Lucky Clan Forum

Support => Suggestions, Ideas, Bugs => Topic started by: ZenAtWork on September 05, 2019, 02:22:52 PM

Title: Please, PLEASE let me decouple the canvas from device rotation!
Post by: ZenAtWork on September 05, 2019, 02:22:52 PM
Okay, let me begin with my bonafides:
I’m a professional UX designer. Have been for 24 years. I have a degree in CS, another in product design, AND one in Human Interface. Oh, and for spice, I worked for Apple for 3.5 years. AS AN IOS DEVELOPER.

I’ve been using your Art Studio app for 3-4 YEARS, and, since I use it at and for work, I use it 3-5 hours PER DAY, MINIMUM. That’s damn near 5,500 hours logged in your product. I love it, obviously.

There is ONE thing that still enrages me, though: I use one of those iPad cases with the 360-degree rotating handles. This is awesome in Paper, was awesome in the old Photoshop app, Sketchbook, etc. Because I can simply rotate my work on an illustration or design to work at a different angle, as most designers are wont to do on paper. With AS though, I gotta do the whole two finger twist thing.

Please, please, PLEASE add a checkbox in settings that makes the canvas ignore device orientation. The UI should totally behave as it does. Just let me decouple the canvas part? Let my work stay facing as it does. Now I get there’s some gotchas on this (rotate, transform, flip, etc.), but nothing that a global “offsetRotation” variable that increments or decrement by 90 onDeviceRotate won’t handily fix. Hell, stick a compass rose icon into the menu bar to indicate base orientation. Pinch can still snap it back to that.

I will personally send you a nice crisp $100 bill to get this feature. I use this thing enough that’s totally worth it to me. Hell, gimme repo access, I’ll CODE the damn thing for you, free! Just please. Please? I swear: it’ll make the software that much more intuitive. It’ll will improve your UX. I’m NOT guessing. Email me on my forum address  (I’m registered) a paypal link, if that’s what it’ll take!

Please?

ZenAtWork
Title: Re: Please, PLEASE let me decouple the canvas from device rotation!
Post by: Lucky Clan on September 06, 2019, 03:05:22 AM
I get the idea. However it can be difficult to implement that interface rotates but canvas remains still.
Besides you can lock orientation in Control Center.

However we will do some researches in the next few months.
Title: Re: Please, PLEASE let me decouple the canvas from device rotation!
Post by: ZenAtWork on September 24, 2019, 07:19:28 PM
TLDR: At the bottom of my reply, I offer a fairly easy-to-implement solution.

That's really awesome of you, both to take the time to reply, and to look into the matter. I truly do know the relative difficulty/complexity in what I'm asking (again; I was an iOS developer) but I assure you: this would be the last bit required for me to discard pretty much the rest of my tools, personally, and I think you'll be surprised how much a difference it makes.

Regarding the control center workaround, yes, I do know you can lock the device orientation. The problems this introduces are twofold:

1. Naturally, the interface doesn't rotate with the device (as it has been instructed not to do). The hassle here is that it inverts all of one's direction-sensitive commands (easily ignorable), but worse, it does things like move the undo button to a new location with every 90-degree shift of the device. This is harder than it sounds to mitigate, mentally.

2. The iPad is a capacitive device. Without going too deep into the mechanics, suffice it to say that when you touch the screen, you're actually touching a point millimeters ABOVE the point your brain "thinks" it's going to contact. We did a bunch of OS-level jiggery-pokery to "trick" the users' brains into believing that the point they're aiming at is actually what they come in contact with (it's functionally an offset upwards that depends on a slew of things, from orientation, to angle of use, to stylus vs finger, to whether or not the keyboard is on screen. In short, we cheat.

Thing is, that offset rotates with the perceptual screen orientation (that is to say, the amount and direction we "cheat" is device-orientation-specific). This means accuracy drops by more than an order of magnitude when you flip the device with the lock on (to see this for yourself: open Art Studio. In light gray draw a simple X or +, thin line. set your lock, then turn your iPad upside-down. Using the best stylus you have (indeed, this is the best test OF a stylus, without the 'flip it upside-down' bit), simply try to place a dot where those two lines intersect).

TLDR SOLUTION:

So the UI already rotates with the device orientation. I'm assuming you're simply tapping the OS's native ability to do so. Fair enough. let it continue to behave that way. but if you investigate the UIDeviceOrientation (specifically the beginGeneratingDeviceOrientationNotifications event) you can watch for the shift from UIDeviceOrientation=1 to UIDeviceOrientation>1 (Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided that, starting vertical and going clockwise, the respective values are 1, 4, 2, 3. I have no idea why). The trick I'd pull, though, if it were me, is that I'd simply programmatically rotate the canvas 90 degree in the SAME direction when the event fires. The UI will realign on its own, and the canvas will appear to have simply stayed put, orientation-wise. You may need to compensate laterally for the change in the X/Y coordinates of the canvas's origin relative to the viewport, but it means you can forgo having to recalculate all the BS with gradients, transforms, flips, resizes, etc. and simply apply code you've already built (rotate/pinch) to keep the canvas in a natural-feeling position.

Offer stands, man. You get this done for me, you send me a paypal link. In. A. Heartbeat.

EDIT: Thinking about it, one could even keep the canvas entirely bound to rotation, degree by degree using the same trick, but I'd be happy even with the cardinals
Title: Re: Please, PLEASE let me decouple the canvas from device rotation!
Post by: Lucky Clan on September 25, 2019, 04:25:26 AM
The good news is we have implemented canvas rotation lock last week ;)

The bad news is it will be available in version 2.4 which will be complete in few months...
Title: Re: Please, PLEASE let me decouple the canvas from device rotation!
Post by: ZenAtWork on September 25, 2019, 11:06:02 AM
It would seem that the rumors that have been quietly circulating amongst certain "in the know" tech circles are true! Said whispers, spoken excitedly in hushed tones from the depth of server rooms, stolen in secreted moments from behind crowded server racks, have been hinting, suggesting, intimating at your candidacy for the role of "da man". Now, in light of recent developments, I find myself tossing my support in the ring as well.

What can I say? You're a roaring badass.
Title: Re: Please, PLEASE let me decouple the canvas from device rotation!
Post by: gregg2g on September 26, 2019, 06:20:45 PM
Please, don't make his head get any bigger.  ;D
Title: Re: Please, PLEASE let me decouple the canvas from device rotation!
Post by: ZenAtWork on June 16, 2020, 10:31:38 PM
Any word on v.2.4? I’m entirely cognizant of the fact that the worlds been ending and all; I’m not complaining, just curious.


Z
Title: Re: Please, PLEASE let me decouple the canvas from device rotation!
Post by: Lucky Clan on June 17, 2020, 06:03:48 AM
2.4 became 3.0...
We will release it this summer (June is nto possible anymore, sorry).

And we have locking canvas rotation ready for 3.0.