Re: Motivation for having a 'text color' that is invisible

["Michael Ross" <michael e ross gmail com>]

I suppose you are right.  I was thinking about selecting many and turning the text on or off that way, but you could do it with transparency as well.  I was also thinking that transparency was a pipe dream and toggling was much more likely in the near term.


In the development  environment of LabVIEW, we place functional icons - subroutines.  They are connected by wires of data.  The whole business is self documenting, if you use it with that intent.  When you bring your cursor above an icon a couple things can happen, tip strips can arise with whatever text in it you like.  Also there is Context - Help that displays notes in a window, if it is activated (there are other functions as well and the Context Help can contain links to more in depth Help).  The Icons also have a label and a caption which are toggled visible by either manual or programmatic means.

I only mention this because the idea of embedded documentation and ability to have optionally hidden notes is pretty addictive.  The tip strips is something I would use in Dia if it existed.  For example I just did a schematic of piece of custom electronic equipment.  I placed a bunch of purchasing information on a layer that can be turned on and off.  But that information doesn't move around with the schematic groups and it can be extensive to the point that I need more than one layer for visibility's sake.  Tip strips and/or context help like in LabVIEW would solve that.

Just brainstorming here.  The data flow and graphical programming of LabVIEW present some interesting alternatives to more conventional paradigms of graphic display and programming.

Mike

On 10/27/07, Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk> wrote:

On Thu, 2007-10-25 at 13:56 -0400, Michael Ross wrote:
> In the DAQ development system I use called LabVIEW they provide a
> color they call "transparent."  It is indeed a useful color.
>
> Even better would be a slider for color transparency and for layer
> transparency.  I often wish the fill of a shape could be transparent
> -- if it seems really important then I crank up Inkscape.  But that
> would never be as good as having the ability native to Dia.

Arbitrary transparency takes more work in the exporters -- I'm fairly
sure the internal rendering can handling it.  It would be rocking to
have.

> It is still a good idea to toggle the visibility of text in a shape.
> A hidden or temporarily invisible note could also double as a
> documentation field for a particular instance of a shape.

So invisible (as opposed to transparent) text would not be counted
towards diagram extents?  If that's not the point, I don't know what
there is to toggling visibility that transparency doesn't handle.

-Lars

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Michael Ross
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