XnView Software

Hi budz45

budz45 wrote:but remember that some toolbar items would certainly need grey-ing out (not useable) for the fully modeless, such as 'next/prev file' , 'slideshow' etc. I know you may reply with the familiar expression "well duh" meaning that it's pretty obvious that those should become greyed out.

Sorry, I don't see why... would you explain your reasoning?

Currently the image editing tools such as Levels do not cause next/prev to be greyed out... nor do any other similar softwares (check out Zoner, or the Corel products, for instance).

If the user navigates away from an image in "mid-stream", then MP could smoothly ask "Abandon current tool?" and "Save changes?" etc, etc.

I think that paint will be available as optional toolbar in view mode (like crop or spotlight)

xnview wrote:I think that paint will be available as optional toolbar in view mode (like crop or spotlight)

Hmm sounds cool and "modeless" like what John said.

here is my mock-up for a 'Paint' toolbar: btw, I have left space on the toolbar for which to support my request of more 'Paint' features (in the form of icons) could be implemented; more shapes etc.

Right, I am also thinking.. I forgot to add Paint's own 'fullscreen' button onto the paint toolbar, -meaning- that it would be awesome if paint app withing XnView MP supported fullscreen editing (with the toolbar also displayed in fullscreen too).

It would be a different fullscreen editor/view than that of the standard fullscreen view

xnview wrote:"Paint plugin" will be integrated in the view mode not as another tab

'Floating' window is another possible idea, but if it was added to XnView MP's 'paint', I would say just keep it to one floating window and not multiple:

Hi,

I think that paint will be available as optional toolbar in view mode (like crop or spotlight)

Perfect

Otherwise, do XNV can replace program drawing or painting as "Gimp"?
Would not it more advantageous to facilitate coordination with such programs ?

here is my mock-up for a 'Paint' toolbar:

Cool

@+

French :

Salut,
Parfait
Pour le reste, est-ce que Xnv pourra remplacer un programme de dessin ou de peinture comme "Gimp" ?
Ne serait-ce pas plus avantageux de faciliter la coordination avec ce genre de programme ?
Cool
@+

I've just used the Paint tool of XnView Classic a bit and missed the following features:

Duplicate
Would be cool if one could duplicate objects using the context menu (with right mouse click) and a keyboard shortcut (copy/paste could be supported additionally or alternatively)

Modifier keys
When inserting and resizing an object, there should be modifier keys (Shift, Alt, Ctrl) available for:
- Proportional action (e.g. reszing, moving diagonally)
- Horizontal/Vertical action (e.g. resizing, moving)

I've just used the Paint tool of XnView Classic a bit and missed the following features:...

...Callouts and shapes in a generic extensible engine.

In fact a generic engine which will draw a vectorial shape in a rectangle which can be resized and rotated. IMHO it is impossible to NOT find such an engine for free for C++ and even for Qt to integrate in XnVMP. The shapes will be burned in the image upon save.

See here (read all answers):

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6168 ... cted-graph

I don't think that Pierre should write his own code from scratch here. There are a plethora of solutions here.

m.Th. wrote:... I don't think that Pierre should write his own code from scratch here. There are a plethora of solutions here.

I guess the problem of using an existing library or source is the licencing: XnView MP is freeware for private use, only, and it is not open source.

xnview wrote:I think that paint will be available as optional toolbar in view mode (like crop or spotlight)

JohnFredC » Fri Aug 05, 2011 1:14 pm
(… think of it as image "annotation"... boxes, arrows, some text. …)

budz45 » Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:01 pm
(… here is my mock-up for a 'Paint' toolbar: …)




I like this idea.
GIMP is too heavy, so I use PicPick. If this feature is available in XnViewMP, I don’t have to jump to another application just to mark something on the image I 'read'.
Please, add the following shapes, too.
(original image by budz45)
Thanks.

Please, add the following shapes, too.

...hehehe...

Bezier curves... As I said, I think we're heading to a general diagramming engine on top of the image...

MP makes use of QT's native support for SVG as well as the built-in WebKit engine (for capturing HTML).
The QPainter class seems to offer all the basic drawing tools Pierre needs for annotations (including path stroking).

• Qt Project
  • Plug & Paint Example
  • Painting Examples
• InformIT
  • C++ GUI Programming with Qt4: 2D Graphics

Yes I like the sound of that QPainter class

XnTriq wrote:MP makes use of QT's native support for SVG as well as the built-in WebKit engine (for capturing HTML).
The QPainter class seems to offer all the basic drawing tools Pierre needs for annotations (including path stroking).

• Qt Project
  • Plug & Paint Example
  • Painting Examples
• InformIT
  • C++ GUI Programming with Qt4: 2D Graphics

Nice.
Also, thanks a lot for helping with the links in all the posts around here.

However, istm that QPainter (which mimics rather closely the Windows' GDI approach) while is - for sure - a good candidate doesn't have:

1. A hitting engine. IOW, a way to 'select' the desired painted object (IOW to put the 'selection box' around it) in order to edit it.
This can be faked if we use the paradigm from batch convert in the way in which is described in the Non-Distructive Editing thread. Then by the very nature of things, selecting an action in the actions list, the program will select with ease the desired object.

Also, be aware that a hitting engine isn't very easy to write. (Think that one have a star overlapping a triangle - the engine must correctly select the desired object)

2. An editing engine. The classical 8 dots-dotted-rectangle-box used for selection isn't enough. Ok, for the beginning and/or plain vanilla things, yes. However, if one requests bezier curves (see some posts above) and/or callouts, the things change. We need an engine to deal with specific point-editing.

3. Predefined shapes. Callouts (problems with the 'nose' of the callout - orientation, size etc.), arrows (problems with the arrowhead orientation, size etc.) and other predefined shapes which some of them need special treatment.

The devil hides in details.

My proposal:

Implement the Non-Distructive Editing as shared code with the Batch Convert's actions and add to the Actions list an Insert Custom Shape action.

Put some shapes in there to choose from, pen & brush colors, strokes etc. and controls for move (position), scale & rotate. In this case, imho as a visual paradigm for mouse editing for the beginning the simple 8-dots-box will suffice.

m.Th. wrote:Nice.
Also, thanks a lot for helping with the links in all the posts around here.

Thanks for your kind words, m.Th.
I really appreciate your detailed explanations!

m.Th. wrote:The devil hides in details.

My previous post was originally a question (“Why can't Pierre use…”), because I had an inkling that someone would've brought up that QPainter class before, had it been a viable alternative.

m.Th. wrote:I don't think that Pierre should write his own code from scratch here. There are a plethora of solutions here.

If I'm not mistaken, the customization and/or skinning feature of the toolbar in XnView Classic are/is 3rd-party code, too.

• Qt Project
  • Diagram Scene Example
• Qt Centre Forum
  • Mindmapping widget