First Impressions, thoughts, and issues from the Seattle Rep

[brianf]

I just downloaded and installed the latest SpikeMark Beta and I really like all the improvements in layout and style over Avista. This is a list of things that I think could use a look. Some of the items are things that seem problematic (to me), and others are more like wishlist items. I don't know how many of these are already being looked at (I have read the other threads, I just don't remember it all) and that leads me to item number one.

The List:

-It may be nice to see know bugs and or a list of future goals included with the release notes and the installer.

-I can add spikes but not select them, I'm not connected to any motors, but even then it would be nice to be able to build a show blind at a paper tech.

-The OK button in the spike creation window is never active, if I hit cancel it adds the spike, but OK doesn't ever even unshade.

-When trying to use a spike to build a cue I tried to type in the name of the spike and it crashed the application (I will send an email with the log file for your reference)

-I know that the ability to import tuning is being considered (I would vote for it) but in addition it may be nice to copy a motor. If we have several tracks that are similar in many ways it would be nice to be able to copy one and paste it instead of setting all the parameters for each.

-When I zoom into the stage view there is no way to scroll the view, only rotate, it probably doesn't make any difference, but it seemed like it should be able to do that.

-In all the text boxes it would be nice if the Enter key would apply the changes. There is something counter-intuitive about having to leave the box to apply the changes to me.

-I think it came up in another thread but, it seems like the slider for the "Distance from Plaster" is backwards, the numbers make sense but moving the slider to the right moves the unit into the house rather than upstage, maybe it's just a difference in prefrences, but I think it would be better the other way.

-(this one is really nit-picky) If I use the wheel on the mouse to scroll down the tools on the right side of the screen it stops scrolling when it's over the spike list. I suspect this is so that when the spike list is in need of scrolling it's self it will allow scrolling there, but perhaps when it has scrolled all the way to the bottom or top it could resume scrolling the other tools.

-Pressing the "Add Spike" button on the side panel seems like it should add the spike and select the name text for editing.

-How about a translucent stage deck so that elevators in the pit could be visible?

-It came up before, but I'll throw in my two cents also... it would be great to be able to put a turntable on a wagon, or turntable on an elevator.

-In our next show we have a drawbridge, I have a few options of how it would be represented, but none of them are ideal, I could do a turntable on it's side to show the rotational movement of the drawbridge, or I could do a wagon as an elevator to show the level of the end of the bridge. I don't know how you would add rotational scenery that isn't a circle, but it could be useful.

That's my list for now. I suspect some of the things I mentioned are just user error on my part (using spikes for example), and somethings are pipe dreams, but hopefully some of them are useful.

We've only got 3 of our 8 Stagehands in use right now, so hopefully I'll get a chance to set up some motors on our second control computer with the Beta software and play around. I'll let you know if I have any other issues, and I'll take a look at the Stagehand that was being problematic on our last show.

This new version of the software looks really promising, although I'm sure our Automation operator won't be excited to hear she gets to learn new software again.

[brianf]

OOPS, I installed Friday's build. I see now that the Distance from plaster issue has been resolved in today's build. Thanks.

[garethconner]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for taking a look at the beta and providing feedback, it's greatly appreciated.

-I can add spikes but not select them, I'm not connected to any motors, but even then it would be nice to be able to build a show blind at a paper tech.

-The OK button in the spike creation window is never active, if I hit cancel it adds the spike, but OK doesn't ever even unshade.

This is currently works, but might seem a little quirky. The key is to select a line in the spike dialog without clicking into one of the text boxes. Just click to the left or right of a text box and it will select the spike.

-When trying to use a spike to build a cue I tried to type in the name of the spike and it crashed the application (I will send an email with the log file for your reference)

Thanks for that report, we'll get it fixed.

-I know that the ability to import tuning is being considered (I would vote for it) but in addition it may be nice to copy a motor. If we have several tracks that are similar in many ways it would be nice to be able to copy one and paste it instead of setting all the parameters for each.

Sounds good, we can bring back the duplicate motor feature.

