Just some potential quality-of-life improvements.

[AdrianGroty]

I really like Durdraw. More than the other text art editors I have tried, even. Once I understood all the different settings and got used to the keybindings, I found it very intuitive, and I never even reach for the mouse or have to menu dive (with a couple of exceptions that I will get to). But! The following ideas have crossed my mind:

• browsing/selecting character sets is unwieldy. It's no fault of yours; there are a shitton of unicode characters to peruse, and I've been scratching my head trying to come up with a more convenient mechanic to utilize them. The best ideas I can come up with are to a) have some kind of text file where the user can define the characters that appear in the default character set or a separate custom character set, and/or b) implement a hotkey(s) for recent/favorite character sets. I find myself using alt+shift+s and typing the name of a given unicode block to use the same two or three character sets quite a bit, then doing alt+shift+s, enter to get back to the default, then realizing I need one of the other characters again. God forbid it was a block I don't use often, and I didn't take note of the name of the set.
• on mouseless control: the one thing I have not found a way to do with the keyboard is the eyedropper. Alt+t, y "arms" the eyedropper tool, but I must still use the mouse to sample colors from a tile. Maybe wait for an input of left click OR enter (to sample from cursor location) after preparing the eyedropper? Also, the cursor disappears into the void when placed over a tile that has been cleared. I imagine this is a non-issue for a mouse user, but it can be quite frustrating to find the cursor when I lose track of it. Maybe have a hotkey to Marco Polo the cursor?

I've been having a lot of fun with this software! These are just some idle backseat dev musings.

[cmang]

• Alt+t, y "arms" the eyedropper tool, but I must still use the mouse to sample colors from a tile.

That is strange. You should be able to just move the keyboard (not mouse) cursor, with the keyboard, over the character, and then use alt-y or esc-y to pick up the color. It works in any mouse tool mode, including Move. It does not, however, work when the animation is playing.

[AdrianGroty]

That is strange. You should be able to just move the keyboard (not mouse) cursor, with the keyboard, over the character, and then use alt-y or esc-y to pick up the color. It works in any mouse tool mode, including Move. It does not, however, work when the animation is playing.

You're right, and I'm a loud idiot. It's right there on the help screen. 🧠

[cmang]

I really like Durdraw. More than the other text art editors I have tried, even. Once I understood all the different settings and got used to the keybindings, I found it very intuitive, and I never even reach for the mouse or have to menu dive

:) That is awesome to hear. Thank you.

* browsing/selecting character sets is unwieldy

I agree. I have some ideas for how to fix this. It's just going to take some programming.

[cmang]

• Also, the cursor disappears into the void when placed over a tile that has been cleared.

Interesting. I've seen this. I think it's one of those things that happens in some terminals, and not others (like my daily driver). I didn't know it happens when a character has been cleared. Cleared like with backspace? Or the space bar?

I'm not seeing it in Gnome-Terminal or xfce4-terminal (ubuntu) over here. Is this reproducable?

Edit: I think the cursor turns blue for me instead of disappearing.

[cmang]

When the cursor disappears, while it is invisible and over a problematic character, press esc-I to trigger the character inspector. What does it say the Fg: and Bg: values are?

edit: Nevermind. Should be Fg: 1. Bg: 0. I'll look more into this. Thank you for the useful update!

[cmang]

I think I may have fixed this. Can you please trry the dev branch and see if the cursor still disappears like this, with deleted characters?

[AdrianGroty]

The cursor now appears light grey/black on empty tiles in both 256 and 16 color modes. Thanks!

[cmang]

I appreciate you bringing it to my attention. This was an old bug that slipped under the radar, but may have affected a lot of people.

[AdrianGroty]

No worries! I'm glad this is helpful, because 30 seconds after I mention these things, I feel like I just said "Hey code monkey! You missed a spot!" I'm happy to help you get this software where you want it to be, because it's a really fun useful, and thoughtfully-designed art tool. A lot of the time, because of the inaccessibility of the nuts and bolts of a tool's functionality, the user gets whatever design an engineer got to work, but you design like an artist.

[cmang]

• a) have some kind of text file where the user can define the characters that appear in the default character set or a separate custom character set, and/or b) implement a hotkey(s) for recent/favorite character sets.

For A) Yes, I want to do this. I haven't decided on a format, but will probably just go with JSON. Custom character sets will also let us make a set containing only Code Page 437 compatible characters, so people can ensure compatibility when editing classic ANSI art. This can be done for other sets/code pages/vintage platforms, as well, as long as they can map nicely to a Unicode point.

B) Better searching and Favorite Sets are what I had in mind. Hotkeys for sets are a really interesting idea.

C) I also want to be able to edit sets through the TUI with the mouse and/or keyboard. I think it would be cool to go into a mode where you can just click on the F1# you want to change, and have a "blob" of characters from a given set for selecting the character. Some GUI ANSI editors can do this. The challenge, as you mentioned, is navigating the enormous amount of Unicode groups and characters, on top of this. This will also require some significant work writing TUI ncurses code. Which s fine, but, you know. Time. :)