jchapman

Yes thats exactly what I was thinking of. It can be called a macro or a template or any other name such as an Action. Obvious simple actions that many will use to include your favorite text and button settings as actions thus enabling identical sizes and styles across a number of slides and slide shows. Other obvious ones would be user defined transitions from one or more images to the next image. Thing like the cube could be in there, it would work like this create a Mask, add 6 images to the mask then select the cube to be applied to the mask and it would set the transition values for all 6 images creating the cube sides. It could also be done the other way - select the cube task, a menu in the cube code gets the user to select 6 images then put the completed cube into the O&A list, either way would work. All PTE has to do is check the parameter values are valid and within limits allowed in PTE, I am sure they already have such checking code built-in into PTE already. While most users will not create these, some are doing them now and I am sure more will do so over time. It would make the program more appealing to those who are less literate with animations. For the programmers, in case they don't know, in Photoshop and other graphic editors you add these items into a specified directory and the program then finds them all and when asked displays them in a drop down list. They don't get added directly into the program code, rather these actions can only set parameter values on the selected object or in some cases create a new object.

I have used PTE for a number of years now and created a bundle of shows but rarely posted anything. Probably about time I added my thoughts as to the future directions for the program. I am an experienced graphics programmer and until recently was a computer science lecturer at a University for 17 years. I am impressed at the PTE programmers skill in getting pretty well bug free code written - its not easy. However I also suspect the programmers are not themselves that skilled at using the creative effects the program is capable of so why not use us, the users, to create some pre-defined Object and Animation actions. My suggestion is that the PTE programmers add into the O&A editor the ability to add user defined macros. This would be similar to what is done on Photoshop with adding filters and macros. This would allow the clever animations created by the Dom and others to be available in a menu rather than having to do a paste and cut as we do now. Over time, I am sure users would create many macros and would make some fancy animations more automatic and much easier to create. I would have it work by selecting an object or a tree of objects (as appropriate) then click on the macro list to set all the O&A values for that object/tree, of course you can then edit the values as we do now to fine tune the animation. This would also allow the programmers to concentrate on adding basic features and debugging new code as they have been doing and use us, the user group, to create any desired fancy O&A actions. Anyway, what do others and Igor think about this idea.

After having created 5 long shows with PTE we have found it awkward to aligning text and buttons - it has to be done by eye unless you make your own special image. It would be much easier if an option was added to the project Options to display a grid over the top of the display. The grid could have user set spacings or maybe just offer one of several, say a grid at 10% intervals across the display area and another with 1/2. 1/4, 1/8 and 1/16 spacings. Of course the grid should be toggled on and off just like the TVsafe zone is done at present. At present we have found you can do this by creating your own PNG image with a grid, adding the grid image as an object then deleting the grid image when finished but thats pretty slow for a simple task. It should be fairly easy to code this as the O&A display already has similar features as it displays edge highlighted and also can optionally show the TV safe zone.