly also adapts the angle at another corner, but that could be remedied (if required) by dragging the horizon when that is implemented later on (see below).

As far as horizons and similar things are concerned, I agree that they make life much more easier for the average user, and I think we should provide the relevant functionality sooner or later. But in the beginning it is probably best to confine ourselves to the very basics and to make them work/behave properly and intuitively. Later on it's then no problem to add a horizon, make it draggable, restrict the movements of VPs to it, and many more things you could think of. But let's not attack these things before the core tool really works.

Cheers, Max

From MAILER-DAEMON Sun Mar 25 09:24:21 2007

Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 18:24:07 +0200 From: Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@...123...> To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Message-ID: <20070325162407.GB4611@...1413...> References: <46055F5C.4020403@...173...> <20070324185647.GA4642@...1413...> <3c78ff030703241206y1a44bc8clb41f9885c63337b@...401...> <20070324194945.GB4642@...1413...> <3c78ff030703241340i6ab7965bvcad52f0218a2049@...401...> <20070324212942.GC4642@...1413...> <3c78ff030703241449p5ecfa901pc45db28c0f7119a0@...401...> <20070325080322.GA4611@...1413...> <46069D9C.9010503@...173...> MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <46069D9C.9010503@...173...> Priority: normal X-Mailer: Mutt User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) X-Warning: 80.138.82.18 is listed at list.dsbl.org X-Spam-Score: 0.0 (/) X-Spam-Report: Spam Filtering performed by sourceforge.net. See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details. Report problems to http://sf.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=1&atid=200001 Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Illustrations for a planned 3D box tool (SoC) X-BeenThere: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list Reply-To: t_w_@...123... List-Id: <inkscape-devel.lists.sourceforge.net> List-Unsubscribe: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel, mailto:inkscape-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=unsubscribe List-Archive: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=inkscape-devel List-Post: mailto:inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net List-Help: mailto:inkscape-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=help List-Subscribe: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel, mailto:inkscape-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=subscribe X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 16:24:21 -0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Disposition: inline

On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 06:04:44PM +0200, Maximilian Albert wrote:

finally a response from me, too. ;) Since Bulia already replied to pretty much everything you said/asked, I will just make a few general comments, trying to sum it up.

Ok, I see my input has been considered and I look forward to the first prototype ;)