Some Backgrounds enhancements (easy)

[humdinger]

This is hrev30824.

There are some details that are not yet perfect. :)

# When I invoke the Background add-on on an image file, the selected image is shown in the preference panel for the "Default Folder". Personally, I think this function is more often used for setting a workspace's background, so it may be more useful to set "Current Workspace" here instead.

# When changing from "Default folder" to "Current/All Workspaces", the image that invoked the Background panel is replaced with the current background image of the workspace. Keeping the invoking image is a better idea IMO. [Update: this is still true, even though it's the other way around, as invoking on an image defaults now to "Current Workspace" (see resolved 1st bullet)

# The "Default Folder" shows "backgroundTexture.tga" as image file. Too nerdy IMO, and what's the difference to selecting "None"? I guess... "none"?

# From an aesthetical POV, the "Preview" string above the monitor representation on the left should either have a few pixel distance to the monitor or, better IMO, forget the "Preview" string altogether.

# I don't have a working widescreen resolution under Haiku, so I can't test this: does the preview monitor change aspect according to the workspace's resolution? It should.

# There's still ticket #1006, eliminating the Apply button.

# More, maybe less easy, enhancements are in ticket #5025.

[humdinger]

Oh, one more. Most important IMO:

# When using "Scale to fit" Backgrounds should really to use ShowImage's "High Quality Zoom" for filtered resizing.

[stippi]

IIRC, I already implemented the backend for your last item. Tracker just needs to pass the bilinear filter option in the flags parameter to SetViewBitmap(). Maybe this ought to be configurable, since it uses more CPU. That's why I didn't just go ahead and did it.

[humdinger]

I can see why not doing it by default in ShowImage. If you have a slow system, you may not want to wait for the filtering when browsing through some images. As a background, that would be a one time thing after pressing "Apply", right? So filtering should be the default IMO.

I'm sorry, but I have one more enhancement. :)

# How about commandline parameters to set backgrounds without opening the panel?

[leavengood]

Replying to humdinger:

I can see why not doing it by default in ShowImage. If you have a slow system, you may not want to wait for the filtering when browsing through some images.

Well I kind of want to remove the delayed filtering from ShowImage, plus the algorithm in app_server is going to be really optimized once Christian is done (I emailed him but haven't heard back, hope he can finish this soon.) Maybe app_server can have some clever logic to only use this when the CPU is fast enough.

As a background, that would be a one time thing after pressing "Apply", right? So filtering should be the default IMO.

Actually I'm pretty sure it would need to filter the image each time it was drawn. Actually maybe not if the shrunk image is stored as an attribute of the Desktop somehow. I'll take a look unless Stephan is listening and can inform us :)

I'm sorry, but I have one more enhancement. :)

# How about commandline parameters to set backgrounds without opening the panel?

Yeah I thought of this too and could use that instead of what I do now from ShowImage (though what I do there isn't so bad.)

I'll also take ownership of this bug, even if I don't implement everything before the alpha freeze...

[mpanasyuk]

# From an aesthetical POV, the "Preview" string above the monitor representation on the left should either have a few pixel distance to the monitor or, better IMO, forget the "Preview" sring altogether.

...or monitor could be placed in the center of Preview section.

And yet another enchancement from me:

# Backgrounds preflet should be coherent with other preflets (ex. Screen), follow one style. Void space between controls and window borders should be same size in all directions.

See pictures

[mpanasyuk]

Backgrounds in hrev32975

[mpanasyuk]

Screen in hrev32975

[mpanasyuk]

suggested changes to Backgrounds (compare to hrev32975 image)

[humdinger]

Updated original ticket text by "strike through" of committed changes. Added link to further enhancements in #5025.