FreeCAD UI Bible?

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onekk
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Re: FreeCAD UI Bible?

Post by onekk »

Roy_043 wrote: Sat May 08, 2021 3:19 pm
onekk wrote: Sat May 08, 2021 11:04 am - You have the wiki, that is not ever updated
WTH! We may be behind when it comes to documenting the current state of FreeCAD, but what you are saying here is completely false.
Regarding the wiki or the entire post?

Sorry my intention would be to say that "wiki is not up to date", in other words, some pages are not "in sync" with the actual version, (excuse me but my English is not the best, as it is not my natural language)

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Carlo D.
GitHub page: https://github.com/onekk/freecad-doc.
- In deep articles on FreeCAD.
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heda
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Re: FreeCAD UI Bible?

Post by heda »

@ chris wesley

ui bible or not, why not just start a new wiki page with the title "possible gui improvements".
make a table there and fill in things that you would like to see improved.
you will know if you gain traction in that by other people starting adding or editing that wiki page.
of course does not really change any code, but it probably makes it easier for drive-by coders to pick something useful up related to the gui in general (and it could very well work as a "what trips new users" library as well if you think of how to include that).


take one simple example, short-cuts - feel free to map that out, and see how your plan with ctrl/alt etc works out and if changes are needed
another simple example could be how to make icons in the treeview
take v0.19 now, it is almost impossible to see if a sketch is blanked out, the nice new "state" icons do not "get grayed" when blanked.

concrete things like this is what is going to change fc, it simply needs to be broken down into manageable pieces,
taking the full holistic view can possibly be done by one individual behind the scenes, but then we are talking about
years committent to keep that plan up to date, so unless you are willing to keep that plan behind the scenes,
you are better of if you want to influence fc's future by focusing on smaller things that you can formulate into something specific that can be done in a weekend or so by someone that just "wants to do a contribution".

heck, why not scan the whole gui of fc, and list things point by point...
that should keep you busy for a while, and I'm quite sure you will get credit for having done it.

also, if you spend some time helping new comers in the forum, you will probably quite quickly learn that most people are willing to read the wiki (granted that there can be some initial reluctance to do so, but most people come around to that it is actually easier on themselves if they do spend some time with the wiki) - so making the wiki better is a really good contribution with instant rewards (well, the reward is of course total silence, but silence is to be regarded as good in this case).


if you have not figured out what is going on by now, I'm trying to motivate you to find ways to contribute to freecad,
contribution does not have to be exactly the way one first imagined that it would be,
or the one way which is obviously correct from one's own perspective.

end @ chris wesley

below is ranting to the ether, just because it is fun and so easy to just dish around platitudes to left and right,
when one does not really intend to/have ability to write any code.
sorry for not quoting properly, but the quotes are all from this post.

of course partly reiterating what others already have said, well because there is not much else to do on topics like this...

#1
Proposals that win are those which have actual pull requests.
---
yepp - it is this simple, one might add that it also needs to be judged to be good enough to enter the code base,
that is in general not a problem since the people that actually write code probably will do all they can to avoid
that this code generates any type of problem down the road (from their own perspective and knowledge base),
in other words they are already without anyone looking over their shoulder doing the best they can.
as a side note - imho - in pull requests one can also read in wiki edits.

#2
What would you say would be a better way to control development?
---
hm, are we now back into the coorporate world, i.e. trying to apply coorporate speak and thinking to a foss project?
in the coorporate world one can enforce following guidelines, because one has that right, because one is paying for the work to be done.
in a foss project, the drivers for following anything someone else states, or tries to control from the sideline simply works different,
well one could say - it just does not work at all to attempt to control people from the sideline,
the only thing one can do is to make examples of what oneself think is good examples,
but then you also have to make people aware (and agree) that this is actually good examples,
still there is no change in the codebase - for that someone has to pick up the ball and start running,
and lets suppose someone is doing that - are you sure that they will not change their mind of what is good once starting to dig into the details?


#3
it may not be the best way for a large complex software package to develop
---
probably some ounzes of truth into this, however...
- I sincerely doubt that commercial software is without "usability complaints", albeit maybe of a different type or level.
- there are people here that has taken fc from nothing to what it is today,
with all respect - put yourself in those shoes, and how do you think you would react
(and you cannot think coorporate now, because you are not payed to take crap - it is basically an attack on how you have chosen to do things in the past)
- about the thing with control, that is what every manager in any coorporate situation can say and it is never wrong, but also never right..., and it seldom does anything fundamentally - the correspondance to a pull request to fc code base is what drives actual change also in coorporate environments.


