LC 8 Property Inspector

[Richard Gaskin]

Peter Haworth wrote:

 > On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 11:59 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
 >> Here's an implementation I've been using whenever I need things
 >> not found in any Inspector:
 >> <http://fourthworld.net/revnet/devolution/4W_Props.rev.gz>
 >>
 >> The design is largely functional, but suboptimal. Time permitting it
 >> would group related properties together under collapsible headers.
 >
 > Completeness is indeed important, especially to newcomers as you
 > point out.
 > There are some strange omissions from the pre-8 PI, e.g. it doesn't
 > have a place to specify a behavior for an option menu which, when I
 > first started using LC, led me to believe option menus couldn't have
 > behaviors for some reason.  I see that's been corrected in v8.
 >
 > However, once you're past the newcomer stage, showing every possible
 > property is probably something you don't want, which brings me to
 > the issue of layout flexibility, the ability to organize properties
 > together in a way that makes sense for each individual user.

The collapsible headers I referred to is the enhancement a good Property 
Sheet should have to allow users to find properties easily.

Logical groupings allow you to work with just color props, or 
size/location props, etc. as needed, and likely only crazy people like 
me would expand all of them at once in an alphabetic list like the one 
I'd built to see them all at once.

Ken Ray and I discussed having one of the theoretical collapsible 
headers being Favorites, so anyone who finds themselves using a certain 
subset of props frequently can include them there while still keeping 
the logical groupings it would ship with by default.

The real value of the Prop Sheet implementation I shared isn't that it's 
complete in that way, but merely that all of its prop labels and values 
use only one field to display them.  Super easy to build and maintain, 
and efficient to work with.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com