For development of a Free gui for Panorama Tools

JohnPW | 5 Jun 2012 04:32

GUI Redesign Questions

Is this the best place to go to get up to speed on the current GUI
Redesign:  ?
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/hugin/+spec/ui-overhaul

Is there a user case, development plan, or other kinds of documents I
can review to understand the goals, intentions, and planning of this
redesign? I'm asking since I'd like to offer relevant feedback and I
don't want to go over "old ground" or be ignorant of previously agreed
upon goals.

I imagine this is probably early days in the the redesign so there is
probably experimentation with the UI. If not, as a newer user (2
years,) for me it seems like the UI might be moving to a bit less
transparent and usable place with this version (using hugin-
mac-2011.5.0.5783_78df15316108.) I'd like to get up to speed and offer
feedback from the POV of, and on behalf of, newer Hugin users. 

Thanks,
John

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JohnPW | 12 Jun 2012 20:03

Re: GUI Redesign Questions

Judging from the resounding silence, I'm guessing my post must be seen
as somewhat offensive, ignorant, presumptuous, or the like (or
possibly the ones who can answer are to tired to respond.) Sorry if
any or all of those are true. I really appreciate the work that has
been done on Hugin and know that the load falls on the small minority
of people who have the knowledge, skills, and motivation to actually
do this challenging work.

I am interested though in the GUI redesign though, so:
Can anyone give, or point me to the basic information on it?
Is the redesign evolving as new approaches are tried, or is it moving
toward a known endpoint?
Is feedback desired on bugs and/or UI function at this time?
Only for Linux/Windows platforms or OS X too?
etc.

Thanks,
John

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Harry van der Wolf | 12 Jun 2012 23:02

Re: Re: GUI Redesign Questions

2012/6/12 JohnPW <johnpwatkins <at> gmail.com>

Judging from the resounding silence, I'm guessing my post must be seen
as somewhat offensive, ignorant, presumptuous, or the like (or
possibly the ones who can answer are to tired to respond.)

No, no, no, no.

Sorry if
any or all of those are true. I really appreciate the work that has
been done on Hugin and know that the load falls on the small minority
of people who have the knowledge, skills, and motivation to actually
do this challenging work.

The launchpad section you point to has been set up by one of us in the community. Everyone waits for him to act first and if that doesn't happen than people forget (at least: that's what I did).

I am interested though in the GUI redesign though, so:
Can anyone give, or point me to the basic information on it?
Is the redesign evolving as new approaches are tried, or is it moving
toward a known endpoint?
Is feedback desired on bugs and/or UI function at this time?
Only for Linux/Windows platforms or OS X too?
etc.

Thanks,
John

The launchpad section has been set up to start is as a structured approach to start the redesign of the Gui. Due to time limits or whatever other (self-imposed) restrictions.
Thomas Modes which is currently and for the past few year our most active and contributing programmer just started and we are now evaluating "as we go". This might not the best approach, but the at the same time we have "the dogma": "if you feel an itch, scratch it."
Your are obviously reading your hugin-ptx mails so I can only advise you to search back and read and if you have feedback, comments, bugs, questions, etcetera, just ask them (like you already did).

I just reread a bunch of mails again and some contain really valuable feedback, some are based on "lesser" experience with the new Gui (but of course just as valuable :) )and need to be categorized and most possibly put under the launchpad topic you are pointing to.
With regard to the feedback for the platforms: All feedback for all platforms is welcome.

And as a last remark to the gui overhaul launchpad topic: That was actually setup to discuss and start a gui based on wx-python, python-gtk, python-QT or something alike. To step away from the C/C++ gui and to switch to an easier to maintain Gui. To really separate the display functions from the calculating functions (C/C++).
Now we simply have the Gui overhaul in C/C++.

Harry

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Bruno Postle | 13 Jun 2012 00:42

Re: Re: GUI Redesign Questions

On Tue 12-Jun-2012 at 11:03 -0700, JohnPW wrote:
>
>I am interested though in the GUI redesign though, so:
>Can anyone give, or point me to the basic information on it?
>Is the redesign evolving as new approaches are tried, or is it moving
>toward a known endpoint?

Both, though although we have tried to define the endpoint in 
discussions in the past, this was never very conclusive.

Most of Thomas' recent work in the gui_overhaul branch is fixing 
longstanding problems that have built up over the years as a result 
of features being added.  New features tend to be minimally 
intrusive so that they don't break everything, but the GUI gets 
inconsistent as a result.

I'm hoping that once a lot of these obvious fixes are cleared up it 
will be easier to get a better idea of where the endpoint should be.

One 'vision' that is being tested at the same time is Pablo's idea 
to turn Hugin inside out, to make it more graphical and interactive 
by making the preview the main application and relegate the tabular 
views in the current main window to secondary status.

The idea here is that Hugin could just be the panorama canvas, where 
you drop photos and see them appear where you drop them, you can 
then drag them around and/or use automatic alignment.  This view of 
the canvas is then where you click on photos to navigate into the 
deeper less graphical parts of the GUI that give detailed control.