#4
The magic happens when they don't comply, they embrace and contribute to a common goal which they were part of creating.
---
2 points
- are you sure that the ones that are actually contributing code does not think it is like this already, i.e. magic?
- it might look like that in coorporate worlds, but are you sure that this is not largely a smoke screen for the real driver,
being part of "sucessful" projects, leads to more bucks in the wallet, either by merit, or by promotions - so regardless
of all the nice words wrapped around things - how sure are you that it is not the true underlying cause for a majority of the cases...


#5
People are task oriented - not lerning oriented. They want to job done.
---
well some people are, not all though - it might surprise you that the majority of the world population is not...
I will give you though that the majority of people tend to be frustrated when something is complicated as opposed to easy.
When these "task oriented" people show up on the forum, if you hang around for a while you will realize that if they stick around,
they will in 99.9% of the cases have started to read the wiki and follow tutorials, and then their questions change tone and turn into requests for how to do things rather than the sweeping rants of "why does it not work like I want it to".


#6
Problem is everything is treated as complaining (or requests). It is not. It is pointing out issues and suggesting improvements.
---
yes, this is the view of the ones that do not code - and just hopes that the program will change "now" by dropping comments.
yes, it is not fully fair to state it like that, like always there are exceptions, actually there are plenty of examples where fixes are within 24hrs, also for gui things, at the same time there are things that lay around for years without anyone picking it up.

what do you propose that will change that?
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onekk
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Re: FreeCAD UI Bible?

Post by onekk »

heda wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 1:15 pm @ chris wesley

ui bible or not, why not just start a new wiki page with the title "possible gui improvements".
make a table there and fill in things that you would like to see improved.

I think that a wiki page is not the right place, a forum thread is more taylored.

+1 for a list of shortcuts:

But i see some problems, or better, having not used the GUI so much (I'm working almost all my time with scripting):
1) shortcuts will change between UI languages.
2) shortcuts are workbench related? if yes, what to do with "deprecated workbench"?
3) shortcuts have to mime some other widespread software, left out the "CTRL-X, CTRL-C, CTRL-V, CTRL-Z, CTRL-S", that although are windows derived are now almost everywhere with same behaviour. Complex shortcut, like those with two modifiers, like "CTRL-ALT" or "CTRL-WIN" are applicable to MacOS?

Not to criticize, only to begin to have some "common UI guidelines".

Better to start to collect in another thread, a list of "actual" shortcuts, for at least the most used WB like Part, Draft, TechDraw, Sketcher (as an example proposal, feel free to add other generally used workbenches?)

I think that is a decent base to start with.

Having such list maybe will help to "draw a better view" of the "state of the art" in FreeCAD now.

Some ideas, and rantings:

- analyze this "set" of shortcuts and eventually decide if something has to be changed, in relation maybe to some other used widespread CAD to make the learning curve "less difficult".
- give maybe a more "organic view" if the "actual state" is caotic or maybe not much "mnemonic" (if languages adaptions are not modifying the things)


After having done this preliminary work, if it is not present elsewhere, maybe if all seems correct, the list could be put in a wiki page, and the work is not done "in vain".

But this has to be discussed at least with some developers or WB mantainers, to take in account things that maybe a "normal user" could not see.

my two cents.

Carlo D.
GitHub page: https://github.com/onekk/freecad-doc.
- In deep articles on FreeCAD.
- Learning how to model with scripting.
- Various other stuffs.

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Re: FreeCAD UI Bible?

Post by Roy_043 »

onekk wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 3:58 pm +1 for a list of shortcuts:
https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Sandbox:Keyboard_Shortcuts
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Re: FreeCAD UI Bible?

Post by onekk »

Roy_043 wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 5:13 pm
onekk wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 3:58 pm +1 for a list of shortcuts:
https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Sandbox:Keyboard_Shortcuts
I think that this could be an end of this discussion, @Roy_043 i put here the link to the forum where discussion was made.

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=44973

Regards

Carlo D.
GitHub page: https://github.com/onekk/freecad-doc.
- In deep articles on FreeCAD.
- Learning how to model with scripting.
- Various other stuffs.

Blog: https://okkmkblog.wordpress.com/
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