This thread is continued from:
http://community.coreldraw.com/forums/p/19344/100072.aspx#100072
... but is intended to be PP specific. It's a list for Corel bug fixers... one place for them to easily find many bugs... big or small, crash/freezing or just wrong GUI stuff. This is not intended to be a wants list, but obviously sometimes there's overlap... one person's wish is another person's GUI bug. This thread will probably be boring reading for most of us, but hopefully this will efficiently help the bug-finding and bug-fixing process. Hopefully you can be as specific as possible about the circumstances of what you were doing when the problem occured, but I know from personal experience that some of the crash/freeze problems just happen or are around all the time.
I'll start it off with a few itty bitty new ones.
- Make the popup text the same for icons as they're called in the customization/commands dialog
-eg. "Fit in Window" is a zoom command, and it's popup text says "Zoom to fit" - which imho is a good name... fit to window should be changed
-eg. "Initiate cutout tool" is not the cutout tool being started... it's the "cutout lab"
- The zoom 25% command is using the zoom 33 icon.
- when you hold L on a pallete colour to bring up the super cool hue popup colour picker box (which is great), don't force the user to pick a colour with Left-mouse (for foreground in PP) if you accidentally drag the mouse (with L button still down) into the popup... if the user goes out of the popup with L held down, let them release without a choice being registered, and keep the popup open so the user can use L or R to pick.
- this colour picker kinda-bug (sorta) is also a wish/bug for Draw (for fill and outline instead), but I've been told that it's better to separate the threads for better communication.
Here's to a better PP and Graphics Suite X5.
- at different zoom levels, the outside area (overscroll area) changes form light to dark... this is bad because (at least on my reasonably quick computer), when you zoom using the mouse wheel, you get a dark grey and then light grey flicker effect. It's very brief, but adds to the feeling that the software isn't solid. Make the outside area one colour... and make it a changeable option... so the user can choose to work light on dark or vise versa.
- when you crop to colour when you're zoomed in, the refresh doesn't work correctly for the background area (it goes the dark shade)
- *maybe* (as an option) make the brush use XOR on the brush's outline so you can see it over chaotic textures. When I'm drawing on some textures, I can't see the brush.
- the drawing utensils need to be able to have shortcuts set for them. Everything else can... even obscure icons/actions. The basics should definitley be able to link up to a shortcut key... eg. brush, airbrush, pencil, pen, marker, etc. I'm not even talking customized brushes (which also need to be shortcutable)... I'm talking the basic drawing tools. This also includes smear, smudge, and all the other specific "effect" tools. This is a no-brainer. You don't primarily use the program to do "pen and ink"... you're smudging, smearing, cloning, and using the different brush tools... Clone is shortcutable... the others should be too. It's common sense.
- have a way to disable the "masks will not be saved in this format" message when you're working with jpgs and other basic raster formats. It's annoying and completely unnecessary the thousandth time... make it a dialog that can be disabled?
Davoid said: The basics should definitley be able to link up to a shortcut key... eg. brush, airbrush, pencil, pen, marker, etc. I'm not even talking customized brushes (which also need to be shortcutable)... I'm talking the basic drawing tools.
One problem is that I bet 9 out of 10 PP users don't know the effect tools exist. They are missing tons of power.
I totally agree that access to the powerful tools with user-definable shortcuts is critical.
Sometimes I think Corel looks at their software from a new user's perspective, instead of a experienced user's POV who looks at the Corel suite 8-12 hours a day. They should track down the top PP users who are somehow able to create fine art in PP in it's current state, and ask them what drives them crazy.
Pro software will inherently seem complex to newbs due to extensive features. Newbs have no loyalty. Pro users do. Newbs showed up at the PP focus group for the 100.00 and free sandwiches. LOL
Corel's job is to convert newbs into pros, and the only way that's possible is if newbs can make a living by using fast and reliable software. Dumbing down software to appeal to newbs, and irrititating pros by hiding the power they need (and understand) is the wrong path (for pro software) IMO.
One dialog I want to DIE forever is the prompt to retain clipboard contents. I see that 60-100 times, every freaking day....
Hi Jeff,
I'm glad to hear you are using it. Thanks also for mentioning that you renamed the module. I have been very sloppy in the past about naming modules and it really came to light with the addition of the Macro Manager docker in CDGSX5. I really need to go through all of my macros naming things properly to show up in the docker as expected. I will have to be more astute in this area from now on.
Best regards,Brian.
Brian said:I'm glad to hear you are using it.
Oh, I couldn't wait. I made something for Draw right away also. But VBA is bit different for DRAW...I had to do this:
Sub Close_delete_CB()CorelDRAW.Application.Clipboard.ClearSendKeys "%(fx)"SendKeys "{n}"End Sub
And I couldn't get the save clipboard to work. Oh well, this is OK:
Jeff Harrison said: I'm glad to hear you are using it. Oh, I couldn't wait. I made something for Draw right away also. But VBA is bit different for DRAW...I had to do this: Sub Close_delete_CB()CorelDRAW.Application.Clipboard.ClearSendKeys "%(fx)"SendKeys "{n}"End Sub And I couldn't get the save clipboard to work. Oh well, this is OK: [/quote] Hi Jeff, when I saw your above code I was curious. How weird! Even when you have already cleared the clipboard (programmatically), CorelDraw still asks if you want to keep the contents of the clipboard and there are no contents! You can therefore leave out the line which clears the clipboard, as it will be cleared anyway when you answer "No" to keeping the contents of the clipboard (programmatically). Therefore, you could just write this code: Sub Close_delete_CB() Application.Quit SendKeys "{n}"End Sub To keep the contents of the clipboard: Sub Close_save_CB() Application.Quit SendKeys "{y}"End Sub Maybe when you were trying to write code to save the contents of the clipboard you accidentally forgot to remove your 2nd line of code, which was clearing the clipboard. There would be nothing on the clipboard to save after running that line of code. Best regards,Brian.
I'm glad to hear you are using it.
when I saw your above code I was curious. How weird! Even when you have already cleared the clipboard (programmatically), CorelDraw still asks if you want to keep the contents of the clipboard and there are no contents! You can therefore leave out the line which clears the clipboard, as it will be cleared anyway when you answer "No" to keeping the contents of the clipboard (programmatically). Therefore, you could just write this code:
Sub Close_delete_CB() Application.Quit SendKeys "{n}"End Sub
To keep the contents of the clipboard:
Sub Close_save_CB() Application.Quit SendKeys "{y}"End Sub
Maybe when you were trying to write code to save the contents of the clipboard you accidentally forgot to remove your 2nd line of code, which was clearing the clipboard. There would be nothing on the clipboard to save after running that line of code.
Brian said:Maybe when you were trying to write code to save the contents of the clipboard you accidentally forgot to remove your 2nd line of code, which was clearing the clipboard. There would be nothing on the clipboard to save after running that line of code.
Hi B,
outside of the clipboard issue, there are 2 other factors.
1. the prompt to save current doc
2. prompt to save other docs that may also be open that I might want to keep (but forgot about for the moment)
Second one - I haven't touched yet...
Much of the time, as a Draw enthusiast, I open it to quickly try something, but have no intention of saving that scribble. So my Draw code assumed I didn't want to keep the open file.
When I want to keep something, I'm sure to save it manually. Out of nervous habit I press CTRL+S every few minutes on important work. So, if I've never saved a file once, I really don't want it.
So it's a second annoyance to me when Draw asks if I want to save a file. That what that code in mine was doing, killing the save prompt.
Imagine going through life with a little robot on your shoulder second guessing every thing you do, not allowing you to proceed until you press a yes or no button on it... LOL
Jeff Harrison said: Hi B, Imagine going through life with a little robot on your shoulder second guessing every thing you do, not allowing you to proceed until you press a yes or no button on it... LOL
Ah, I see, so you need the forthcoming BDPredictiveClose macro? LOL