[OpendTect_Developers] Some suggestions

[Jaap Glas]

Dear Williams and other developers,

I would like to react on one of the suggestions brought up by Williams Lima
about handling mouse clicks in OpendTect's data tree:

 > 3. Pressing the mouse left button over 2D Seimics bring up a pop menu.
 > Better, in my opnion, is activate the popup menu only on a right mouse
 > button press event.

I totally agree with Williams on this point. I think the nature of most
developers is trying to make the use of their software as consistent as
possible, and this clearly is a violation of that. However, we do not
make this software for ourselves. We are happy that a growing number of
people likes to use the software we produce. Our marketing department
found out that some of our new users had difficulty discovering the
right-click menu popup functionality in the data tree. In order to
confront them with this functionality as early as possible, it was
decided that a left mouse-click on a tree item group name does pop
up the menu as well. Totally unlogical, but if it serves a goal,
the developer finally has to step over his/her urge for consistency.

Cases like this show up regularly in daily programming practice. How do
I deal with them? Of course, I first try to convince the applicant that
his/her idea is not consistent with what we already have in OpendTect
or in other software. This should be efficacious in most cases. If not,
I code in the consistent way first, and then make a clearly documented
exception on that, using descriptive variable or function names and/or
comments. After a few releases, I sometimes shortcut the inconsistency
temporarily to see whether users react on it, either positively or
negatively. It turns out that lots of ideas do change through time.

And believe me, there is no greater satisfaction than that sometimes
after many years, sometimes even by the same applicant, a change is
requested for which you only have to make the shortcut permanent,
and remove the exception code. Enjoy this moment in silence!


Happy programming,


Jaap Glas.

-- 
-- dr. Jaap C. Glas
-- Software Engineer
-- dGB Earth Sciences
-- Nijverheidstraat 11-2
-- 7511 JM Enschede, The Netherlands
-- jaap.glas at dgbes.com
-- http://www.dgbes.com
-- Tel: +31 534315155, Fax: +31 534315104



On 01/25/2012 05:27 PM, Williams Lima wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I just started to study plugin development in opendtect. It is relatively easy
> and I'm really enjoying that. OpendTect is a great tool.
> I have some comments/suggestions I hope can be in some way useful for all.
>
> These coments are with respect to the gui behaviour of the main window.
>
> 1. On a left mouse down event over a final node (a 2d seismic section) under 2D
> seismic (in the scene tree) the top toolbar change in a bit confuse manner.
> If the section is already selected and you press the left button (not click just
> press down) the toolbar change and when you release the button the toolbar
> change again. If there is a selected
> section and you press over another section the toolbar change for another
> configuration of buttons and goes back to the the toolbar for a selected section
> when you release the button.
> The above observations are not a big issue but maybe this toolbar behaviour is
> not the way it could be.
>
> 2. It seems like multiple selection is not allowed in the tree. So you cant
> change for example the colormap for a number of sections simultaneously.
>
> 3. Pressing the mouse left button over 2D Seimics bring up a pop menu. Better,
> in my opnion, is activate the popup menu only on a right mouse button press event.
>
> 4. A lef mouse button press over 2D Seismics could select this node and permit
> to change some properties for all sections under it, e.g the colormap.
>
> That is it. maybe como conclusions I made above are not correct. I'm just
> starting to explore opendtect. By the way I could try to implement some
> modifications based on the
> these observations if they are really correct as an exercise on coding in opendtect.
>
> Thanks
>
> Williams
>
>
> _____________________________________________________________
> OpendTect Developers mailing list Developers at opendtect.org
> http://lists.opendtect.org/mailman/listinfo/developers


-- 
-- dr. Jaap C. Glas
-- Software Engineer
-- dGB Earth Sciences
-- Nijverheidstraat 11-2
-- 7511 JM Enschede, The Netherlands
-- jaap.glas at dgbes.com
-- http://www.dgbes.com
-- Tel: +31 534315155, Fax: +31 534315104