ShowImage needs a "New from clipboard" menu

[mmu_man]

While ShowImage can select part of an image and copy it to the clipboard there is no way in the default install to use it in any way. It would be very handy to allow creating a new image from the clipboard content to allow saving it in one of the supported formats like Preview.app does in OSX.

[mmu_man]

Unfinished attempt at adding a "New from clipboard" menu item

[leavengood]

I think this sounds like a reasonable feature and it looks like you did most of the work. But given how some "editor" type of features have been removed before (like image resizing), I wonder if others may think this is too much like image editor functionality.

Though it isn't too different than dragging off a selection as a clipping then renaming it, just maybe a bit more convenient.

If anyone on the bugs list has an opinion, please chime in.

[humdinger]

I'm not against a "New from clipboard" item, though I frankly never missed that feature. From where could you get a bitmap in your clipboard, but wouldn't be able to save it directly instead of detouring thru ShowImage?

[mmu_man]

Well, when copied from the host into the guest clipboard in VirtualBox for ex :=) From another image editor, a word processor, ...

[humdinger]

But why not saving in the image editor or word processor directly? BTW, got a link to that word processor? :)

I give you the clipboard thing when running virtually, though even then I'd personally prefer not to use ShowImage for pasting. Simply because I'd have to open some other image first, because ShowImage won't start blank. And ShowImage doesn't have a Deskbar entry.
On the other hand, in cases of a bare bone system, without the WonderBrush optional package pre-installed, this would be the only way to do what you describe in the VirtualBox example...

[leavengood]

The other use case I was thinking of which really is just making things a bit easier is making a selection, copying it, and then pasting that into a new image instead of dragging it to Tracker as a clipping. This is probably more obvious to users from other systems, especially with the need to use right-click drag to get the menu to select the file type to save the clipping as. Also when dragging a clipping you need to rename it whereas with is method you could save it with the name you want.

[halilpk]

(GCI-2011 Participant)

Haiku revision: hrev42211 still a bug. You can save selected part with drag&drop but there is no menu item to do that . System: Haiku hrev1-alpha3 on VMware workstation 8 on windows 7 32 bit

[hometue]

(GCI-2012 Participant) Haiku revision: hrev44702. Valid, but this is not a bug. A workaround is to drag the selected portion to a folder, creating a new image from the selected region. However, there is no menu item to do so. System: Haiku R1-alpha4 on Virtualbox 4.1.20 on windows 7 64 bit

[pulkomandy]

What about allowing Tracker to "paste" an image into a file if it finds one in the clipboard? Going through ShowImage for that does not seem like an appropriate workflow. Doing it in Tracker could also work for text clips, etc.

[diver]

Sounds quite handy!

[pulkomandy]

Migrated patch to Gerrit: ​https://review.haiku-os.org/#/c/106/

[leavengood]

I like the Tracker idea. I can give that a try since I still own this ticket after 8 years.

What did you envision the behavior being pulkomandy?

What about this:

You paste from the menu or Alt-V in Tracker, an untyped image file appears with the name <Pasted Image>, which is selected, and then you type a name and file type. If you don't put a file type it defaults to PNG or something. If you hit escape while in that mode it stops and doesn't paste the image. The file isn't actually written until you hit enter on the file name.

As you say, this would also be awesome for text, so maybe it could be done more generically.

The main complaint I could think of for this for UX is it may have low discoverability compared to an obvious "New from clipboard" menu in ShowImage.

[pulkomandy]

ShowImage is not reachable as an application from the Deskbar menu. Think about the workflow: open another image, use "new from clipbard", save. This makes little sense. This is how one would do it inWindows using paint, but it is not agood and natural workflow.

I would keep it simple. Use the existing paste menu or shortcut and it should create a "Bitmap clip" file, just as drag and drop from a ShowImage selection to Tracker already does. It should use the format of what's in the clipboard, and dump that into a file. I think the drag and drop code should be largely reusable,

Making the file show in Tracker but not be saved to disk until you enter a name is going to add confusion. Preselecting the name may be nice, but not mandatory. Let's keep it simple.

[leavengood]

Yeah, the state management on my idea would be difficult to create, plus confusing for the user. Having it behave like a dragged out bitmap makes sense. The only thing I don't know is if the clipboard has the file format information, like JPG versus BMP, or if it is always just bitmap data. I suppose if it is just raw bitmap data we could have Tracker default to saving in PNG rather than BMP which seems like an archaic format at this time.

Thanks for the feedback.

Switching component to Tracker and making it Unscheduled since it is an enhancement.

I will poke at this sometime in the next few months.

[pulkomandy]

As far as I know, when you drag a selection from ShowImage to Tracker, the format is preserved, so that's possible.