Re: [Tuxpaint-devel] Some recent improvements

[Bill K. <nb...@so...>]

Following-up... last night I began work on a new color selection tool,
which is allows you to mix (combine) Red[*], Yellow, Blue[*],
White, Gray/Grey, and Black, to come up with new colors, just as you
would using real paints or pastel chalk!

[*] The red & blue are closer to magenta & cyan, respectively, to
    space them more equally around the 360-degrees of the color circle.
    We're looking at the colors more from a CMYK standpoint than RGB.
    This tool uses the HSV values of the colors and shades, and
    averages them (taking 2/3rd of the current color, and adding the
    color you picked to make up the other 1/3rd)

Right now it works, and I encourage you to play with it!  At any time,
you can use the 'trash' button to erase the color and start over.
(You don't start with any particular color.  It's simply in a state
where the first color you add gets applied 100% (3/3rd) to your
target color.)

Here's a short video demonstrating it, over on Twitter:

  https://twitter.com/TuxPaintTweets/status/1486651478903123971


Since you need to interact with it a bit more than the other two
special color selection tools (the "color picker" aka rainbow palette,
and the "color selector" aka pipette tool for grabbing a color from
the canvas), it has both a "Back" button, as well as a green checkmark
button you use to indicate that you're done mixing.

While this all works and is "production ready", I'd really like to add
Undo/Redo buttons to it, to allow you to correct a mistake.
Say, for example, you want Red+Red+Red+Yellow+Grey, but you accidentally
click White at the end.  Rather than having to start over, I'd like
you to be be able to hit Undo, and get back to the R+R+R+Y state.

I'm guessing this will prove tricky, but I've been on a roll lately,
so I may be able to get it going this evening!  I'll try my best
(as usual) to not commit anything that's totally broken / not working.
(I guess this is why people invented branches? :-D )

Enjoy & tell me what you think!

So far, the response I've seen on Twitter, my personal Facebook, and
from my wife, have been:

 * this is the first time i've seen this concept put into something,
   very cool addition

 * Okay, this is cool because it is not "open source kids' drawing
   app trying to be professional art sofware" it's a color theory lesson.

 * That is a super cool idea.

Yay :)


-bill!