Bounty proposal: Paint

Now that the excellent alpha-mask work has been done for the OS, I wonder whether it’s a good idea to plan an upgrade for Paint? Any support for a bounty proposal along the following lines:

- Attach toolbar to sprite windows (Ticket #138)
- Create and manipulate alpha-masked sprites (ROL-format and full alpha channel)
- Undo feature
- Change dpi settings/colour depth within app rather than needing ChangeFSI
- Bug fixes: crash when selecting brush sprite; crash with using sliders (Ticket #339)
- Interface/menus tidy-up to make Style Guide compliant (cf. ROL version for reference)
- Better selection & crop/resize tools (see post below)
- Option to add a full palette to 256 colour sprites
- A compatibility display somewhere which says which OS version the sprite is compatible with
- Better palette editing facilities

The only thing it really needs is ‘undo’. Though the rest would be nice.

Added.

Please, please, never do the first and last entries on that list. I despise the ROL version’s interface; it makes everything take three times as long. And the toolbars get in the way when you’re working.

Interesting – I feel the opposite way. When having lots of windows open and trying to work on more than one sprite, I keep losing the Tool window behind others. It would be possible, of course, to make the behaviour configurable, like ArtWorks.

I disliked several of the things ROL did to Paint. The main problems came from the way they hung the tools and stuff in panes off the edges of the window.

There was one at the bottom, with the zoom values and bump arrows. So if you clicked the bump arrow to zoom in or out, the window size would change, and that would move the position of the zoom pane. So you had to move the mouse to bump it again. With RO5 Paint, you just use the Zoom menu and Adjust clicking the zoom bump arrows leaves the dialogue open; you can adjust the scale to suit without the interface for doing so dancing around.

IIRC, the tools pane was another problem. Instead of having a global tool setting, you could have different tools selected in different sprites. So editing multiple sprites at the same time was fraught with peril. For example if you’d been using the single pixel tool in one sprite, then moving to another sprite to make a corresponding change, not remembering you’d last used flood fill there. And there’s no Undo!

Also there was something annoying about the way the tools and zoom panes interacted with the edge of the screen, but I can’t remember exactly what. If you wanted your sprite to fill the whole screen, either the panes would be out the edge of the screen, or perhaps they obscured the sprite you were working on. Either way, I much prefer RO5 Paint’s minimal interface, with global “Paint tools” as a separate window.

Better selection & crop/resize tools, i.e.

- A selection box which you can adjust the size of after initially dragging it out (copy & export tools, row/column removal)
- Move the row/column removal tool into the toolbar/toolbox so the sprite isn’t hidden by the menu tree when you try and use the tool
- When cropping/resizing have a dialog box to allow you to enter how many rows/columns to add/remove from each side

Also:

- Option to add a full palette to 256 colour sprites
- If we’re improving support for new sprite formats, add a compatibility display somewhere which says which OS version the sprite is compatible with (e.g. ‘Archimedes’, ‘RISC OS 3.5’, ‘RISC OS Select’, ‘RISC OS 5.22’)
- Perhaps better palette editing facilities (e.g. as offered by !Pale) – or is that getting a bit too specialist?

I keep losing the Tool window behind others

It’s easy to summon it from any open sprite with the menu option. Also I tend to resize and move windows around with Adjust. So my other windows don’t jump above it, unless I want them to.

- Move the row/column removal tool into the toolbar/toolbox so the sprite isn’t hidden by the menu tree when you try and use the tool

Agreed!

- When cropping/resizing have a dialog box to allow you to enter how many rows/columns to add/remove from each side

Compo has the best interface I’ve seen for this.

- Option to add a full palette to 256 colour sprites

From Sprite editor window: Edit > Palette.

It gets a tick when there is a palette.

I disliked several of the things ROL did to Paint. The main problems came from the way they hung the tools and stuff in panes off the edges of the window.

I agree about the specifics of ROL’s implementation, including the points you raise, though I still think the principle of attached tool windows is a good one. IIRC, the last glitch you referred to may be the possible overlapping of the lower tool pane with the window’s scroll arrows/resize icon, which is indeed a problem.

Perhaps I’m in a minority about this issue, but I still wonder whether a single tool-pane, working globally as you suggest, attached to the currently edited sprite window (but configurable to be free-standing) would be a valuable addition. With some care over the design, I think it might work. However, I remain open to being persuaded otherwise :)

Better selection & crop/resize tools

Option to add a full palette to 256 colour sprites

Compatibility display somewhere which says which OS version the sprite is compatible with

Agreed, and added.

