Re: Modifying properties of several objects at the same time

[Ben Hetland <Ben A Hetland sintef no>]

Hi everybody,

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 14:24:19 +0200, Daniele Pighin wrote:
> I was wondering whether it was possible to introduce a way to be able to 
> modify several objects' properties at the very same time, as it would be very 
> useful and time saving, especially for large diagrams.


I suddenly got this idea to how a solution for a GUI for this could 
behave in a very flexible way IMO. I just share the idea so we all 
can elaborate on it or spawn better ideas... :-)

The idea is perhaps a variant of the following proposal:
> method 3 - popup oriented: when selecting several objects and then clicking on 
> "properties", present a popup with the appropriate widgets to edit any 
> property which is common to all selected objects. All of these widget would 
> initially be disabled (each would be enabled by an appropriate checkbox): 
> when enabling one or more fields, editing and applying, all of the selected 
> objects would have the corresponding property changed.

Instead of being able to edit only the common properties, which is 
merely the intersection set of the all sets of properties for the 
individually selected object, one could present a popup dialog 
having a selector at the top (e.g., combo box or tabbed dialog 
widget). The selection available here would be the type names of all 
kinds of objects included in the current selection.

The rest of the dialog box would be the same dialog as the 
Properties dialog for the selected object type in the selector. The 
size of the dialog window could either re-adjust itself on every 
selector change, or it could simply be the maximum size required to 
fit in the windows below the selector.

This would now enable us to manipulate the _union_ set of all 
properties.


But if for example "Standard - Line" was selected, its property 
sheet would be displayed. Consider now that there happened to be 
several such objects included in the selection:

Now, some of the properties have the same settings in all objects; 
Those fields can just be enabled and the common setting shown.

If the property in question does NOT have the same value in all 
selected objects, however, then the field should still be enabled 
(i.e. modifiable), but doesn't show any real value. It could also be 
"dimmed down" or something to visually aid in the concept that there 
are really multiple values around. If the user does not touch this 
setting at all, then the properties should remain unchanged in all 
objects. But if the user sets a different value, then that will be 
set in all objects of that type.

This solution is the most flexible, I think, and it also handles the 
case where different kinds of objects happen to share a property 
name which isn't really the same property. But I'm not sure that it 
really handles the situation that some common property among 
different object types might be better handled if it's only 
displayed at one [common] place (and not repeated on every type's 
property sheet).


Regards,

-+-Ben-+-