There are lots of loose ends here, and maybe the result will be 
something else altogether, but I'm glad to see the effort being 
made.

-- 
Bruno

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JohnPW | 13 Jun 2012 01:02

Re: Re: GUI Redesign Questions

Thanks Harry and Bruno,

I'm glad I didn't cause offense (and don't worry, I took no offense at the initial silence.) I appreciate your explanations and will continue to provide what feedback I can. I'll also go back and make sure I've read all that I can on this and not missed any past discussions.

I'm also glad to hear that the long standing problems are a priority as they are the hardest to fix and the easiest to ignore, but the most important to tackle. All I can say is "Good for Thomas!"

Thanks,

John

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Gnome Nomad | 13 Jun 2012 12:25

Re: Re: GUI Redesign Questions

On 06/12/2012 12:42 PM, Bruno Postle wrote:
> On Tue 12-Jun-2012 at 11:03 -0700, JohnPW wrote:
>>
>> I am interested though in the GUI redesign though, so:
>> Can anyone give, or point me to the basic information on it?
>> Is the redesign evolving as new approaches are tried, or is it moving
>> toward a known endpoint?
>
> Both, though although we have tried to define the endpoint in
> discussions in the past, this was never very conclusive.
>
> Most of Thomas' recent work in the gui_overhaul branch is fixing
> longstanding problems that have built up over the years as a result of
> features being added. New features tend to be minimally intrusive so
> that they don't break everything, but the GUI gets inconsistent as a
> result.
>
> I'm hoping that once a lot of these obvious fixes are cleared up it will
> be easier to get a better idea of where the endpoint should be.
>
> One 'vision' that is being tested at the same time is Pablo's idea to
> turn Hugin inside out, to make it more graphical and interactive by
> making the preview the main application and relegate the tabular views
> in the current main window to secondary status.
>
> The idea here is that Hugin could just be the panorama canvas, where you
> drop photos and see them appear where you drop them, you can then drag
> them around and/or use automatic alignment. This view of the canvas is
> then where you click on photos to navigate into the deeper less
> graphical parts of the GUI that give detailed control.

That part I would like.

> There are lots of loose ends here, and maybe the result will be
> something else altogether, but I'm glad to see the effort being made.

As long as the OpenGL issues are addressed, so using the "panorama 
canvas" as the main interface doesn't fail when something blows up in 
the OpenGL underpinnings. If Hugin can fall back to the Classic (tab 
based) interface in that case, it would still be usable if OpenGL isn't 
working for some reason.

-- 
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gnomenomad <at> gmail.com
wandering the landscape of god
http://www.clanjones.org/david/
http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/
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Tduell | 14 Jun 2012 05:17

Re: Re: GUI Redesign Questions

I'm wondering if the context menu in the Pano Editor window is quite right.

For example, consider the Photos tab. The context menu is the same regardless of the display chosen. The context menu allows one to select 'new lens', but the lens number associated with each photo is only shown in the 'General' display.

I seems to me that it would be more helpful (less confusing?) if the context menu choices only applied to the data that was shown in the particular display choice.

The current arrangement is one that I could work with...it's really just a matter of getting to know your way around.

Cheers,

Terry

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T. Modes | 17 Jun 2012 13:09

Re: GUI Redesign Questions

Hi Terry,

On 14 Jun., 05:17, Tduell <tdu... <at> iinet.net.au> wrote:
> I'm wondering if the context menu in the Pano Editor window is quite right.
> For example, consider the Photos tab. The context menu is the same
> regardless of the display chosen. The context menu allows one to select
> 'new lens', but the lens number associated with each photo is only shown in
> the 'General' display.

You see also the lens number when you group by lenses. In this case
you see the lens number independent of the selected columns.
So it is not so easy to find a logic when each command should be shown
and when not.
Keep also in mind that the context menu is also shown in the optimizer
tab. So you can edit some aspects also there.

So it is a complex issue. And when the context menu is hidden in one
case the next user will complain, why it is not shown in this context.

You can make a proposal. This should take the above mentioned issues
into account. Also it should contain a lot of the context menu items
and not only a single one. Then I can see what is possible.

Thomas

PS: Currently the context menu contains 22 items. Plus 3 fixed items
(link/unlink/edit/select all/unselect all).

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Terry Duell | 18 Jun 2012 01:06

Re: Re: GUI Redesign Questions

Hell Thomas,

On Sun, 17 Jun 2012 21:09:43 +1000, T. Modes <Thomas.Modes <at> gmx.de> wrote:

[snip]
> So it is a complex issue. And when the context menu is hidden in one
> case the next user will complain, why it is not shown in this context.

OK. Clearly there is no simple or straight forward way around this. I  
think I had a feeling it might be like that.
As I said, I can work with it as it is, so it isn't a real big problem.  
For new users, I guess the best thing we can do is provide some good  
tutorials.

Thanks for your response.

Cheers,
-- 
Regards,
Terry Duell

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