Pin description mode

today I showed a friend vvvv, he like the interface and a working paradigms a lot but mentioned that he noticed that I loose a lot of time looking over the single pins what they do/what they are (especally of the modules I don’t use that often).

… now the idea is why not implementing a modus/shortcut (as an example “ctrl”) which shows all pin descriptions (at once) for the module I hover with my mouse?! wouldn’t that be very easily possible - just extending the already available pin description dialogs a little?!

I already thought about a hack with getpatch - but I think that won’t work because thexml only holds the pin description when the inputs are connected.

best andreas

very right, a year ago i coded a little connecting boxes app in java. there the pin descriptions poped up like in vvvv, but stayed until you click into an empty area… was feeling good, maybe joreg can do some for us…?

ctrl+i
ctrl+t

i regularly see people hovering their mice over every individual pin of a node, and i agree that this is a colossal waste of time. but this is not a problem with vvvv; everybody just keeps forgetting about herr inspektor, whose primary function is the display of ‘what they do/what they are’. the tooltips on the individual pins are for finding the pins you want to connect (and checking values/spread counts on the fly), it is not their duty to describe the node. this is why herr inspektor can be attached, while the tooltips are always dependant on mouse position, unobstructive and volatile.

i’m sorry i have to speak out so strongly(italicly), but i must avert the implementation of ‘tooltips that stay until you click somewhere else’, since they commit the primary sin: obstructing whatever lies under them and thereby removing other potentially important information from the screen which, in the actual case of vvvv, means not being able to connect anything to anything at any given time until you explicitly tell them to stop that. i don’t think there is anything worse you can do in the context of this interface.

if you really need something to pop up, use autohotkey to map ctrl to toggle between ctrl-i and ctrl-w, for example. although i would advise you to stay out of the excellently mapped lower left half of the keyboard unless you can afford to loose some of that sweet, sweet functionality ;)

I was thinking more about a ‘hold ctrl and hover the module with the mouse’ to get the info of the pins. I agree with you that ‘tooltips that stay until you click somewhere else’ don’t make sence and slowing down the developement process.

… anyway your right about using the inspector is the way to go.

try this one

Kottan (VVVV).zip (4.3 kB)