Under Dimitri's encouragement, I've been working on a short list of features I most want to see in 9. Of course it is taking too long, it's tricky. I hope you don't mind Art if I tack one of them onto your thread here, since it seems to fit with your thinking well. Drawings ...
I would go further again. There is currently only one thing stopping me from using Radian Studio rather than Manifold 8 for data analysis, data correction, data wrangling. OK two things, which I would like to see merged, namely: (1) The Info pane, with selection filter*, next/previous navigation*, Go To and Zoom To the current object. (Ping is less important.) Something like this is absolutely necessary for serious data analysis. Even a halfway implementation would be welcome. (*If necessary, order can be arbitrary.) (2) Saved views. (3) We already have labels. My reason for listing labels here as well is... I would like to see (1), (2) and (3) combined into one UI interface. I'm not exactly sure how, but for now: I'd like to be able to create a set of labels-aka-views, with a name (= label text), a location and a scale (scale can be optional, current scale being the default). I want these to be accessible and navigable in the same pane used to navigate through selected objects, in 8 called the Info pane. In that pane, the list of labels/views/objects should be sortable by name, by X, or by Y. (Maybe also by Z, M or an arbitrary attribute.) A generic term for labels/views/objects here could be bookmarks. The basic use case is this. I use a query (or a transform) to identify a subset of objects that satisfy certain criteria. I then need to scroll through the objects, showing each in its location and context, with its attributes (editable), and to make a quick note for some objects (name=label: no need for double-entry). Later, I need to be able to return to annotated objects, using labels and/or attributes to identity which objects I need to pay closest attention to. I'm wedging this in here because it seems to chime with what Art is suggesting, and because as I said this gap is the one thing that stops me from using Radian as spatial tool of choice. I will work it up into a proper suggestion later. (Art gives a welcome kick up the bum.) Tables I would really like to see a filter where we could display only the selected records.
We have discussed this before. On the face of it, it's tricky, because the engine doesn't know which objects are selected (that is, which objects fall within the applicable selection set) until all objects have been fetched. So a selection filter is really a query, and it could take a very long time if the table is large. But how about a halfway measure. How about if there were a selection filter to show selected table records within the bounds of the current window for the associated drawing or image. These records have necessarily already been fetched, since their data is shown. The filter (button) would belong not to the table window, but to the drawing or image window; it would filter the display in the table window. Query Engine ...
My vote: (1) keyword highlighting, (2) better error messages (with line numbers if that can be done). Intellisense one fine day, not such a priority given the query builder and table panels.
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