Show coordinates and measured distances more clearly

[Brian]

Aven still does not work properly on my computer,an oldish Win 2000. As I did not like the new Aven much, it dos'nt matter much.

Windows 2000 (build 2195, Service Pack 4)
wxWidgets 2.8.10
Display Depth: 32 bpp (colour)
OpenGL 1.4 15.13.10.08
S3 Graphics, Incorporated
S3 Graphics DeltaChromeR8G8B8
Max Texture size: 2048x2048
Max Viewport size: 2048x2048
Smooth Point Size 0.500-64.000 (granularity 0.125)
Double buffered: true
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[Olly Betts]

In what ways doesn't it work properly?

And what don't you like about it compared to the old version?

[Brian]

Replying to olly:

In what ways doesn't it work properly?

And what don't you like about it compared to the old version?

The colour by depth window has no text and there is an error message when you shut Aven down:- The instruction at "0x1009d117" referenced memory at "0x0000004c". The memory could not be "read". Click OK to terminate program

The old Aven used to zoom out to a 50CM bar across most of the screen, now it only zooms to a 2M bar a third of the screen. The labeling of the stations and the distance between is now on a small bar at the bottom of the screen and is dificult to see.

[Olly Betts]

Do you see labels on the scale bar, compass, and clino? And do station names work (Ctrl+N to turn them on)? They're all drawn in the same way as the depth bar text so if the others work it's something that's different there that's causing the issue.

Not sure about the crash - I'll see if I can get Jenny to reproduce it at work.

I've increased the distance you can zoom in to match 1.0.x, and made the scale bar maximum length the same as it used to be in r3779, so those will be fixed in 1.2.1.

Putting the station details and distance in the status bar was a deliberate decision - it means you don't need the side panel open to see this information, which makes things much more usable on smaller screens, and it also gives more space for the survey tree. So undoing that change doesn't seem great.

In what way do you find it more difficult to see than before?

I've wondered if we could provide this information in a little tooltip-like window which could be shown near where you're measuring which might look better (and then we wouldn't need the status bar at all).

[Brian]

Replying to olly:

Do you see labels on the scale bar, compass, and clino? And do station names work (Ctrl+N to turn them on)? They're all drawn in the same way as the depth bar text so if the others work it's something that's different there that's causing the issue.

Yes all the other labels are there, I have noticed that the text size of all labeling is larger on 1.1.* and 1.2.0 than 1.0.*, perhaps the text will not fit in the depth bar box and does not show. This problem exists in 1.1.* I have mentioned it before, but a long time ago.

Not sure about the crash - I'll see if I can get Jenny to reproduce it at work.

I've increased the distance you can zoom in to match 1.0.x, and made the scale bar maximum length the same as it used to be in r3779, so those will be fixed in 1.2.1.

Putting the station details and distance in the status bar was a deliberate decision - it means you don't need the side panel open to see this information, which makes things much more usable on smaller screens, and it also gives more space for the survey tree. So undoing that change doesn't seem great.

In what way do you find it more difficult to see than before?

I have always used 1.0.* so are use to to seeing in the side panel in larger text.

I've wondered if we could provide this information in a little tooltip-like window which could be shown near where you're measuring which might look better (and then we wouldn't need the status bar at all).

That would be a good idea, or a moveable window that I could put below the survey tree on the side panel, as the length on the survey tree does not mater when there is over 13000 survey stations (OFD).

[Olly Betts]

Actually, the zoom limit issue was still dependent on the survey dimensions - I've now fixed this properly so the limit is the same regardless of the survey. It's a little arbitrary what this limit should be, but it is now about the same as 1.0 and allow 1cm differences to be clearly seen which seems useful.

The text is now drawn in a completely different way to how it was in 1.0, which has a few issues with alignment and spacing currently - I've made the size a little larger so these issues are less striking, but I prefer the font size in 1.0 personally. But the depth bar is sized dynamically according to the width the text needs, so that shouldn't be an issue.

I suspect the issue is that the text gets drawn under the grey background, though that shouldn't be happening. I've now removed that grey background as that makes the key more consistent in style with the compass and clino, and showing the colours on black makes sense when they're used on black in the survey. But that may fix your issue as a bonus.

[Olly Betts]

Brian reports on the list that with 1.2.1:

I still get no text in the depth colour bar, if I press F5 then it gets filled with 'm' only. Also the scale bar does not have any text now except for an occasional 'm'.

I also recently noticed an issue with the wrong characters getting drawn initially on Microsoft Windows 7, which was fixed by doing anything which caused the display to update. So it's not just you.

1.2.2 changes the approach used to draw text. The previous approach tried to use texture mapping which should be fast with a decent graphics card, but in testing the new approach of simply drawing bitmaps is faster on some machines, and not noticeably different in speed on others. It also doesn't have the character alignment issues.

[Olly Betts]

I think the issues with how far you can zoom in, with text not always rendering, and the crash on shutdown are fixed now (if you're still seeing these problems, please say).

That seems to leave only the issue with how we show station coordinates and measured distances, so retitling this ticket to be about just that.

[Olly Betts]

Ticket retargeted after milestone closed

[Olly Betts]

Ticket retargeted after milestone closed

[Olly Betts]

Ticket retargeted after milestone closed

[Olly Betts]

Ticket retargeted after milestone closed

[Olly Betts]

Ticket retargeted after milestone closed

[Olly Betts]

Ticket retargeted after milestone closed