MindSpace

@yoodoo2

So cool! Shaping up really nicely - thank you for your effort!

Very promising - keep on!

@yoodoo2

Quote:Finally got some time to play with it a bit.

It seems to be evolving quite nicely!

I tried making a small database diagram for a simple MySQL DB I have here. I used the Class object and wanted to write the table name into the top space and the column name list into the bottom, but all I could find was a way to give the object a label, which ended up in the middle. Did I overlook something? Or are those facilities just not there yet?

The same goes for connectors; all I could find was a simple line, no arrowheads or other ending symbols. And a way to snap the line to an object would also be nice. BTW, it is very difficult to adjust a line once it has been created; I could select the line and move it as a whole, but trying to grab one of the endpoints to e.g. shorten or rotate the line made it deselect every time I tried.

I tried an export as PDF using the (old) SVGTools from OS4Depot, that worked fine.

Finally, I'd like to make a wish for an option to run the program on WB instead of on a separate screen (BTW, preferences aren't there yet, right? Otherwise there is something wrong with the menu item, nothing happened when I selected it.)

Maybe you are already aware of these things, if so, I happily await further progress .

Best regards,

Niels

@nbache
Hi Niels - thanks for the feedback.

Text is v limited at the moment; I didn't want to do too much work on this until I've vaguely figured out how to use freetype properly with Cairo. For the moment you could add an "invisible" shape over the top of the other object.

Lines are awful at the moment and connectors non existant. Eventually MindSpace 2 will have the same set of connector features as MS1.

The current build now opens on the Workbench if required, but I'm trying to find a nice way to move and resize the toolbars without havin the huge dragbars that normal windows have. Using WA_ToolBox is great for avoiding losing focus from the main window, but a pain if other messages are actually needed.

@yoodoo2

Cool.

About the toolbars - maybe you should try contacting Broadblues, I believe he went through some of the same considerations with SketchBlock. Whether he found the "ultimate" solution, I don't know, I haven't played that much with SketchBlock recently.

Best regards,

Niels

@yoodoo2

I played with v.0.05 of your program: it looks promising indeed!
Many things still to be ironed out, but it is already good.
Thanks for working on it!

I might have found a little bug: If I select one or more objects, then click on the top toolbar on the right, all selected abject are suddently moved to the top right, if I click on the top toolbar on left, all selected objects are moved to the left.

I had a look at the list of the planned features in the file "readme.txt" and I did not notice something that I use very much in these kind of softwares: the alignment and distribute tools. Would you mind addind it to the wish list?

Another feature that it might be added is the possibility to move selected object with the mouse horizontally or vertically while the shift key is pressed.

One last thing: what about having one window only application instead of multiple windows for the various toolboxes? Is it more or less difficult to implement? I have no idea.
Please have a look at the mockup below: would it be feasible to have multiple documents in one window only using tabbed pages?

@virgola
Align and distribute tools have now been implemented and I've added Single Window mode to the long-term plan.

A new download will be available soon.

@yoodoo2

Fantastic!
Looking forward to try out the new beta!

Thanks for including the one-window mode in your plan!

@yoodoo2


+1 on the thanks & congrats with your continued work!

Seeing this thread my first thought was that it would be great
if Mindspace could be made to work as a default tool for viewing
SVG files. Seems like that should be pretty easy to do.

That got me to wondering: how much work would it be to make an
vector image datatype out of Mindspace's rendering engine?

Thanks again,

PJS

@pjs

Quote:
Chris Young is already working on a vector image datatype superclass:

OpenAmiga link

@pjs
Although MindSpace exports svg, I'm a long way from adding inport support and full svg compliance is a very, very long way off.

As well as Chris' newer efforts, there's an existing svg.datatype on OS4depot (from Salass?) which MindSpace 1 uses for its anti-aliased display.

Work-in-Progress v0.06 of MindSpace 2 is now available from here.

Main additions:
- can open on WB screen
- more flowchart shapes added
- snap-to-grid/show grid
- line shapes more or less work :)
- align, distribute and match size functions added
- a few bug fixes

Readme.txt

All feedback welcomed as always.

@yoodoo2

Just tried v0.06: MindSpace is coming along very nicely!
Bravo!
Thank you for implementing the align function, very helpful.

Is it possible to donate something to show some appreciation to your work? How can I do that?

