Sketchup 8, serious observer bug?
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I recently wrote the 'Octane Render Exporter' - and it is a 'Tool' [any 'class' that is suitably loaded and contains appropriate 'methods' is one??? A 'tool' doesn't always need to spot mouse movements, clicks etc]. You 'run' it as tool
Sketchup.active_model.select_tool(Octane.new)- which then does aninitialize()and anactivate(), runs all the subsidiary methods and when you are done it uses a 'deactivate(view)' method - and as part of that closing method it checks to see if the user 'canceled' the web-dialog [it's a simple @flag] and if not then all of the Exporter's web-dialog's current settings are saved into the model as appropriate attributes. These are then recycled next time the user runs the tool in that model and are read in as the new default settings. Obviously these latest settings are only remembered across sessions if the model is eventually 'saved' by the user.
It takes a blink of an eye to get / to set literally dozens of these settings as the web-dialog opens / closes. You could also make the dialog 'modal' so that the user can't close the model with the web-dialog open and thereby loose settings - I have done this because with my tool you can do several operations with the dialog remaining open and it's only on a 'close' that the current 'fields' get saved as attributes...
I do think its best to remember mosts settings like these as 'model specific attributes' since the user might have different requirements in each model. My Exporter does read/write one of the 'setting' as an entry with the SketchUp App [registry etc] - that is the 'current version' of the 'Octane Render' app to be used - the user must sets the path to a valid exe file and that is used in all models thereafter - as it's in beta testing it allows the user to test different versions of the exe... -
@thomthom said:
But isn't it just as likely the user might want to undo these setting changes?
yes, but unfortunately, they can currently undo changes they made in the settings editor even when it's closed. They won't be able to tell that they've undone them. Perhaps, like me they might think they just mispressed the ctrl-z key, or just keep pressing it until something visual undoes (like the removal of a line), and later discover that they've just undone all the changes that they made to the settings, and there is no way to redo, because they've continued on with their work.
This is entirely plausible because I've done it myself! While it isn't too much of a loss at the moment, I can see it getting pretty bad later on, plus, any little change like ticking a box or whatever adds another undo to the stack, which means that when alternating between modelling and changing render settings, they have to delete the changes they made in the settings editor AND press undo many times just to get a visual response... (hmm I could have made that bit shorter
)@unknownuser said:
Have you tried that bare-bone example with no other plugins installed?
yes, in both sketchup 7 and 8, but I'm thinking I'd better try mucking around some more to see whether it's another problem with my sketchup installation, because it doesn't seem to be giving you guys any problems. But you are right, because it could be an observer in another script interfering with this one or something. Oh well, unfortunately the solution isn't that simple
Thanks for the help anyway thomthom (and TIG of course
). Hopefully I can get a reasonably feature complete su2lux out soon for people here to test. I'm going to be doing a bit of Arch-Vis work over the coming holidays, so I have a vested interest in this project!edit:
oops, didn't see that last post TIG, I'd better reply to that too! -
@tig said:
It takes a blink of an eye to get / to set literally dozens of these settings as the web-dialog opens / closes. You could also make the dialog 'modal' so that the user can't close the model with the web-dialog open and thereby loose settings - I have done this because with my tool you can do several operations with the dialog remaining open and it's only on a 'close' that the current 'fields' get saved as attributes...
So what happens when the user tries to render/export with the settings dialog still open? I would like it to be possible not to have to close the dialog every time you want to render the scene, so it will be easy to make quick changes... I'm guessing you've probably handled it similar to me in that you have a temporary attribute dictionary, that gets save synced to sketchup on demand. So that it should be possible to export your scene whether the dialog is open or not... Either way, does implementing the "syncing" action in the deactivate(view) prevent it from being registered in the undo stack? Your solution to the problem does sound like it could work for me. Could I not also do it like like this? WebDialog.set_on_close{ save_settings(blabla)}
If I do it the way you suggested at least the user will will have the option to undo the changes, I just worry about it getting in the way of the modelling workflow, because it essentially creates a point where the user can no longer undo changes they made in the model. There really should be two undo stacks running in parallel
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do you have to write the settings to the model for every interaction you make to the model? what about writing them when your dialog closes?
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@l.frisken said:
There really should be two undo stacks running in parallel
?I do think we should be able to make transactions that does not appear in the undo stack at all. At least set attributes. Because when you set model properties in SU you don't see them in the undo stack.
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@thomthom said:
do you have to write the settings to the model for every interaction you make to the model? what about writing them when your dialog closes?
That's what I do - as you work the values can be read from the web-dialog as you go when you click some button it remembers the settings as attributes affected by that button.
The web-dialog has all of its fields available to be 'read' as you deactivate() so it can save all of them. if the users 'closes', or not if the users 'cancels' - but changes made during intermediate operations will be remembered as 'you go'... -
If i disable google update service and hide associated exe, i am experiencing noticable delay on closing sketchup or opening a new model.
First i thought i had AppObservr bugs.
Even though i try to code defensively against exceptions and presume surprises. -
@morisdov said:
If i disable google update service and hide associated exe, i am experiencing noticable delay on closing sketchup or opening a new model.
First i thought i had AppObservr bugs.
Even though i try to code defensively against exceptions and presume surprises.Yes! That's probably it. I'll check before I confirm that was my problem, but if it is then this is definitely google's responsibility. I do normally close the update service because I don't like to have random processes running in the background on my computer... But this definitely shouldn't affect sketchup usage!
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I didn't think Google Update Service was related to SU... Thought it was SketchUp itself that did this check. I've only ever gotten update noticed when I've run SU.
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A bit OT, but the right people seem to be here.
Are there any known problems with Settings?
The menu comes up OK and Render exports an LXS file, with a dialogue to start LuxRender, all good
But the Settings doesn't bring up anything at all?
SU8 Win7 64bit Lenovo Laptop ATI video card.<edit> i do have the SU2KT and SU2POV installed, so it may be some interference.
I don't want to uninstall these just yet as I'm finding both useful, but I will investigate ... -
ah mozzie,
It's actually not too OT at all
There are a number of known problems with SU2LUX's settings atm,
and I ran into this problem when trying to fix them.
If you want I can share what I have so far, and it should work
fine on SU7 and perhaps SU8 if the problem is restricted to
my machine but I suspect it isn't... (not that there is too much
to be desired in SU8 free anyway...) -
Well, I'm happy to test it out, on SU7 & 8 Pro. But programming? Nope.
But with TIG and ThomThom commenting here you've already got some deep SU Ruby knowledge.
If we can ask them to get involved ....As suggested, there's nice exporters for POVray and Kerkythea, which means we may be able to draw on others in the forums too.
Supporting another good OSF renderer in SU would be helpful to all involved.
What functions do you think needs to be done to move this project along, and then to the next level?
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