I agree. One question I have is, given that the Help is now pointing to the correct spot for Rhino for Mac, does this, you know, help?
It takes quite a long time for the dialog to load, and if I have a large project file open when I attempt to bring it up it takes even longer.
I know it takes awhile to load the Command Editor dialog, but it’s model-dependent? I’m interested, there could be a bug there…can you provide models to reproduce this?
This is sort of buried in the help…
To add a custom image to the command button, drag and drop an image from Finder into the icon area.
For best results, images should be 64 x 64 pixels.
…it definitely needs to be more discoverable (logged in MR-2159).
Were you clicking the “Save” button at the bottom and it still didn’t take? (I wish we didn’t have to have a Save button on this screen, FWIW).
PanelingTools? Those commands don’t have toolbars or icons in Rhino for Mac yet…which was one of the (minor) reasons why the entire subsystem did not make its way into the initial commercial release.
I hear you. Do you have ideas for a more Mac-like interface for this? I’d like to hear them and definitely get them on our list because fixing this is definitely on our radar (see MR-1177).
that’s tough because there’s not really anything (that i can think of) to base it off of… customizing toolbars usually consists of right-clicking on the toolbar then ‘customize’… Safari for example:
that would (probably) be horrible to do with rhino since there are so many commands and it’s so much more customizable than standard mac apps… (ie- we can make a button with custom icon that triggers a macro)
so it’s challenging because you have to figure out what ‘mac-like’ actually is when there’s not necessarily a specific example or convention to follow.
that aside, i don’t really mind the way it’s layed out now… it’d be nice if it could somehow load instantly… the top-right quadrant of the dialog seems wasted… it should probably check for & disallow multiple items to be tied to a similar keystroke as well as alert you if a keystroke is unavailable due to a clash with an osx shortcut… another niggle is you can only make one RunPythonScript keystroke.
for example, if i have shft-cmmd-R for ! _-RunPythonScript Example …
it wont let me make shft-cmmd-T for ! _-RunPythonScript Example2
one other thing while i’m at it… : )
i sort of wish there was Customize-> Tool Palettes & Customize-> Keyboard Shortcuts` as separate things instead of always tied together… that said, i don’t have any concrete reasoning why i wish that but it’s just always stood out for some reason… possibly best just to ignore this last bit. : )
—Edit
actually, i know why that last one stands out for me… i don’t have a single custom tool palette built but i have quite a few custom keyboard shortcuts… but the customize dialog always opens at the tool palette first, then wait the tiny bit for it to load, then switch to ‘keyboard shortcuts’ via the button up top… when i wish it would just let me go straight to keyboard customizing.
i get it that it’s a nit pick… i’ll live if it doesn’t change in this regard.
Lot to ponder and not even close to a puter now. When I say ‘Mac like’ its due to 24 years of using them more or less exclusively and 15 years of building apps for the OS while working at a control systems company where ever system shipped is a custom UI.
I’ve used a lot of different mac apps over the years and have a pretty good feel for what flies and what sinks like the titanic.
I realize there’s a lot of legacy stuff there. Decades of it.
Just pouting out the stuff that a new user without the decades of experience with it encounters.
The help is better, well outside if having to download it, but a lot of stuff is still very buried and there’s still a fair bit of windows specific help in there. That’s challenging when it shows tool palettes that don’t even exist in the Mac version.
As for ideas, I’m sure I can come up with boatloads, but they need to be thought through and both not miss the bigger Picture or get overly focused on one thing while missing the other.
All this is a fine discussion, but honestly, it’s gravy. The inability to EXPORT custom commands to simply refer to them at this point (commercially released) is a SERIOUS problem.
IMPORTING custom commands would also be greatly welcomed for those using both Mac/Win Rhino.
I’ve been asking for this basic functionality (for something like the past year?) to help smooth and bridge Mac/Win use, but instead the emphasis on bridging that has been implemented is the deletion of the already working and completely superior Toucan rendering engine in MacRhino?