I tested a lot the current version, please, find some notes.

toolbar
- the tooltips on the toolbar heavily interfere when trying to click the tool button, they does not seems to be standard Reaction;
- the button for locking objects is currently a key, I would suggest to use the AISS lock image instead;
- the flip tools seems to be inverted;
- when clicked the button "save document as PDF file", if you click "cancel" the PDF is exported, it should simply close the dialog, not save;
- the toolbars on small screen resolutions can exceed the available screen size and buttons cannot be clecked; toolbar should be resizeable, or better, you could implement a scroolbar;
- the number of rows or columns is fixed, on a small resolution screen would find useful to add an additional row or column;
- rotating objects does not seems to work;
- undo and redo functions does not seems to work;
- the gradient tool does not seems to work.

toolbar editor
- the toolbar editor makes the CPU jump to 100% and the system becomes unresponsive (I have a Sam460).

drawing
- shapes cannot be placed or moved outside the paper area;
- when reducing the size of the page, objects previously inside the page, might go outside the page; once objects are outside the page, they cannot be moved around;
- when placing an object right on the paper border, some visual corruption appears on the border;
- the text position selector does not seems to work;
- flipping grouped objects does not work, objects are flipped as single objects, not like a single entity.

general
- on startup the page window could have a reduced width, leaving space for the "Object properties" on the right that in my opinion should appear at startup; nowadays the screen proportion is 16:9, and the paper is usually vertical leaving space for more tools beside the paper;
- when no object is selected the "Object properties" should have empty fields, not simply disabled;
- zoom to fit page does not show the entire page;
- please, do not change the stroke color of selected objects, otherwise the user cannot see when the stroke colors changes; to me could be enough to show the control points, or you might also show the rectangular bounding box using a dotted line;
- a doubt: instead of "Diagram", should it be a good idea to call it "Page"? If so, the menu should be mode moved right before "Object". "Diagram properties" should consequently be be called "Page properties";
- it is not clear to me what the menu "User MSO" can be used for;
- strange visual problem: moving the "Object property" window clear the window drop shadow effect made with compositing ON. Once stopped moving the windows around the shoadow is redarw correctly.

wishlist
- magnetic corners for attaching lines to objects; once attached, lines should move when the object is moved
- layers window showing from top to bottom the list of objects, the first column could be the object shape (same as in the toolbar), then name (if empty you can show the ID). Some basic function can be implemented: move up or down, rename, delete, duplicate, lock the selected layer/object);
- while moving an object, if I press the shift key, the object should move only horizontally, vertically, or at 45°;
- while resizing an object, if I press the shift key, the resize should keep the original object proportions;
- by pressing ctrl and scrolling the mouse wheel the page should zoom in one direction, zoom out in the other;
- the toolbar editor feels a bit rigid; could you consider adopting a solution similar to the "Filer" toolbar preferences with two list, available and used buttons, and at the top a selector for deciding in which toolbar the tool should be inserted;
- application library support, for opening, closing and calling the preferences of MinSpace.

@virgola

Many thanks for the extensive feedback - this kind of support is far more useful and motivating than donations at the moment :)

What screen resolution are you using? I'll add a set of toolbars to load automatically.

I'll certainly look into the unresponsive toolbar editor window and the Object window drop shadow artefact.

I need to update the rendering code a bit before allowing off-page shapes.

Menus need to be re-written to follow the new style/guidelines. I plan to move "Diagram Props" entry into the Project menu and will rename the Diagram menu as suggested.

userMSOs will (eventually) work in the same way as in the original MindSpace. A bit like customisable brushes - you will be able to group objects and create a toolbar of your own shapes. It will be possible to load/save banks of userMSOs.

Many many items are not yet implemented (proper flipping, rotate, undo. save, gradients etc). I know I ought to disable icons that aren't done, but I'm far too lazy...The readme.txt is fairly uptodate with what has been implemented. Text is really not started and it will be quite a while before I get round to anything more complete than what is now available.

tooltips - the "real" ones can't be used across multiple toolbar-style windows, so I have had to implement my mine. When I get round to the interface prefs, it wil be possible to switch these off. I've added a note to myself to close the tooltip window if the pointer moves out of the button (rather than just a timed delay). Turning off the highlight for selected objects will also be an interface prefs option.All windows will be snapshot-able - I imagine most users will set up their interface and then keep it more-or-less the same. I might add different layout profiles at some point.

I won't be adding scrollbars etc to the toolbars - I want to keep them as slim as possible, although there will be more columns/rows available in the future. It will be a long time before I tackle the toolbar editor in any great detail again - I need to crack with other core features first.

Lock and flip icons have been changed (I think I was using a very old AISS list).

I like your key-qualifier ideas and have added these to the "do now" list!

zoom-to-fit - well spotted - it's actually zoom to 100%