Aven Bug (well, interface issues at least)

[Olly Betts]

On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 12:16:39AM +0800, Matthew Ryan wrote:
> 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.

Yes, that's bad.  Clicking on a tree entry should do the same thing as
navigating to it with the up/down cursor keys.

> 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?

I find it annoying sometimes, but assumed it was mostly because I was used
to the old behaviour.  If it's genuinely unintuitive, perhaps it needs a
rethink.

> 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.

It's also annoying to measure from a station in the tree to one in the
window.  You have to click on the one in the window, then measure to the
one in the tree.  Sometimes I find that unnatural.

> 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.

Right click to centre makes intuitive sense to me - right button drag
pans the view, and "centre on station" is really "pan so that this
station is in the centre of the window".

Then right-click on the tree would centre, with a keyboard shortcut
too (enter perhaps).  Enter currently does something rather odd, and
certainly not intended or useful.

On a related note, someone on the Dachstein expedition failed to find
the measuring line feature until I showed him how to work it - it's not
obvious if you don't know where to look, and he (not unreasonably)
expected it on a "Tools" menu or similar.

> 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.

You can also drag the scalebar to the cave, though there's no "put it
back where it should be" feature yet.

> The shortest distance between two legs would
> presumably be an easier implementation and is what we normally want to know.

Is the more general solution ever useful?  If not, closest approach would
probably be a much simpler to use feature.  I'd imagine the measuring
line would look similar, but the ends would migrate along legs/stations
connected to the current station/leg.  If the measuring line is in a
tools menu, there can be a "measure closest approach" tool too.

> 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.

That's only not shown due to wanting to keep the window size down, and
being usually less useful than the other info.  The displayed info is
actually calculated from the (x,y,z) distances.

The experimental Survex 1.2 branch currently puts this info in a status
line along the bottom of the screen - see the bottom right of this:

http://www.survex.com/~olly/lech.png

The search is on the menu bar here, so the left panel only holds the
survey tree, which I think is an improvement, especially if you have
a small screen.

I'm hoping we'll have a test version of Survex 1.2 released for people
to play with soon.  Mark is currently working on getting it to build on
Windows

> 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.

It would be much appreciated if you did.  I'm off to Mulu for a month
in less than two weeks and have a load of paid work to get done first,
so I doubt I'll be able to do much Survex work for a little while.  I
hope to get another release done before I go - there are a few minor
changes since the last one.

Cheers,
    Olly