Enhancement: Clearer Pointer syntax

[TrueMylenium]

Assuming pointers were ever fixed to actually work with more than two segments and possibly as part of a greater plan to make them more universal I would propose to change the syntax in such a way that each segment's points are treated as a separate script entry for better readability. Potentially there could also be specific names for start and end segments and methods to e.g. glue them to callouts without having to dial in actual coordinates. Something like that perhaps:

0 !LPUB POINTER BEGIN
0 !LPUB POINTER_SEGMENT 0 0 300 400
0 !LPUB POINTER_SEGMENT "inherit" "inherit" 600 700
0 !LPUB POINTER_SEGMENT "inherit" "inherit" "CALLOUT LEFT" "CALLOUT CENTER"

"inherit" is meant to represent the last point of the previous list entry, obviously.

[trevorsandy]

Thank you for your suggestion.

Multi-segment pointers ware specifically designed to be animated from the User Interface which automatically manages the position offsets when a pointer segment is moved. Additionally, pointer as line type, color, border etc are managed from a pointer's context menu. These functionalities were put in place to streamline the pointer creation and updates.

I'm not sure the added effort and ongoing maintenance to augment the current UI-centric pointer edit behaviour with a meta command-centric framework will justify the marginal benefit of added flexibility. Particularly when said flexibility will likely be utilized by the minority of LPub3D users who are at the level of competence required to appreciate this type of enhancement. While I can certainly agree with enhancing the pointer meta commands, there are many other pending enhancement that would bring a greater benefit to a broader segment of users. For example, animating the BUFEXCHG from the 3DViewer or having menu-driven insertion of 1:1, sticker, and right/wrong illustrations.

Cheers,

[TrueMylenium]

Sure, there's a million ways to skin a cat, but wouldn't you agree that this could perhaps be part of a greater effort to de-contextualize the pointers and make them more universally usable? Same for dividers/ separators. I understand that LPub is meant to derive as much as it can from intrinsic properties of the model files like it would be in an automated tech doc system, but regardless, I think we need to have a way to make things look pretty like in a more user-driven layout tool. After all, people use line tools in InDesign or whatever to do the weirdest things and I could see this having potential in combination with BUFEXCHG for drawing offset components and arrows for instance. You know, having an arrow to tell people where to insert a pin could be just as useful as a right/ wrong comparison. Just sayin... In the end you have to weigh the priorities and I can't help much, though I'm almost tempted to get dirty in the source code just to understand how things work...

[trevorsandy]

I am warming, it seems slowly but warming none the less, to your pointer architecture suggestion - particularly the ability to have unlimited segments. I’m still thinking about an optimal implementation; when I figure that out, I’ll convert this ticket to an enhancement.

Cheers,