Better palette editing facilities (e.g. as offered by !Pale) – or is that getting a bit too specialist?

No, I’d use that!

- Option to add a full palette to 256 colour sprites

From Sprite editor window: Edit > Palette.

It gets a tick when there is a palette.

Hmm, I’m sure that when I last tried that it only added a 64 entry palette, not a 256 entry one (and that Paint refused to allow you to edit 64 entry palettes). But maybe I’m mistaken?

I’m sure that when I last tried that it only added a 64 entry palette, not a 256 entry one

Yes, I think you’re right. You can create a fully-editable 256-colour sprite, but only by selecting the ‘mono’ option and starting out with 256 greys. It would be nice to be able to create an editable sprite with (a range of?) colour palettes to start off with.

Hmm, I’m sure that when I last tried that it only added a 64 entry palette, not a 256 entry one (and that Paint refused to allow you to edit 64 entry palettes). But maybe I’m mistaken?

I think it just adds the standard palette for whatever the sprite type is. So if you’re editing a paletteless 256 colour sprite, it adds the standard 256 colour palette, or if you’re editing a 16 greys sprite, it adds the standard 16 greys palette.

I’d also like to chip in with: I hate ROL’s reorganisation of Paint’s menu – I still can’t find what I want, and I hate the removal of the logical operations – I often find them useful.

Also hate: Always returning to 1×1 zoom – who edits sprites in Paint at 1:1?!

who edits sprites in Paint at 1:1?!

BITD, probably mainly primary school kids creating bitmap art!

Better selection & crop/resize tools, i.e.

Ability to add a column to the right of the rightmost column to save having to copy edge detail across. Ditto for horizontal, of course.

Scrollwheel support for zooming (maybe in combination with a modifier key like shift or control, as the default action for a scrollwheel is to scroll the window).

And for people without wheel mice, maybe holding shift or ctrl when dragging the resize icon should act as zoom? (i.e. resize the window, but also adjust the zoom so the same area stays visible)

And for people without wheel mice, maybe holding shift or ctrl when dragging the resize icon should act as zoom? (i.e. resize the window, but also adjust the zoom so the same area stays visible)

NetSurf does that.

Perhaps I’m in a minority about this issue, but I still wonder whether a single tool-pane, working globally as you suggest, attached to the currently edited sprite window (but configurable to be free-standing) would be a valuable addition.

I really don’t like the sticky-out tool panes. If the tools are to be attached to the window, it’s better to have an actual toolbar. Here’s a very quick mockup of a toolbar version:

I put current foreground (Select), and background (Adjust) colours at the right hand side. There should probably be a “Shapes” button on the top row too, and that would set the bottom row to show all the triangle, rectangle, etc buttons, with a checkbox for Filled.

Of course, the toolbar has its own set of problems. It uses up screen real estate and there’s a limit to how small the window can be to fit everything in. That’s not insurmountable; there can be a background canvas area, with the sprite centred, if it’s too small, and as Nemo said, no one edits icons at 1:1 anyway.

With some care over the design, I think it might work. However, I remain open to being persuaded otherwise :)

I think we already have the best solution; a separate window. :)

There seems to be a fair amount of support for this. I’d find a small amount to donate if this goes live; aspects of the current Paint can appear somewhat of an embarassment to the OS IMHO.

If things are agreed on here, they can perhaps be added to the draft Bounty proposal: Paint on the wiki… I thought this’d save Chris having to keep editing his first post. Please correct any of my misunderstandings/omissions.

Ability to add a column to the right of the rightmost column

Just use adjust size.

I think we already have the best solution; a separate window. :)

I think so too. I have seldom used paint in anything other than a small window – too small to fit a toolbar in.

the current Paint can appear somewhat of an embarassment

Depends what you expect from it. As a pixel level editor it works ok – undo would be nice.

Also flood fill doesn’t work on sprites wider than 65535 pixels. Not that this is Paint’s fault, but…

Also you can’t draw a circle with an even diameter (which Paint could do something about).

I’ve already mentioned that I like the global painting tool setting. The current colours aren’t global, and that needs to be the case, because different sprites may have different bpp or different palettes. However, if you’re editing a lot of sprites it becomes difficult to keep track of which colour picker belongs to which sprite. You can easily start painting into a sprite and get an unexpected colour.

This could be fixed by having a NetSurf style status bar at the bottom of the window:

That unobtrusively shows the current foreground and background colours, and clicking on a colour would be a simple way to open the sprite’s colour picker.

Edit:

Or even this even more discreet version:

I prefer this one. An adjust click there could open the tools window, making that more accessible too. :)