[ptx] thoughts for hugin UI, post 0.5

[Rob Park]

On 5/26/05, Jim Watters <jwatters at photocreations.ca> wrote:
> I prefer 6 over 5.  The layout is more readable.  The only thing I would
> change is to right justify the labels of horizontal, vertical and so
> forth down to compression. 

The GNOME HIG is not clear on this point. From what I understand, it
says to left-align them if each label is similar in length, but to
right align them if they vary in length quite a bit. Supposedly
left-aligning them makes it easier to scan over them. I'll try it
right aligned.

> Tijmen wrote:
> >Technically there is no need to put parameters that belong to the same thing
> >together. This is a fault made in many UI's.
> 
> I have to agree that GUI must be separated from the application layer.
> But saying that, depending on the engine there will be separate
> functions that are available.  Currently Hugin does not have a setting
> for color correcting images but that will only be available if
> PTStitcher is chosen.  There is no saying what new things that may be
> added to Nona.   No control should effect values or control above it, so
> the choice of stitch should be near the top of the list and I believe a
> separate item.

Well, the field of view and projection will apply to any stitching
engine, and they also have effect on the preview window, that was the
justification for having that at the very top, and I think that's a
good spot for it... nothing below it will disable it.

However, this is what I understand will disable other entries:

 - setting "engine" to "PTStitcher" will disable "Soft Blending"
 - setting "format" to anything but "JPEG" will disable "compression" (I think?)
 - setting "format" to anything but "TIFF" will disable "soft blending"
 - "soft blending" should also be disabled if enblend isn't installed.

So I think we're pretty good as far as "widgets can only disable
widgets below them"

> I am not sure of the purpose of "Use the custom settings above:" except,
> may be to save different settings as presets.

Yup. It has a list of commonly used presets including: 

"a high quality TIFF file" (selects TIFF, enables soft blending)
"a high quality JPG file" (selects JPG, 90% compression)
"a draft quality JPG file" (selects JPG, image is 1024px wide)
"a layered TIFF file" (selects multiple TIFF output. (huh?))
"a layered Photoshop file" (switches it to PTStitcher).

oh... LOL... I just noticed that if you set it to PTStitcher, it
changes all the options there. So that explains what douglas was
talking about when he said that new6 isn't really possible, because
switching it to PTStitcher is going to have to add a ton of widgets
into it. Bleh.

Thinking about it now, do we really need PTStitcher at all? As far as
I know, enblend does a better blending job, but the only advantage of
PTStitcher is that it does exposure correction, although I've never
gotten good results from that (the result is always far superior to
get the exposure correct in the camera than to rely on software to fix
it).

I say, for the sake of UI simplicity, we either drop PTStitcher
entirely, or hide the whole stitching engine selector in a preferences
window, default it to nona, and allow us to keep the nice and simple
Stitcher pane.

What does everybody think of that?

Thinking about it a bit, the preferences window should have a new tab
for nona and a new tab for PTStitcher, and then crazy stuff like
"interpolator" could be moved there. Does anybody even know what the
interpolator does? I don't, and I don't think it's important enough to
have it right there on the stitcher window.

We should strive to make it so that no matter what stitching engine is
chosen, the UI of the Stitcher tab shouldn't change like it does now
(oh god, and I thought it was bad before, with PTStitcher chosen it's
even worse). Consistency is paramount.

>  If this is the case, then
> I would put this back to the top. 

Yeah, not a bad idea. But the "Stitch" button has to stay at the bottom.

> Change it to something like "current
> settings" or "my saved settings" and a button to save new or modified
> settings and a button to delete existing settings.

I'm not sure about this... I can't do it, that would require a lot of
extra functionality added to hugin itself, much deeper than the purely
cosmetic makeover I'm attempting to give it.

>  The reason to put it
> to the top is, a change in this drop down will effect all other
> controls.  Changing a control should not change any values or controls
> above it.

Yeah.

-- 
Urban Artography
http://artography.ath.cx