[PD] GUI abstraction issues

[Jonathan Wilkes]

>________________________________
> From: Esteban Viveros <emviveros at gmail.com>
>To: Roman Haefeli <reduzent at gmail.com> 
>Cc: PD-list list <pd-list at iem.at> 
>Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:18 AM
>Subject: Re: [PD] GUI abstraction issues
> 
>
>Well I try the IOhannes sugestion, and autotips don't work correctly with my abstraction... :/
>
>
>I tried to create another example (testing-abstration), and now only the inlet are working with autotips feature... In pd-l2ork everything works fine.


Indeed it doesn't.  It looks like when the abstraction is GOP, it registers all the
xlet #s as "-1", and it doesn't detect the bounding box of the object.  (The latter
because I'm looking for the text tag, which a gop box doesn't have.)

I imagine Ivica's works because he's checking for tooltips on the c-side, and I'm
checking on the tcl side.

Pd-l2ork: Check whether there's an object or inlet under current mouse position. If
there is, look for its tooltip text in the help patch, then draw the tooltip.

Pd-ext: Trigger an event when the mouse hovers over an object or inlet that is
_visible_ on the canvas.  Look for the tooltip text in the help patch, then draw the
tooltip.

Pd-l2ork's approach is more robust-- for example, it's easier for him to enlarge the area
that will register an xlet tooltip.  Pd-extended's currently has what I think is the "proper"
behavior, though-- you only show tooltips for objects that are visible to the user.  If the
patch author covers up an object with a [cnv], he/she is actively hiding that object, and
it shouldn't register a tooltip.  It's bad UI design to show a tooltip when the user can't see
the thing it refers to.

Anyway, I'll investigate and see if I can come up with a fix for the testing-abstration (sic)
situation.  But if you're putting [cnv] objects on top of xlets then they shouldn't respond to
tooltips.  That problem should be fixed at the source: xlets and object rectangle should
always be at the top of the stacking order.  (I guess there could also be an option for
hiding xlets or the box, but that doesn't seem like a good idea for visual dataflow.)


-Jonathan