Re: [Tuxpaint-users] Difference between 'Text' and 'Label'

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

On Mon, Feb 07, 2022 at 02:46:54AM +0200, ΑΡΕΤΗ ΤΣΟΛΑΚΙΔΟΥ wrote:
> Hello there,
> I was working on tux paint this days and I was testing especially on the
> 'text' and 'label' tools. What I recognized is that these 2 tools have very
> similar uses. Also, I figured that the 'label' tool is more useful than the
> 'text'. I think that these things that can be done with 'text' can easily
> be done with 'label' too.
> I would be glad if you tell me what your opinions are and if you think that
> the 'text' tool should be replaced by 'label'.
> Thank you!

>From a historical perspective, the Text tool came first.

It is simpler to use -- once you are done adding text
to your drawing, there are no extra UI elements, which could
potentially cause confusion in younger users.  (This is why
the Label tool can be explicitly disabled, as a simplification
option.)

Many requests came in over the years to add a way to edit and
manipulate text after the fact (move it, correct a typo, etc.),
beyond simply using the Undo feature, and typing it again.
Based on these requests, we added the Label tool.

>From a practical perspective, the Label tool provides something
different from the Text tool, beyond simply the ability to edit
the text after the fact.

With the original Text tool, the text becomes "blitted" into the
drawing.  You may paint over it, manipulate it with various
Magic tool effects (blur, blocks, perspective, etc.), just
as you can with most everything else that ends up on the canvas.

Imagine the Text tool as though you were literally painting
words onto your canvas.  You can smear or paint over them
later.

The Label tool is like a clear sheet of glass hovering just
in front of your painting, where you can place little
stickers containing text.  You can move them around after
the fact, without changing your painting.  However, you cannot
paint _over_ them.

>From a technical perspective, Label is like a text layer in GIMP.
The Text tool is as if you the took your text layer and issue
a "Layer -> Discard Text Information" command, followed by
a "Layer -> Merge Down" command.

So there's definitely no reason to get rid of the Text tool.

I do see how it could be useful to provide an option, that caused the
same effect as those two GIMP commands above.  In other words, a way
to take a piece of text written with the Label tool and "apply" it to
the canvas, as if it were originally entered using the Text tool
("painted onto the canvas"), once you are happy with it.

(Also, I see that the Label tool's interactions lack very many hints
(text at the bottom, next to Tux the penguin) on how to use it, which
I think should be addressed!)

Thanks for your thoughts on this!

-- 
-bill!
Sent from my computer