> ... going to a menu, and a submenu to turn on the feature pales
> beside the earlier ability to simply click on the constellation
> button and have the same thing happen.... I wish the preferences for
> these various buttons allowed us to control their effect.
Following up on this, I must admit that I am a little confused about
what is the design philosophy behind the behaviour of the display
pallete buttons in SNP 3.1.1. I guess it would be helpful if one of the
designers stepped forward to explain, because I do find myself expecting
something a little different from what I actually see in many cases.
Let me use Constellations as an example. I understand that most of the
constellation functionality can be accessed through Guides->
Constellations. This is good. (And HUGE thanks for putting the toggle
for the full set of illustrations back in!) Somewhat less functionality
can be accessed through the display palette, and in ways which so far
have proved counterintuitive.
When I click the Constellations button in the palette, what it appears
to do is to turn on "Auto Identify". Indeed, if I then click the widget
left of the constellations button to bring up the constellation settings
dialog (the same dialog brought up by
Guides->Constellations->Constellation Settings...), I see that "Auto
Identify" has been ticked. I can untick it again, and when I close the
dialog the Constellations button will now be off. If I tick, say,
"Stick Figures" instead, when I close the dialog the stick figures do
indeed display, but the Constellations button remains off. Clicking it
.. yes, you guessed it ... turns on "Auto Identify". Clicking it
again simply turns off Auto-Identify again, instead of turning off
display of ALL constellation information. To turn off the stick
figures, I need to access the Guides->Constellations menu again or
re-open the Constellation settings dialog. (Incidentally, this seems to
make the menu item Guides-Constellations->Constellation settings...
menu item at least somewhat redundant, as much of the on/off
functionality is already available in that menu. But you can set label
colors there.)
This is what I see happening. On the other hand, what I would EXPECT to
occur when I access the Constellation Settings, is for those to act not
as as a toggle for display of a particular kind of information, but
rather as preferences for the behaviour of the Constellations button,
which itself simply would toggle display of whatever constellation
information has been set on and off. For example, I could access the
settings dialog, and tick "Stick Figures" and "Auto Identify". Closing
the dialog would not change my display. When I click the display
palette's "Constellations" button, though, the items I had ticked in the
settings palette (Stick figures and Auto-Identify, in this example)
would turn on. When I click the button again, they ALL would go away.
That, to me, is the intuitively expected behaviour.
Maybe this is just me. But I have a similar confusion when it comes to
other buttons in the display palette. Instead of simply toggling the
named items on and off according to whatever settings are currently in
effect, they seem to toggle a limited subset of whatever information it
is possible to display in a given category. Conversely, the "Settings"
dialogs act as toggles. To me, this all seriously limits the utility of
the display palette, and leaves SNP considerably less transparent to me
as a user. Frankly, I don't really understand the motivation for the
display palette buttons to act as toggles for a feature subset. That
functionality is ALREADY easily accessible via the menus, whereas the
ability to globally turn on or off all constellation information at once
is not present at all, as far as I can tell. And I see no utility at
all in having the settings dialogs acts as toggles as well.
[Another example is the Ecliptic button. The button itself seems to
toggle display of the ecliptic grid. To toggle the ecliptic itself, one
needs to access either Ecliptic settings or use the Guides->Ecliptic
sub-menu. There is no way I can find to turn on or off all ecliptic
information at once. I could easily repeat the entire discussion above
for this, and most of the other buttons on the display palette.]
Actually, I just figured out one reason why this HAS been so
disorienting for me: the behaviour I am describing as what I would LIKE
to see is how Starry Night Deluxe USED to behave! (I just checked.)
What was the motivation for the change? I, for one, would rather see
things back the way they were, at least in this department. (Playing
around with Deluxe for a while did really drive home just how much we've
gained in Pro, though!) Or, perhaps the designers can convince me that
the new way of doing things really is best!
This is just me ruminating on a Saturday night as I use this wonderful
program to generate some movies for my courses. You guys work your
fannies off to produce a work that is a wonder to behold -- and use.
But SNP has grown considerably in its feature set (which, don't get me
wrong, I LOVE), and I think some of the growing pains show a little bit.
So I'm doing my level best to be helpful, as someone who loves and uses
this program a great deal. So please, please take all of my bitching in
this spirit.
David Craig
<http://cda.mrs.umn.edu/~dac/>
--
To unsubscribe from this list or to subscribe to other
SPACE.com Canada, Inc. mailing lists please visit,
http://www.starrynight.com/cgi-local/lists.cgi
