more on extensions
Hi,
A recently added "3D polyhedron" extension is actually more useful than it seems at first site, because it can load arbitrary OBJ files which are basically 3D model objects. Nifty, eh? ;-)
What is not so cool is that users are supposed to provide full path to an OBJ file in a text input box. Is it actually possible to hook an Open File dialog to extensions?
Alexandre
On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 22:28 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
A recently added "3D polyhedron" extension is actually more useful than it seems at first site, because it can load arbitrary OBJ files which are basically 3D model objects. Nifty, eh? ;-)
What is not so cool is that users are supposed to provide full path to an OBJ file in a text input box. Is it actually possible to hook an Open File dialog to extensions?
I guess my question here is I don't understand why this isn't an input extension and it's an effect. It doesn't seem to effect anything on the canvas. Input effects can have preferences also.
--Ted
On Jun 3, 2008, at 7:59 PM, Ted Gould wrote:
On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 22:28 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
A recently added "3D polyhedron" extension is actually more useful than it seems at first site, because it can load arbitrary OBJ files which are basically 3D model objects. Nifty, eh? ;-)
What is not so cool is that users are supposed to provide full path to an OBJ file in a text input box. Is it actually possible to hook an Open File dialog to extensions?
I guess my question here is I don't understand why this isn't an input extension and it's an effect. It doesn't seem to effect anything on the canvas. Input effects can have preferences also.
I'd say "yes" to the first question, and "yes, very much" to Ted's follow up.
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 9:37 AM, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
I'd say "yes" to the first question, and "yes, very much" to Ted's follow up.
Mmm... Which question is the first one? :-)
Also, I'd go further than that. There is an extension called Replace Colors. It seems natural to me to be able to click a button in it and use mouse cursor as a eye-dropper to pick a color from an existing object on canvas (and not figure out exact color or copy/paste it from Fill'n'Stroke dialog) and put it to the first input box automagically. Or should there be a mode in Eye-dropper tool to copy hex value of a color to text clipboard?
Which anyway leaves a question: are standard GTK+ dialogs (open file, pick color, choose font etc.) available from extensions?
Alexandre
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 8:17 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
Also, I'd go further than that. There is an extension called Replace Colors. It seems natural to me to be able to click a button in it and use mouse cursor as a eye-dropper to pick a color from an existing object on canvas (and not figure out exact color or copy/paste it from Fill'n'Stroke dialog) and put it to the first input box automagically. Or should there be a mode in Eye-dropper tool to copy hex value of a color to text clipboard?
Replace colors is just a quick hack. Of course this functionality must be part of the core.
As for copying colors from Dropper, it's already there. Just press Ctrl+C.
On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 15:17 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Which anyway leaves a question: are standard GTK+ dialogs (open file, pick color, choose font etc.) available from extensions?
Well, let me answer that in a couple ways:
-- Yes, the preferences from for all extensions only require returning a GTK Widget. That widget can be constructed anyway that the author deems fit.
-- There is currently no parameter type for "filename". If there was a parameter type for it, it's widget could be a file chooser. I'm a touch uncomfortable with this though, as it seems like in general, if you're dealing with files it should either be an input/output/import type of thing. I realized that we need a way to do multiple files (for things like the "Save As Webpage"), but that's not the case here. What it comes down to for me is: "Yes, it could be easily added, but *should* it be?" I don't see the usecase for it.
--Ted
Ted Gould <ted@...11...> writes:
-- There is currently no parameter type for "filename". If there was a parameter type for it, it's widget could be a file chooser. I'm a touch uncomfortable with this though, as it seems like in general, if you're dealing with files it should either be an input/output/import type of thing. I realized that we need a way to do multiple files (for things like the "Save As Webpage"), but that's not the case here. What it comes down to for me is: "Yes, it could be easily added, but *should* it be?" I don't see the usecase for it.
I think that as far as extensions are concerned, adding possibilities creates the usecases. You never know what extension developpers will come up with.
Here are two possible usecases.
-Extensions like l-system could be much more confortable to work with if it was possible to describe the l-system in a separate file. -Another possibility would be «tile along bitmap» in tile with clone: you select a bitmap, and you do a clone tiling, except that you remove the tiles that correspond to the pixels where the pixmap is white. This one would be a really nice addition to clone tiling.
Neither of these are implementable as import/input things.
Morality: "Yes, we can!"
Oh, and by the way, a "group" or "svg item" parameter type would kick ass too.
Florent
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 6:59 AM, Ted Gould wrote:
On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 22:28 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
A recently added "3D polyhedron" extension is actually more useful than it seems at first site, because it can load arbitrary OBJ files which are basically 3D model objects. Nifty, eh? ;-)
What is not so cool is that users are supposed to provide full path to an OBJ file in a text input box. Is it actually possible to hook an Open File dialog to extensions?
I guess my question here is I don't understand why this isn't an input extension and it's an effect. It doesn't seem to effect anything on the canvas. Input effects can have preferences also.
Well, the point of the current version of the extension, as I see it, is in providing a set of polyhedrons *and* an ability to render arbitrary OBJ files.
Having preview for models with not so many faces is quite cool, but it surely is not so great when one tries to render a huge OBJ file with over 80K faces. A clear case of functionality clash for me. Maybe the current extension should be splitted into an input extension that would handle any OBJ file and a regular render extension that would list just several "presets".
Alexandre
participants (5)
-
Alexandre Prokoudine -
bulia byak -
Florent Becker -
Jon A. Cruz -
Ted Gould