Aven Bug (well, interface issues at least)

[Matthew Ryan]

In aven if you click on (or even just pass the mouse over) a station name in
the side panel then the "measure to" indicator will move to the selected
station.  If you use the keyboard to highlight the same station name then
the map will recenter on the station but the indicator will not move.  Seems
very strange.

Somewhat related, we're getting terribly wound up out here that clicking on
a station re-centers the window every time (especially in the survey
window - it would be better if I didn't each have the memory of a goldfish
and forget every time that this is what will happen...)  Does this bother
anyone else?  It's certainly nice to be able to recenter the survey on a
selected station, but most of the time it's not what we want to do and the
survey you're looking at suddenly moves.  Normally we're just trying to find
the name of a station or measure to it.  I know you can do both of these
just by hovering over the station, but it doesn't really feel natural and
sometimes you then want to then be able to move the mouse away again to do
something else.  There's no natural link with centering the window and
starting a measuring line, and you expect neither to happen when you click
on a station.  I'm not sure what the solution ought to be - right click to
center? shift+click to center? ctrl+click to start a measure line? Whatever
fits in with everything else really.

While we're grumbling, and since it would also require a UI rethink in the
same vein, the ability to measure from a station to an arbitary point along
a survey line would be nice, or even between any two arbitary points on
survey lines.  The current solution is to zoom in / rotate appropriately and
move the interesting bit of cave to the scale bar which does at least work
even if it's slightly tedious.  The shortest distance between two legs would
presumably be an easier implementation and is what we normally want to know.

Finally the E/W, N/S and U/D differences are as interesting as the straight
line distances when measuring between points, and it's a pain to have to
calculate them manually.  I know passages don't always run N/S and E/W but
people looking at a survey (well I at least) tend to always think in terms
of x m North, y m West and z m down, rather than a straight line distance
plus bearing and inclination.

I suppose I could get my finger out and have a go at fixing some of this
myself (not that I like GUI programming any more than the next man), but it
would be interesting to know what other people think about things first.

-Matt

--
Matthew Ryan
matt@mdryan.net    <-- Please note my new e-mail address