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tonyw
736 post(s)
#19-Mar-19 21:22

I saw technique in one of the Manifold videos, one click to reverse the order of colours when applying a palette when styling objects. I've poked around the dialog box but with no success. Say I've applied the colour palette from the Color Brewer for greens to blue but I want the sequence of colours to be reversed, from blue to green. How do I reverse the order of colours with one click? Thanks.

Sloots

678 post(s)
#19-Mar-19 23:09

Select all (or some) elements and click the right mouse button .


http://www.mppng.nl/manifold/pointlabeler

tonyw
736 post(s)
#20-Mar-19 06:45

Thanks Sloots. Makes sense to be able to reverse a subset of the palette by selecting some.

dchall8
1,008 post(s)
#20-Mar-19 16:02

The flexibility they are building into M9 is eye watering.

tonyw
736 post(s)
#20-Mar-19 20:43

The challenge is finding how to use the tools. I don't know if tooltips would help in this case to point out that "hey you can reverse some or all of the sequence of colours". I know I saw it done but could not re-create the outcome on my own.

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#21-Mar-19 14:46

The challenge is finding how to use the tools.

Agreed. There's a lot to cover. That's illustrated in the second of the Style examples in the Examples topics, but not in the Style: Thematic Formatting topic, where I think it should be repeated. I've filed a suggestion to do so.

The same technique, by the way, is useful for creating a graduated list of size values if you want to thematically format the size of symbols. Say you have ten intervals: set the lowest value at one end, the highest value you want at the other end, Ctrl-A to select them all, and then right-click and choose Interpolate and all the numbers in between will be filled in. Love that one. :-)

You can also create some really tricky palette combinations by selecting some rows and not others and then reversing on those that are selected.

All that leads to... "how do I save this cool palette I got with ten minutes of tinkering that I'll never hit on again?" Do that by opening the Properties for the drawing (right click on the drawing's tab in the map and choose Properties) and then copy the property's JSON string and paste it into a comments component, or into a Notepad .txt file or whatever. It's just a text string you can copy and paste to save it or recycle it.

I think it will be nice when there's a "save to favorites" or similar button, but until then it's easy to just copy and paste the text string for a style.

tonyw
736 post(s)
#21-Mar-19 16:54

Thanks Dimitri! Those are really great techniques in thematic formatting.

mikedufty

871 post(s)
#22-Mar-19 07:54

Even when I remembered I need to select them, it took me a few goes to recall which key I need to press before clicking to be able to select.

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#22-Mar-19 09:40

Ctrl-click works everywhere to select (objects in drawings, rows in tables, etc.). Likewise, Ctrl-A.

mikedufty

871 post(s)
#26-Mar-19 04:26

Seems odd that just clicking does nothing, but I guess you get used to it.

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#26-Mar-19 07:13

Seems odd that just clicking does nothing,

Clicking into the intervals pane does do something: it moves the focus there and places the row cursor where you clicked. Being able to click where you want to move the focus, without messing up what's already in thee, is a very big deal. You need to do that constantly, probably more than anything else, so that's why in Windows and in many other contexts a single click does that, moves the focus to where you want.

Suppose you have three windows open: an image, the image's table, and drawing. Clicking into any one of them moves the focus there and the contents pane reacts automatically to the context you've chosen. Clicking into the contents pane's intervals panel allows you to move the focus there, so commands like Ctrl-A to select all rows or Ctrl-I to invert the selection of rows operate on the intervals rows, and not (if the focus were on a thematically formatted drawing), selecting all objects in the drawing or inverting the selection of objects in a drawing.

In another example, clicking the row cursor onto a cell in a table not only moves the focus to that table window, it also moves the focus to that row and column for subsequent moves, like a Ctrl-F for Find being readied to use that particular column by default.

It also makes sense not to have something as powerful as a selection be done with a mouse click action that can easily be a mistake. Click somewhere to move the focus and if you click wrong, it's no big deal. Click again on the right window or panel you desire, with no harm done.

In contrast, suppose you've created an intricate selection in the interval rows panel (could be dozens of rows), or have cleverly selected just the right collection of objects out of many in a drawing: if a simple click changed the selection (and the move to select should be the same move everywhere) to what you clicked on, when you intended to click and drag to just pan the view you could easily click and... good-bye, intricate selection.

I use very many different software packages, with proficiency in a fair number of them, but the speed and efficiency of the mouse moves in Manifold is truly exceptional. I particularly like the ensemble of click-and-drag to pan a display and a zoom box on the right-click-and-drag mouse buttons. Sure wish those were available in other software. Ctrl-click also is a great default mouse move for selection. It's very fast and easy to do and at the same time not something that leads to accidents.

I agree it's something you have to learn. But that's true, as far as I can tell, of all very efficient interfaces for sophisticated products. They're designed to make workflow very efficient for people who have learned them and use them as a working tool. That's a tradeoff as compared to the more limited set normally used for products that don't have much richness or which are intended to be easily picked up and remembered by people who use them rarely. You pay the price for that up-front simplicity with less efficient workflow in regular workflow once you learn the thing.

tonyw
736 post(s)
#26-Mar-19 06:05

You can also create some really tricky palette combinations by selecting some rows and not others and then reversing on those that are selected.

Nice, a related use is selecting all or a subset of rows, set the colour of the first and last row, right click and select the option to Interpolate to get a custom colour gradation through the range (or sub-range) of intervals.

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