[Merged] Sketcher Elements Widget rework

[paddle]

To test see the last commits on the branch : https://github.com/PaddleStroke/FreeCAD ... et_testing

[openBrain]

Overall looks great. I'm sure users will generally appreciate.
From the video, your 'point' filter seems to not work.
I indeed think the 'not applicable' icon shall be lighten.

If you can submit a PR for this change, I can review it.
Note to myself : time to improve caching in MultIcon.

[adrianinsaval]

Here a muckup for what I suggest for this widget:

elements_widget_muckup.png (7.1 KiB) Viewed 817 times

I don't like the filters as an additional disappearing box in the widget, here the filters are really simple so a combobox serves the purpose perfectly. I like putting extended naming in a menu. I like the idea of having buttons to select the points but instead of putting everything left of the element name and making it feel loaded I suggest putting them aligned to the right and only showing the relevant buttons for each, so when you click on the element you normally select the edge, for select start/end/center point you select the corresponding icon on the right. Also no real need for different icons depending on the type of element IMO, more minimalist icons as in my muckup would help reducing percieved bloat.

I don't quite understand what "auto switch to edge" was supposed to do, or what "switch to next valid type" means... are we losing anything by removing those?

Edit: I did not see the advanced filters you added before posting, I suggest for now keeping the combobox with the simpler filters and once we figure out a good UI/UX for the filters in the constraint widget we can transfer this here with the filters by geometry type, I remain disliking having the filters in a box inside the widget. I'm of the opinion that the best UX for those filters would be to mimic the filtering widget seen for example in MS Excel (left) or even better LibreOffice Calc (right) users will be familiar with this and IMO it's pretty efficient:

office-filters.png (14.3 KiB) Viewed 808 times

(sorry for the spanish, FYI todo means all)
they are full widgets shown after clicking in a combobox and can be dismissed by clicking outside of them, in the libreoffice widget the check and cross icons on the right of the "All" checkbox are to show only the selected item and for showing everything except the selected item respectively, I found those to be very useful buttons.

[paddle]

Overall looks great. I'm sure users will generally appreciate.
From the video, your 'point' filter seems to not work.
I indeed think the 'not applicable' icon shall be lighten.

If you can submit a PR for this change, I can review it.
Note to myself : time to improve caching in MultIcon.

I actually had no point in my sketch
Ok I'll put that as a PR and post link here.

[adrianinsaval]

@paddle off topic but have you considered setting up github sponsors? In your video you mentioned your patreon and I kinda wanted to donate a little something to you, but I don't really want to create a patreon account (I'm sick and tired of creating a thousand accounts on a thousand sites and the less sites have my credit card info the better) plus I just wanted to do a one time donation, not sure if patreon supports that. Also @jnxd had told me that github doesn't take a commission from the payment so it might be better for you too, I had donated to him through github both because I already had an account there and because he told me it was the preferred channel.

Also consider promoting your patreon (and github sponsors if you set it up) here on the forum, perhaps in your signature? I didn't know you had one until I heard it in your video, note that I don't always watch these videos with audio or until the very end and I doubt I'm the only one.

[paddle]

Here a muckup for what I suggest for this widget:

Your mockup look nice, but I'm not sure it would look so nice if the list is full, with differents geos (arcs...).

1- show only usefull icons : I'm not sure it's a good idea. Because as arcs and lines don't have the same number of elements, then the icons for start/end/mid wouldn't be aligned. So it might end up looking like a mess. Beside coding that would require a quite large rewrite and seems complex because the icons position depends on geo types.

- Regarding putting the 3 icons on the right, why not. It might look better indeed and isn't too difficult to code. What others think?

- Regarding simpler icons, it seems to look better on your drawing. But it's less informative, for the center point for instance it's not clear that it's the center. For line start/end it looks good indeed.

[paddle]

I don't quite understand what "auto switch to edge" was supposed to do, or what "switch to next valid type" means... are we losing anything by removing those?

