timothyschoen
commented
4 months ago From the discord channel I see that PlugData tries to visually differentiate abstractions and subpatches to the user with a 'dot'.
I also see that it seems that Vanilla had no way to differentiate a box that it is an abstraction, for instance, so a mechanism for that was designed for PlugData. Well, the truth is that Vanilla has a pretty good and better strategy for it, where the mouse cursor points up and tells you that the object can be clicked to open if it is an abstraction.
But first of all, let me reason that it is not that important for users to know that an object is an abstraction, which are supposed to work as regular objects. I guess one proof of that is the incredible and unbeatable industry standard and state of the art software called 'MAX' that rules the world... it has simply NO WAY of telling the user that an object is in fact an abstraction.
I don't agree with that though, forgive me MAX. I guess people that see a [pd] object should know it can be opened... and help files of abstractions should tell people that the object is an abstraction. That is to say that it is not that bad, but having a way to tell the user you can click and open it could be useful, and this is what beloved Vanilla does.
So why not just do what Vanilla does? It will also make both more relatable!
And let me tell you other advantages of Vanilla's beautiful approach...
It will also tell you that you can click on GUIS, like a bang object. It will tell you that it is possible to click on an array to edit its contents. It will also tell you that you CANNOT click on it if array editing is disabled.
I also just tested a few things and I see that you fail to show users that they can click on [array define], for instance, as it has no dot... well, if the cursor changed to point up, it would be evident and good.
Note that some objects in ELSE can be clicked. One example is [loadbanger]. But in PlugData that is not evident.
It is not evident as well that you can click on a GUI like [function].
Anyway, please consider getting rid of the dot, which is also not clear at all what it is supposed to mean for for someone who is well versed with patching environments like me (with experience in MAX and many forks of Pd).
I think we should do a hover colour for subpatches/abstractions. I tend to dislike cursor changes, since they turn out differently on every OS. And hover colour is a pretty universal way to communicate that something is clickable.
For example, pure-data's cursor changes for abstractions/guis work for me on macOS, but not on Linux.
porres
alcomposer
From the discord channel I see that PlugData tries to visually differentiate abstractions and subpatches to the user with a 'dot'.
I also see that it seems that Vanilla had no way to differentiate a box that it is an abstraction, for instance, so a mechanism for that was designed for PlugData. Well, the truth is that Vanilla has a pretty good and better strategy for it, where the mouse cursor points up and tells you that the object can be clicked to open if it is an abstraction.
But first of all, let me reason that it is not that important for users to know that an object is an abstraction, which are supposed to work as regular objects. I guess one proof of that is the incredible and unbeatable industry standard and state of the art software called 'MAX' that rules the world... it has simply NO WAY of telling the user that an object is in fact an abstraction.
I don't agree with that though, forgive me MAX. I guess people that see a [pd] object should know it can be opened... and help files of abstractions should tell people that the object is an abstraction. That is to say that it is not that bad, but having a way to tell the user you can click and open it could be useful, and this is what beloved Vanilla does.
So why not just do what Vanilla does? It will also make both more relatable!
And let me tell you other advantages of Vanilla's beautiful approach...
It will also tell you that you can click on GUIS, like a bang object. It will tell you that it is possible to click on an array to edit its contents. It will also tell you that you CANNOT click on it if array editing is disabled.
I also just tested a few things and I see that you fail to show users that they can click on [array define], for instance, as it has no dot... well, if the cursor changed to point up, it would be evident and good.
Note that some objects in ELSE can be clicked. One example is [loadbanger]. But in PlugData that is not evident.
It is not evident as well that you can click on a GUI like [function].
Anyway, please consider getting rid of the dot, which is also not clear at all what it is supposed to mean for for someone who is well versed with patching environments like me (with experience in MAX and many forks of Pd).