[E] Seeing where Elements are used

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Tiagofvarela
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[E] Seeing where Elements are used

Post by Tiagofvarela »

The editor currently possesses a feature wherein it ensures no element is deleted if some frames depend on it. This can be anything from an entire character, a single pose of said character, evidence or music.
Image
Since I imagine some sort of function exists to figure out all the frames, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to create a button that would let us check this list for any given element at will.

As for possible applications, it's mostly just for navigation purposes. Recheck other usages of the element in the case to ensure consistency, check if it's being overused or underused, check if there are elements not being used for any reason.
A bunch of organisational details. Nothing in any way urgent.
I just thought it might be relatively easy to implement, though I am not certain it would. As you can see, it doesn't provide too much benefit, so it might not be worth it at all.

And for the positioning of said button, the easiest way would be to position it right next to wherever the delete buttons are, as there's space. And as the safeguard of dependencies exists, I would hope it wouldn't be too destructive to misclick the delete button.

Finally, you might say "You could just try to delete the element to see the list." and you would be... correct. However, my own paranoia would lead me to fear deleting an element which isn't used anywhere and I thought it was.
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Enthalpy
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Re: [E] Seeing where Elements are used

Post by Enthalpy »

This is something we could do, but every new button we create adds more stuff to the user interface. If the user wants the button, great. If the user doesn't want the button, it's just clutter.

So to add a new button, the benefit of "clearly tells the user they can do Cool Thing X" has to outweigh the organizational cost of "another button to look over."

In my mind, this is nowhere close to that standard, so I'm against the proposal. If there were some option to allow the user to enable/disable the button, I'd be okay with this, but there isn't even a place to add buttons like that. If we add a "customize editor UI" feature, I'd be fine with this, but until then, I'm opposed to this one. Trying to delete the element (and refreshing if needed) is good enough.
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ThePaSch
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Re: [E] Seeing where Elements are used

Post by ThePaSch »

I wouldn't say a button or a menu would be the best way to do this. The way I see it, just have a little icon somewhere on an item's frame; hovering over it would display frames that depend on it in a little tooltip. That's non-invasive, self-explanatory once you've hovered over it once, and doesn't add any menucruft.

Don't quite know how the delete dialog achieves this feat, though. It's been a while since I've looked over this part of code, so I can't say how difficult this would be to implement off the cuff.
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Re: [E] Seeing where Elements are used

Post by Enthalpy »

ThePaSch's modification, I'm much happier with.

The delete dialog code is well-modularized, so that part is easy. Identify the relevant function in editor_locate_depending.js and just pass in the IDs of the object you want to locate the dependencies of.
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Tiagofvarela
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Re: [E] Seeing where Elements are used

Post by Tiagofvarela »

Naturally, I do not object to any such adaptations of my original suggestion.
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