Thank you all for your valuable comments and feedback. I admit that the menu structure suggested first looked nice and smooth. So I do understand that you disagree my last suggestions. At first I also thought that the menu structure was good, but when looking closer at it and thinking about each functionality and it's usage, it became clear to me that it's o.k., but not really good and correct.
I'll try to explain in more detail and hope that you can see the ideas behind the new menu structure.
Let's have a look how the user will work with the selection:
- Orientation - Manual, arbitrary selection
The user has selected an area in the image manually. Now he/she wants to change the orientation of the image. He/she simply selects "Selection - Swap width & Height" and the orientation will be changed. Please note that the user can change the orientation without even thinking whether the current selection is "Landscape" or "Portrait". That's easy.
- Orienation - Predefined Selection (Size or ratio)
If there is a selection with predefined size or ratio, changing the selection's orientation works exactly the same as for manual selection: The user simply selects "Selection - Swap width & height", and voilà, orientation is changed. Again simple.
- Options!
So it becomes clear that the menu items "Portrait", "Landscape", and "Use image's orientation" are neither needed for changing the orientation of a manual selection nor for changing the orientation of a selection with predefined Size or ratio.
When selecting one of these 3 menu items, nothing will/should happen, since they all together make up one option. This option "Orientation" is used when selecting one of the predefined ratios and size (these are real functions) and creatíng a new selection.
- Options and Functions together.
We have the options dialog for options, so this option for the selection could actually go there, but this option might be changed often, so I'd like to keep it close to the actual functions they affect. Also when putting the option into the option dialog, the label for it would become very long and people still would not understand the options purpose.
This is why the option for orientation should go to both "Selection - Ratio" and "Selection - Size".
Olivier_G wrote:helmut wrote:Not sure whether the initial orientations for Ratio and Size should be independent, but I think so.
I am not convinced, as the "subject" is the same (aka: selection) and that they cannot be used both at the same time.
You might be right, here. But two spots (=sub menus) to set the same option is a bit odd. So I'd prefer two options (=submenus), one for "Selection - Size" and one for "Selection - Ratio".
Olivier_G wrote:(Secret: I didn't really night-club yesterday... I Armagetroned )Olivier
Just read the intro post of the Armagetron forum. Sounds like good fun.