Sorry to be a little bristly, but seriously McNeel – can you at least allow us to create a crappy text file to refer to our custom commands? Pretty please with one year old dusty sugar on top? ~Dave
Thanks for this. The “Drag your favorite items into the toolbar…” is the most Mac-like drag-and-drop thing I can think of as well…though it’s far from ubiquitous. The take-away, for me, is that what is needed is a more drag-and-drop composer-style interface for UI customization. The way that the Custom Commands dialog is coupled with Themes is also a bit confusing (still). This is a hard-nut-to-crack and @marlin and I (and others) have talked about it many times.
Starting with this, I think when you pull down Rhinoceros only Preferences should be there, Commands & keyboard shortcuts should be in preferences only. No need to access it from 2 places, like here …
or here …
or maybe this … my keyboard went missing lol
It should be that we can move palettes to where we want and even our custom ones.
Also maybe access anything from the right side slide outs from top toolbar by a right-click customize.
It really is what you get used too, I just spent an hour or so in Rhino for Windows and I don’t have it anywhere like my Rhino for Mac setup, I like it that way, good for the brain not to get set in it’s way.
And all this "Make it more Mac like, what the f*&^ does that mean? Usually it means more like the other software I use on this OS, be it Adobe, Office or zBrush with it’s easy to use UI.
It really means working well then quick with the software interface you are using. Being able to customize it is what we are after and how to do that, well we all have are own ways of wanting it.
Remember, you can’t please everyone, I mean anyone, or was that someone else?
And all this "Make it more Mac like, what the f*&^ does that mean? Usually it means more like the other software I use on this OS, be it Adobe, Office or zBrush with it’s easy to use UI. [/quote]
to me, developing for mac should always have the guidelines as choice #1 when applicable and override those guidelines when they’re unable to accomplish a desired task.
when applicable, a user shouldn’t need to learn how to do something new without good reason… i know how to open a new file or recent file in rhino without needing to learn how to do it because i learned how to open a file 15years ago… it’s ‘maclike’ and should be that way… where can you find Preferences? the same exact place you find them in all apps… etc.
of course, it’s perfectly ok to custom develop and really, most of rhino is custom… it’s not mac and not necessarily windows either… it’s rhino.
the command dialog on mac isn’t maclike… or, i personally don’t use anything else with similar functionality and i use quite a few apple or mac applications… but, it’s one of the most notable differences between rhino windowsVSmac… i sort of just think marlin wanted to move past 1986dos command line and freshen it up some (and personally, i think it was successful… i’d be curious to see what people on windows would do if they had the option change their command line to the command dialogs osx has… but speaking without precise definition, i do think the command dialog has a mac ‘feel’ to it)
anyway, just an attempt to explain my opinion re:your question.
I agree, I was just putting the “More Mac-like” out there to get people to actually say something concrete and not so general.
For me more mac-like since Unix-based OS X, is the fact that I can rename & move open files. I can scroll or use a window that is behind another window once my mouse is on it. As opposed to how the toolbars / icons / pallets are laid out.
Like when Office came out with the “ribbon bat” lots of people were complaining because they were used to the old UI. Anyone new to it got used to it and couldn’t understand what the fuss was about.
I agree, I prefer the floating command dialog and Marlin has done a great job. Only Terminal has any resemblance to the command line. It is a hold over from DOS I suppose. I am wondering if there is some way to get rid of it, probably not. Anyone not coming from windows will not miss the command line. If I use Photoshop for example, I work with my left hand on the keyboard to switch & adjust tools and my right hand on the mouse, and have been doing so since before Photoshop introduced layers, what a novel concept that was. If I could work this way in Rhino, that would be great for me. Let me make a rectangle in Photoshop …
I don’t have to go up to the top of the screen and click / type there, it can be right next to where I am working.
The other thing if having fly-out menus from middle button pop-up.
My pet peeve right now is that I cannot move the tabbed palettes in the ribbon bar and cannot dock newly created palettes to the ribbon bar.
As a side note the need to open the material editor to change Picture Frame transparency is not fun. On windows it can be done like before the new Rhin Render, in the object propertied panel.
I have a drawing / drawings in every model that I am changing transparency through-out the modelling process. Having to open the material editor to change transparency is a time waster.
(and personally, i think it was successful… i’d be curious to see what people on windows would do if they had the option change their command line to the command dialogs osx has… but speaking without precise definition, i do think the command dialog has a mac ‘feel’ to it)