Edit: I did not see the advanced filters you added before posting, I suggest for now keeping the combobox with the simpler filters and once we figure out a good UI/UX for the filters in the constraint widget we can transfer this here with the filters by geometry type, I remain disliking having the filters in a box inside the widget. I'm of the opinion that the best UX for those filters would be to mimic the filtering widget seen for example in MS Excel (left) or even better LibreOffice Calc (right) users will be familiar with this and IMO it's pretty efficient:
office-filters.png
(sorry for the spanish, FYI todo means all)
they are full widgets shown after clicking in a combobox and can be dismissed by clicking outside of them, in the libreoffice widget the check and cross icons on the right of the "All" checkbox are to show only the selected item and for showing everything except the selected item respectively, I found those to be very useful buttons.

'Auto switch to edge' become useless. This option was switching the combobox from 'edge' to 'startpoint' depending if you click a line/arc/others or a point.

"Z switch to next valid type" : I'm actually not sure what it does. It seems it's broken because shortcut Z is used by something else. I think it changed from edge to next available type : start, end, mid depending on selected geo.

Yes it's not the best for the filter I guess it could look better. I had a quick look at how the filter widget could open as a menu, drawing on top of existing widgets. But I couldn't find an easy solution. It seems that the widget needs to be outside the layout, but if I do that the .ui file doesn't compile. I'm not fond of the idea of removing the improved filter temporarily, it's extra work. Besides I think combo box for that sucked, I always ended up changing the filter when I scrolled down (as task bar is big, I often have to scroll down to Element widget, then mouse move on top of the combo box and scrolling happen in the combobox). So I suggest we keep the improve filter, and when someone is motivated enough he can make the filter appearance better.

[paddle]

@paddle off topic but have you considered setting up github sponsors? In your video you mentioned your patreon and I kinda wanted to donate a little something to you, but I don't really want to create a patreon account (I'm sick and tired of creating a thousand accounts on a thousand sites and the less sites have my credit card info the better) plus I just wanted to do a one time donation, not sure if patreon supports that. Also @jnxd had told me that github doesn't take a commission from the payment so it might be better for you too, I had donated to him through github both because I already had an account there and because he told me it was the preferred channel.

Also consider promoting your patreon (and github sponsors if you set it up) here on the forum, perhaps in your signature? I didn't know you had one until I heard it in your video, note that I don't always watch these videos with audio or until the very end and I doubt I'm the only one.

Thanks for considering it!
I don't use github sponsors, though I could set it up if more people ask. If you want to do a one time donation then perhaps paypal is the best : pierrelouis -dot- boyer -at- gmail -dot- com
I'll add the link to the patreon that's a good idea thanks.

[jnxd]

Also @jnxd had told me that github doesn't take a commission from the payment...

I should just mention the caveat that I haven't yet received any of the money so I can't confirm this yet. They apparently hold new users' payouts for up to 90 days. It may be possible Github doesn't take any fees but Stripe (which has a role in the backend) does.

[adrianinsaval]

1- show only usefull icons : I'm not sure it's a good idea. Because as arcs and lines don't have the same number of elements, then the icons for start/end/mid wouldn't be aligned. So it might end up looking like a mess. Beside coding that would require a quite large rewrite and seems complex because the icons position depends on geo types.

I thought about it too, it's a trade-off, I believe the trade-off is worth it for the cleaner look but I perfectly understand if others disagree and don't feel strongly about it. If you choose to have them aligned I suggest no icon at all for the buttons that aren't relevant and maybe just grayed out dashes.

- Regarding simpler icons, it seems to look better on your drawing. But it's less informative, for the center point for instance it's not clear that it's the center. For line start/end it looks good indeed.

IMO the icon doesn't need to convey absolutely everything at once, we can have tooltips and users can just click and find what it does. There's just start, end and center points so I don't think there's much to confuse it with. We could also add a thin small circle around the point to signify it's the center point. Uniform small icons are imperative for a clean look IMO.

"Z switch to next valid type" : I'm actually not sure what it does. It seems it's broken because shortcut Z is used by something else. I think it changed from edge to next available type : start, end, mid depending on selected geo.

would it still be relevant to have this label with this changes? If not it should be removed, if yes we might need to revise the keyboard shortcut and the label. @abdullah can you perhaps clarify what this is supposed to do?