issue-#32 Folds arrows display

[Zinn]

I can never remember which arrows are expanded and which are collapsed, even though that is easy (the wider hollow arrows are expanded,
the narrow solid arrows are collapsed).

But I can very easily see that all the folds are consistently one way or the other.

With the up-slant & down-slant triangles the difference is just not so obvious to me.


(I also have difficulty remembering which of "\" "/" is Windows, which is URL.
Which is called "slash", "back-slash", "up-slash", "down-slash", "solidus", etc. I maybe have some kind of angle dyslexia.)

Robert

So am I.
There is only one way to remember it:
Using the "+" sign for collapsed folds. That mean you click on the plus sign to see more.
And the "-" sign for expanded folds. That mean you click on the minus sign to see less.

The advantage is:
- easy to remember
- the plus and minus signs are available in a lot of fonts.

Certainly those signs are a little bit too small.
Ivan may draw it bigger or even longer if he would like to keep his drawing concepts.
But nobody will accept good idea.

[Ivan Denisov]

Helmut, this is good idea! I see this somehow like this:

helmut_folds.png (3.46 KiB) Viewed 29699 times

[Bernhard]

because there is no single font that is appropriate and available on all platforms.

there are/were MicroSofts "Core Fonts for the Web". Maybe they are sufficient?

see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web,
http://www.unixmen.com/installmicrosoft ... jackalope/,
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/web.aspx,
http://web.nickshanks.com/fonts/microso ... -web-fonts,
and https://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts/

[Ivan Denisov]

Folks, I really do not want to waste my time by making demos. So I like Helmut idea and want to work on demo, but if we decide to move from using Fonts.

Josef, you should make the voting about removing Fonts dependency from the StdFolds!!! This will show the general view, and if we decide to make this, we will choose between the several alternatives. If we decide to use Fonts, we will choose the fonts for this by the next vote.

[Ivan Denisov]

because there is no single font that is appropriate and available on all platforms.

there are/were MicroSofts "Core Fonts for the Web". Maybe they are sufficient?

see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web,
http://www.unixmen.com/installmicrosoft ... jackalope/,
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/web.aspx,
http://web.nickshanks.com/fonts/microso ... -web-fonts,
and https://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts/

This Microsoft fonts not always available in Linux. Only If you installing them manually or with Wine package.

[Ivan Denisov]

Josef, we need the first voting:

1. Draw folds with some font symbols
2. Draw folds without fonts by Ports primitives

Please, do not ignore this topic.

[Josef Templ]

I did some more experiments with explicit drawings of the fold icons,
in particular with the +/- version (see http://forum.blackboxframework.org/view ... t=40#p2036).
If we use precise 45 degree angles we get a sufficient rendering quality without the need for anti-aliasing.
So, explicit drawing as proposed by Ivan is really a strong candidate
and it seems to me that the version with the +/- inside is the best choice.

1. It is in line with many folding code editors, which also use the +/- very much in the same way.
2. it is similar in shape to the current fold arrows, so it will not confuse users too much
3. it gets rid of all platform dependencies
4. it should be possible to draw it with good rendering quality but it will need some careful coding,
in particular,I guess, it will need some computations in device coordinates in order to avoid
rounding problems when converting from world coordinates to device coordinates.

I have created a poll for moving forward on this issue.

- Josef

[Josef Templ]

Since the general trend according to the voting is to switch from
fonts to drawings (as proposed by Ivan) I have prepared a version of StdFolds,
partially inspired by Ivan's triangle version and by the discussions in the forum, that shows
a high degree of symmetry and also provides scaling with the size and
proper printing. A lot of effort has gone into this but it may still be improved,
so feel free to make improvements but be warned that it is not as easy as it
may look at the first glance.

See the diffs at http://redmine.blackboxframework.org/pr ... c1669af08b.

Since the changes in topic branch issue-#32 are obsolete anyway due to
issue-#33, I have cleaned it up and put my new version of StdFolds into it
as the only change. I have created a backup for it in case Ivan needs it in
backup-issue-#32.

- Josef

[Ivan Denisov]

Josef, this is looking and working really well.

Good commit for the anniversary hundredth build
http://blackboxframework.org/unstable/i ... a1.100.zip

folds in Wine

hdt_fold.png (1.07 KiB) Viewed 29623 times

folds in Linux Ubuntu

folds_ubuntu.png (15.5 KiB) Viewed 29620 times

Only one wish is to have a bit more margin around + and –.

[Ivan Denisov]

I improved drawing a bit by increasing of symbol margins inside the arrows.
http://blackboxframework.org/unstable/i ... a1.101.zip

I tested several sizes, print the test document and exported to pdf.