-When I zoom into the stage view there is no way to scroll the view, only rotate, it probably doesn't make any difference, but it seemed like it should be able to do that.

At the moment, I've backed off from this. Prior to releasing the beta I had implemented dynamic zoom, pan, and rotate. Unfortunately it caused a lot of problems that are harder to fix than expected. As a fall-back plan, I implemented the current zoom & rotate. Hopefully I can bring back the other view manipulation tools at some point.

-In all the text boxes it would be nice if the Enter key would apply the changes. There is something counter-intuitive about having to leave the box to apply the changes to me.

I'll take a look at this and see.

-(this one is really nit-picky) If I use the wheel on the mouse to scroll down the tools on the right side of the screen it stops scrolling when it's over the spike list. I suspect this is so that when the spike list is in need of scrolling it's self it will allow scrolling there, but perhaps when it has scrolled all the way to the bottom or top it could resume scrolling the other tools.

Yeah, this drives me crazy too. I'll get it on the bug list.

-Pressing the "Add Spike" button on the side panel seems like it should add the spike and select the name text for editing.

Agreed.

-How about a translucent stage deck so that elevators in the pit could be visible?

That's easily done, I'll try it out for the next build.

-In our next show we have a drawbridge, I have a few options of how it would be represented, but none of them are ideal, I could do a turntable on it's side to show the rotational movement of the drawbridge, or I could do a wagon as an elevator to show the level of the end of the bridge. I don't know how you would add rotational scenery that isn't a circle, but it could be useful.

Hmmm....

This new version of the software looks really promising, although I'm sure our Automation operator won't be excited to hear she gets to learn new software again.

Oh, I'm sure she'll love it

[brianf]

OK, I've tried the spike system again and it works. I crashed the program again by trying to delete the previous position setting for the motor I was assigning a spike to, but other than that I can now set spikes.

Would it be possible for the motor/cue information to display that the motor goes to the spike name in the position field rather than the position number? It seems like it would make it easier to see what is going to happen in that cue.

Maybe a checkbox in the select spike dialog to choose the spike would make it clearer how to select a spike. I suppose it would actually be a radio button.

Thanks for all the replies, it's good to see that you have so much of this in the works already, and I understand the difficulties of the things you aren't currently planning.

[brianf]

I just noticed another feature that seems odd to me. When I want to select a cue in the cue grid I have to click in a text box of the cue or on the gray box at the top, when I click the gray box it collapses the box and then I have to click again to see the information, if I click on the text box them I worry that I will accidentally input new information. Would it be possible to only collapse and expand the information by clicking on the little arrow in the top left corner? Also could clicking anywhere else in the box draw focus to the box so I don't have to click in a text box. Really one or the other would be fine. If I could click the gray without the box collapsing I would do that and the text box issue wouldn't matter.

Also (like so many of my other suggestions, this could be silly, but it jumped into my head, so I'll ask) would it be possible to have a collapse all option for the control boxes on the right. Probably not worth the work, but it seems like while running a show it could be nice to only see the necessary information but be able to quickly open or hide the rest.

[garethconner]

I crashed the program again by trying to delete the previous position setting for the motor I was assigning a spike to

Could you give me a little detail on this? What were you doing when it crashed?

Would it be possible for the motor/cue information to display that the motor goes to the spike name in the position field rather than the position number? It seems like it would make it easier to see what is going to happen in that cue.

The spike name shows up in the header of collapsing panel & on the button next to the position box. The theory is, if you assign spike to the movement and then change your mind deciding instead to use an explicit position number, you can punch the number into the position box and it will remove the spike and substitute the explicit value.

Maybe a checkbox in the select spike dialog to choose the spike would make it clearer how to select a spike. I suppose it would actually be a radio button.

That's a good idea...I'll take a look at that tomorrow. Thanks.

[brianf]

I crashed the program again by trying to delete the previous position setting for the motor I was assigning a spike to

Could you give me a little detail on this? What were you doing when it crashed?

