[OpenLayers-Dev] editing controls, preserve selection

[Tim Schaub]

Steven M. Ottens wrote:
> Hi Pierre,
> 
> I'm currently more involved in user interaction design and not so  
> much in coding so it could be that I'm cutting corners which are hard  
> to cut but:
> 
> why do you need to switch between modifyFeature control and  
> deleteVertex control?
> IMO you can stay in modfiyFeature mode and allow the user to delete a  
> vertex by selecting it and press the delete key or hit the right  
> mouse button and select 'delete' .
> I am aware that this approach forces the user to understand that a  
> webpage has more controls than mere links: keyboard, scrollwheel and  
> the right mouse button behave differently than in the classic Web.  
> I've been a great advisory (?) of backwards compatibility but  
> sometimes you need to take the extra step and force people to spend  
> 10s more time to get the new paradigm to save 9s every time they do  
> the action.
> 
> This rambling has mainly focussed on your approach of feature editing  
> and doesn't solve you core question of preservation of selection,  
> sorry about that. I hope you solve your issue but even more I hope  
> you reconsider your current design (TBH there are valid reasons to  
> keep your current design, but ease of coding isn't one IMHO :)
> 

I like the idea of creating small, single function controls.  Then 
additional controls can be created that aggregate these.  I think this 
gives us the most flexibility.

We've done a lot of work to get things this way currently.

So you've got a drag handler.  A box handler has a drag handler.  Then, 
a zoom box control has a box handler.  This way, other things can also 
make use of the drag handler (like the drag pan control) and other 
things can make use of the box handler (like a box selection control).

The same goes for feature editing.  We've now got a drag feature control 
in the trunk.  This uses a drag handler and a feature handler.  Alone, 
it doesn't do that much, it lets you drag feature around.  We're also 
putting together a modify feature control.  This uses a select feature 
control and a drag feature control.  Together, it lets you select a 
feature and drag around its verticies.

Next, we need delete vertex and add vertex controls.  Alone, these would 
do just what they say.  These could be aggregated with a modify feature 
control (and even a draw feature control if you like) into a single 
feature editing control that lets you drag around verticies, add new 
ones, and delete existing ones. Combined with a draw feature control, 
this would give you one control to draw and edit.

Of course, there will be a lot of room for help from interaction 
designers.  Ideally, we'll be able to use a combination of keyboard and 
mouse input to activate and deactivate specific functionality in these 
controls.

So, perhaps you were suggesting the same - but I wanted to make sure 
that it was clear that it *doesn't* make sense to develop the 
full-featured editing control before having the individual pieces in 
place.

Tim

> good luck
> steven
> 
> On Aug 22, 2007, at 2:44 PM, Pierre GIRAUD wrote:
> 
>> Hello all,
>>
>> Recently I worked on Tim's code to enhance the editing  
>> functionnalities.
>>
>> The result can be seen in the camptocamp/feature sandbox.
>>
>> I'm now facing an little issue. What is frustrating for the user is
>> that each time he switches between the two different editing controls
>> (modifyFeature and deleteVertex), the current selection is lost. The
>> user need to reselect a feature so that he can modify it.
>>
>> The problem is that when a control is deactivated, the select control
>> it relies on is also deactivate and the selectFeature.unselect()
>> method is called.
>>
>> Does someone has an idea of a workaround to let a control preserve
>> selection so that another control can use it ?
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Pierre
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> 
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