[L2Ork-dev] Doubt regarding canvas

[Jonathan Wilkes]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 6:55 AM Prakhar Agarwal
<prakhar at everything.net.in> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I wanted to know why the canvas in the web app is scrollable, that to a little bit.

It's because users can create diagrams that are much larger than the viewport.

For example, a user may create an oscillator that produces some sound.
Then they copy/paste the
contents of the canvas six times and have a long row or tall column of
64 chains of objects!

So the user needs a way to navigate such large canvases, and
scrollbars allow this.

Try "Put -> Bang", then right-click the bang widget you just created
and choose "Help." The canvas for
the help patch is longer than the viewport, so we need scrollbars.

> It looked a little bit odd to me so I asked.

What's the alternative?

>
> I also noticed that when we open "put" menu in canvas, the bottom part of it gets below the console. So I thought, adding scroll to canvas was a workaround for viewing the bottom part of the menu.

That's definitely a nasty design issue, but it isn't the only reason
to have scrollbars.

As far as design-- the web app started from the design of the native
application. And the native application inherited a lot of design
ideas from old GUI toolkits from the 1990s. For example, in the native
application each canvas lives in its own top-level window. So if you
open ten patches you get ten separate windows!

So, as you test out the web app in its current form, it is definitely
worth it to continue asking these questions about which design
features are needed, and which were simply inherited from old design
which may be outdated.

-Jonathan

>
> Please clarify these doubts.
>
> Thanks,
> Prakhar
> _______________________________________________
> L2Ork-dev mailing list
> L2Ork-dev at disis.music.vt.edu
> https://disis.music.vt.edu/listinfo/l2ork-dev