graft, flatten, reverse, simplify icons

Just a slight annoyance but I think the zoom scale to which these icons appear / disappear is a little off, like a wheel spin or two off, I keep forgetting i have things grafted ect. Any one else feel this way? Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Rhydro on August 14, 2012 at 1:32am

Yeah, I feel this way too !

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Heumann on August 14, 2012 at 1:46am

thirded. Can it at least be a preference, or set in one of the settings XMLs, if you don't want to change the default?

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Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on August 14, 2012 at 2:00am

I concur

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Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on August 14, 2012 at 3:07am

Perhaps color wires near connections could be other solution and you don't need huge components over there...(red, blue and green).

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 14, 2012 at 11:27am

Ah, I forgot to make them fading as well. They should appear/disappear at the same threshold as the nicknames and icons. I'll try and fix it for the next release.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

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Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on August 14, 2012 at 11:49am

thanks

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Permalink Reply by Pieter Segeren on August 14, 2012 at 1:40pm

Yes, me too. I do like that they are vector based now.
Would it be possible to not fade them ever, I think I would still recognize these icons (and the component icons too) if they were tiny. At least I would have a hint that there's something there.

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 14, 2012 at 4:07pm

I have to fade out stuff for two reasons:

display speed
drawing errors

the more vectors I need to draw on the canvas the longer a frame refresh will take. When a lot of components are on screen I need to start dropping shapes or the redraw will become dog-slow. Also, GDI+ doesn't like drawing very small or very large things. Sometimes there are cryptic errors (usually Out Of Memory errors, even though that's clearly a lie) when drawing subpixel shapes. I can probably replace the actual icons with just single colour dots or something to indicate that something is there and only when the dots get smaller than 1 pixel actually stop drawing them as well.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

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Permalink Reply by Pieter Segeren on August 15, 2012 at 2:36pm

Thanks for your answer David, I think I got the essence of your explanation ~.

I have a feeling (I wouldn't know) that a preference setting for switching to bitmap or vector icons won't be achievable or miss its goal (speed). But since I'm not printing or projecting GH with a beamer (that was the aim of the vector icons, or?), I have to ask.
(I'm going to be away for some days and won't be able to reply, if necessary.)

Thanks for the dots response. That would be nice.

Kind regards, Pieter

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 15, 2012 at 5:34pm

Vectors look better when zooming in or in hi-res export images. It doesn't matter much performance wise.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Heumann on August 17, 2012 at 10:05am

It would be awesome if we could migrate to vector component icons eventually for the same reason. Especially with the seeming push towards HiDPI devices...

As I understand it, when you're drawing vector graphics on the GH canvas you're actually writing code for each shape, fill, and stroke. Is there an easy (and fast) way for you to render elements from an existing vector file like an SVG or something?

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 17, 2012 at 10:22am

I can certainly make a vector file interpreter and draw icons as vectors. However a lot of icons have some quite tricky elements such as odd fills and transparencies. Not to mention drop-shadows. Providing a vector icon mechanism is a possibility, but I'm not planning it soon.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia