[Geomoose-users] Behaving Properly with Multiple Tools

[Dan Little]

GeoMOOSE has a problem.  It tries to let users do a lot of things that, ultimately, will cause them harm.

The Scenario
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A user is going along identifying things.  Then they decide to add a Polygon to the map.  Then they want to identify things again, so they simply return to the identify tab.

The application fundamentally breaks here.  It will try to draw polygons and identify things at the same time.  This isn't a problem if the user were to, once again, click the "Identify" tool from the toolbar.


There are variations on this tune but the underlaying question to it all is, how should we be defining the users verb focus?  And how do we do it in a consistent predictable manner?

Some thoughts:
1. When switching to any tool, any "service tabs" close.  That means, the users' ability to add a polygon would close the "identify" tab.  Removing the users ability to go after the tab.  This has the negative consequence of not being able to refer to your results for as long or allow the results to interact with other tools.

2. The root of these problems seem connected with some lack of consistency with drawing.  The vector layers are handled separately from the layers that are used as "temp drawing layers" for the services.  We could move the drawing and editing tools into a "tab" so that instead of doing things like "Add Polygon", the user would click a button like "Edit Vector Layer" or "Add Sketches" and it would open a service-like tab that would give all of the layer editing options.  The may mean creating a tool for each vector layer the user wants to have editable.

Anyone with other thoughts? Solutions? Patches?

PS: I'm sorry if this shows up as a duplicate, I sent this email yesterday afternoon and it didn't appear to show up on the list.
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