Various small issues and suggestions

[LeonardoB25]

Hello, here some things I found not working properly or not ideal in Minder, for future updates:

• connections can't be made in the same colour and style as normal links
• links arrows are detached from the line, becoming aesthetically unpleasant
• undo and redo buttons/functions are broken most of the times
• ESC key should be usable even if properties page is opened for multiple nodes and not if only one is selected
• the "rotate colors" function of a root node doesn't remember at which color it is, hence it starts from the first (red) each time

[phase1geo]

With the exception of the first two items, are these issues with the beta release?

[LeonardoB25]

I'm using Minder 1.17 I think from flatpak, is it a beta release?

[phase1geo]

No, but there is a Minder 2.0 beta.

[phase1geo]

A couple of notes:

• Connections and links are distinctly different things. Links follow the child node they are attached to; therefore, they have color which matches the links. Connections are meant to show a relationship between two nodes that may or may not be immediately related to each other. It would be weird to display the two in the same manner as each other. I'm not likely going to change this in the future.

• I'm not exactly sure what is being referred to here. Arrows on links are connected to the links. There is small border drawn around the arrowheads so that it's easier to identify the arrowhead (without the border, the link looks like it has wings on theme which can be subtle and hard to see. In Minder 2.0, the size of the arrowhead on links (and connections) can have their size changed to be bigger or smaller in the Styles sidebar.

• I'm not sure what would be going on with the display of the undo/redo buttons. You may want to see if Minder 2.0 beta has the same issues or not (Minder 2.0 is based on the Gtk4 library instead of Gtk3 so things look a bit different).

• I don't understand what is meant in regards to the Escape key. I'll need more detail to identify what is missing.

• I have the color rotation issue fixed in the 2.0.0 beta. It will be available in 2.0.0-beta4.

[LeonardoB25]

Thanks for the reply!

1. ok, but is it impossible that 2 child nodes converge to the same concept? Since I think the structure of the normal nodes won't let you do it, I thought that for example if I have 2 child nodes A and B which share a concept sequentially (not before), I make a child for node A and then connect node B to that child, which would be the common concept. By having connection that can't have the same color as the child link, I can't do that, and I still think it's a limitation

2. I understand your point

3. unfortunately it is not a predictable behavior. Sometimes they bug sometimes they don't. Sometimes Minder crashes after undo. I'll try to see if it happens with specific actions so I can help you better in understanding where exactly could be the problem

4. example with ESC key. I press node A, I press "I", it opens the property page. I then press ESC, it closes the property page. If I select multiple nodes such as A and B, the "I" shortcut doesn't work (maybe this is intentional) but the ESC key doesn't work neither to close the property panel

5. fantastic

[phase1geo]

1. What you are describing is the need for what is commonly called a "summary node". Minder 2.1 should finally have support for these node types.

2. If you could find a way to reproduce the issue, that would really help. Minder 2.0 doesn't drastically change undo/redo behavior from 1.17, so it would be nice to know if this issue persists or not. Open a new issue for the undo/redo problem if you figure out how to get it to fail.

3. Okay, thanks for the clarification. I don't believe that selecting multiple nodes allows the sidebar to be opened with "I". I would think that escape should still work though to close the sidebar regardless. That sounds like a bug.