I had a number in the position box and before I went to choose a spike mark I deleted the number, when I did that the program crashed. It was essentially like when I had it crash by trying to type in a name of a spike mark before. I imagine it was the same issue at least.

[garethconner]

Ah, I see. Thanks, that'll be fixed for the next build.

[brianf]

Newly noticed things:

- Items below the deck cannot be selected with the mouse through the deck, can't imagine why an item would be totally below the deck, but if it is.

- Now that items can go below the deck pan would be even more useful, when I fill the schematic window from side to side with my stage it centers vertically which means I can see the things mounted flat to the stage, but the stuff under it goes out of view, I suppose the same problem would exist with an above deck elevator, it could travel out of view in the up direction.

- The system allows creation of spikes outside the maximum travel of the motor, and then when you select that as a position it sets the position to the max travel without mentioning it. Maybe it shouldn't allow the creation of those spikes or warn you when you create them or use them.

- Using the tab key to navigate through the text boxes in the motor/cue control box, the cue looses association with it's spike if you TAB through the spike selection button.

- Don't know how to describe it, but using tab in the Spike box of the right hand control boxes can yield odd highlighting results. A combination of having already selected something, and TAB and then SHIFT-TAB is how I got it to highlight multiple Spikes.

- There doesn't seem to be a way to de-select a spike in the spike box on the right side of the screen, this leaves the spikes vulnerable to accidental removal.

I know that panning is on the back burner for the schematic, but now that putting scenery under the deck is more user friendly it could be even more useful.

I still haven't hooked up to any motors, but I may in the near future.

[garethconner]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for checking out the latest build. A lot of good polishing suggestions in your response.

Panning would certainly be nice, I'll see what's feasible now that some of the other big notes have been knocked off the list.

While it doesn't make up for the lack of panning, have you played with using multiple Stage Model Viewers on screen? I've been using this lately to have two or three view of the stage, kind of like virtual spy-cams.

[jon@lagerquist.com]

have you played with using multiple Stage Model Viewers on screen?

While looking at this is struck me that I do not see a way to cycle through multiple windows from the keyboard, like an [ALT-W][3] key command sequence. I do not know if this would end up being useful, or how challenging it would be to add.

Jon

[brianf]

Gareth,

If you look into the window cycling ability (which seems good to me since we usually run motors from one monitor) I would suggest/vote for [CTRL]+[TAB] since it is the standard in many multi-window applications on PC already (Firefox and AutoCAD come to mind.)

[jon@lagerquist.com]

I guess it depends on how the windows are viewed. [Alt-Tab] cycles applications or instances of applications.

[brianf]

I guess it depends on how the windows are viewed. [Alt-Tab] cycles applications or instances of applications.

I hadn't done much playing with the multiple window option yet, so I didn't realize that windows sees each additional stage view as another instance of the program. In that case you are right, [ALT+TAB] is the more likely choice. I was thinking that Windows was only going to see one instance of SpikeMark, in which case it seemed like [CTRL+TAB] was the natural choice.

In testing just now I did find that the extra Stage View windows are forced to be always on top, which make multiple views on one monitor a bit tricky. Another odd characteristic is that when I have Windows focusing on the Stage Model Viewer, it doesn't show an icon for the SpikeMark application, if this were changed so that both windows were always represented in the [ALT+TAB] list and the Stage Model Views weren't forced to be on top (and maybe allowed custom names) switching views on the fly would actually be quite simple. I think that solution would probably require less work and ultimately work as well as the other idea I have, but the second one may be cleaner... If you were to set up the stage model view portion of the screen as a tabbed feature, the user could have multiple views of the same model under the tab and then by clicking on the tab (with custom view name) would switch to that view, [CTRL+TAB] would also be a nice option in this instance.[/quote]

[garethconner]

I know that panning is on the back burner for the schematic, but now that putting scenery under the deck is more user friendly it could be even more useful.

FYI, we now have panning working well in the soon-to-be-released version. Scrollwheel zooming has also been added. These two additions make the model much easier to navigate.

-Gareth