Actions file can no longer be opened
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@pentool The content of the panel is synced with the file content, so if a preset is removed in the panel, it has to be removed in the file as well.
An explicit save command would not be a good solution in terms of UX (always asking at exit, etc).
How about a warning alert when the user removes a preset ?
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I am not sure why an action (or a series of actions) would be kept in sync with the file that they were loaded from? What is the need to do that for?
Actions are already self-contained commands. Once people create actions they don't usually go back and edit them. You could edit an action, for example you entered the rotation incorrectly and you want to correct the rotation angle. However, VectorStyler doesn't allow you to do that. So if I make a mistake, I have to go inside the file, find the problem value and correct it there. As opposed to, say, in Illustrator, where I can double click a particular command (eg Rotate), and the dialog box will show me the value I can edit.
But either way, if a user wants to make edits to an action that was loaded from a file, they can simply save it again from the menu.
My problem with realtime syncing is, one, the user is not aware that the actions are syncing realtime with the file. Two, as I mentioned above, you cannot actually edit a value (eg rotation) if you make a mistake. Three, if you move the file where the actions loaded from, VS will re-create the file at the original location. Why?
Example, I receive an action file from someone else. I am not sure if I want to keep these actions or what exactly the actions are doing so I just download the file to my Desktop temporarily. I load them into VS. I decide they are good so I will keep them around. So I go to the Desktop and move the file into a safe location, say, "..\Design\VectorStyler" folder. Now quit VS and open it again. Now you have two files. The original, that you just moved to the "..\Design\VectorStyler" folder, and another, which is the same file that VS just re-saved to the original location (Desktop).
This is already a confusing scenario because the user will not know what happened and why are there two files. Furthermore, any possibly changes to the actions will be saved into the file on the Desktop and not to the file I moved to my safe location.
Let the user load an action from a file.
Do not sync the action to the file. Why would you?
If the user alters the actions in any way, they will have to re-save it either into the same file or into a new file.
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@pentool said in Actions file can no longer be opened:
I am not sure why an action (or a series of actions) would be kept in sync with the file that they were loaded from?
Then where should these be stored?
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@pentool said in Actions file can no longer be opened:
You could edit an action, for example you entered the rotation incorrectly and you want to correct the rotation angle. However, VectorStyler doesn't allow you to do that.
This will be implemented by 1.3
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@pentool said in Actions file can no longer be opened:
I decide they are good so I will keep them around. So I go to the Desktop and move the file into a safe location, say, "..\Design\VectorStyler" folder. Now quit VS and open it again. Now you have two files.
Not really, once the file is moved, the associated action panel will not open. Unless if VS is still running and the actions are changed.
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I have just tried this with a color preset. They work differently.
- Create a single color preset.
- Save it into a file.
- Delete the color preset from the Color Presets panel.
- Restart VS.
- Load the color preset from the file. It's still there.
- Delete the color preset from the Color Preset panel (the panel will be named whatever the color preset file is named).
- The color preset will disappear from the preset panel (since you just deleted).
- Restart VS.
- Load the color preset from the file. IT'S STILL THERE!
After step 9, the color preset is still in the file and can be loaded.
The issue I had with the Actions, that they work differently. Once you delete an action, it is immediately deleted from the file without the user's knowledge. In contrast, if you do this with a color preset, the color preset stays in the file so you can load it again.
Actions should work the same way.
When you load the color preset, I noticed there's an "Update and synchornize presets" icon at the bottom of the panel. If you delete the color preset and hit this icon, the color preset will be loaded back into the panel (I assume from the file).
There's no such button in the Actions panel. If you delete and action from the panel, it will be gone from the file as well.
So even though there's a preset for actions and colors (Actions are accessed from the Panels > Preset menu) they work differently as far as syncing/opening/using them from an extdernal file. They should work the same.
If you delete an action from the panel, it should not be deleted from the file. Just like in the case of color presets.
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@VectorStyler said in Actions file can no longer be opened:
Not really, once the file is moved, the associated action panel will not open. Unless if VS is still running and the actions are changed.
- Open a saved action from a file. Let's say it's on the Desktop.
- Move the action file to a different location. Say create a new folder on the Desktop, called "Test" and move the original action file here.
- Delete an action from the actions panel (that was loaded from the file)
- Even though you moved the original actions file from the Desktop into the Test folder, now the file is recreated on the Desktop. So now you have an actions file in two places, on the Desktop and in the Test folder.
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To add more to the confusion... I just realized this...
In order to load an Action file, you have to go to Panels > Presets > Actions and load the file by selecting "Open from file..." from the Actions panel menu.
However, when you go to Panels > Presets > Presets and load the Actions file from selecting "Open from file..." from the Presets panel's menu, the file won't load.
This is confusing because both the Presets and the Actions panel is opened/accessed form the Panel > Presets menu. So they are all presets. Also, both (for example) a color preset and an action preset is saved into a ".preset" file. So they are both presets.
Yet, an action cannot be loaded from the Preset panel. This is confusing - I think.
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@pentool said in Actions file can no longer be opened:
Even though you moved the original actions file from the Desktop into the Test folder, now the file is recreated on the Desktop
You need to exit VS otherwise it will keep saving the file at the same location:
As I said earlier: Unless if VS is still running and the actions are changed
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@pentool said in Actions file can no longer be opened:
The error here is that the edits are not saved immediately to the file. I will find a fix for this for the next build.
