Suggestions/Critique I guess?

Information about GMAO - the application I (write and) use to translate manga.

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trado
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Suggestions/Critique I guess?

Post by trado »

Your program is pretty cool, after playing around with it. Doesn't work very well with my current workflow, but that's changable, and I can see some merit in the way you've set this up.

Some general things that I felt the effects of not having that might make the use of the program faster:

-Shortcuts : For the tools like move and add eclipse, as well as adding new pages and stuff like that.

-Refresh the Project tree without collapsing it: it was kind of annyoing to have to go through the tree on the left every time I created a page. Also being able to delete bubbles from the file tree, and add the delete hotkey to it..

-Not have to input a char name when adding tsls and have it go straight to the tsl box instead of going to language first: Probably easy to remedy by just putting default in the char box already added in there.

-Infact, having an option that'll circumvents the whole dialog box and let you input text right onto the page bubble you just made. I don't use character names because I tend to run into a bunch of bubbles for side chars that don't state their names and it's inefficient to just call them girl1 ect.

-Make rightclick exit a bubble or poly-bubble when you're in bubble creation mode instead of having to finish it and then delete it.

-Have it remember and stay logged into the last annotator for the program. Kind of annoying having to log in every time you start the program.

-I don't know how hard it'd be, but say you click in a bubble, have the program detect the edges of the bubble and make a text bubble automatically so you don't have to draw one. Then you can just click and put in your translation. One of the projects I trans/edit has a lot of bubbles in it per page, and it's so annoying having to deal with each of those bubbles, even in photoshop, especially when there's like 13 per page.

This would definitely make editing manga much easier than photoshop in more ways than one.

-I noticed that when the program has a bubble set to Dynamically Resize, it doesn't center the text completely.
Image

-Option to have it not export with the vanity line at the bottom. That's what the file name is for imho.


This is a personal improvement that I would love, mostly because I like translating into a file while looking at the raws:

-I'd like to be able to just mark up what are bubbles on the page without having to input translations, and then have the program take my text script and automatically input all of them into the bubbles that I marked up. I do a simplified script format, where I just number the bubbles instead of putting char names, so it wouldn't be hard for the program to see what goes where. Also have it look for certain chars before the bubble number that tells it whether to bold or change font or whatnot.

I can give you better detail if you plan to do it, but it might be hard to impliment depending on how your program is structured. I just don't have the raws sometimes when I'm translating and use my hardcopies instead.


That's all I can think of right now, but yeah, there you go.
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Re: Suggestions/Critique I guess?

Post by FuguTabetai »

Thanks for the feedback!
trado wrote: -Shortcuts : For the tools like move and add eclipse, as well as adding new pages and stuff like that.
You can use "Z" and "X" to cycle left and right through the tools. Since there are only five tools, it makes it pretty easy to hit the one that you want. Also, you should never be using the move tool: Turn on "Show control points" and then just drag the bubble with the green control point in the middle. I never use Move anymore, except when I'm doing some complicated bubble merging.
trado wrote: -Refresh the Project tree without collapsing it: it was kind of annyoing to have to go through the tree on the left every time I created a page. Also being able to delete bubbles from the file tree, and add the delete hotkey to it..
Yeah, doesn't that blow? I've spent hours trying to stop the tree from collapsing when I add a new node to it. I've spent hours trying to get it to automatically select the most recently added page. I haven't had any luck. I hope to fix that eventually, but since this is just a hobby, it hasn't really been a priority. I only add a page say, every ten minutes when I'm translating. So it isn't a major deal to me.

For bubble deletion I just use a right-click to delete them. I never have the tree expanded far enough to show the bubbles (they don't even have good names, just all their text.)
trado wrote: -Not have to input a char name when adding tsls and have it go straight to the tsl box instead of going to language first: Probably easy to remedy by just putting default in the char box already added in there.

-Infact, having an option that'll circumvents the whole dialog box and let you input text right onto the page bubble you just made. I don't use character names because I tend to run into a bunch of bubbles for side chars that don't state their names and it's inefficient to just call them girl1 ect.
I'll do this in the next release (maybe this weekend or something.) It will make the language the default language (there is a setting for that) and then the character will be "Unknown" or something. Since I went to all the trouble (and boy, it was a lot of trouble) to write the direct text input routines, it will be nice to use them.
trado wrote: -Make rightclick exit a bubble or poly-bubble when you're in bubble creation mode instead of having to finish it and then delete it.
Don't create bubbles if you are going to delete them. I almost never delete bubbles.
trado wrote: -Have it remember and stay logged into the last annotator for the program. Kind of annoying having to log in every time you start the program.
Yeah, I get this request sometimes. I'll add it in the next release, it is fairly easy.
trado wrote: -I don't know how hard it'd be, but say you click in a bubble, have the program detect the edges of the bubble and make a text bubble automatically so you don't have to draw one. Then you can just click and put in your translation. One of the projects I trans/edit has a lot of bubbles in it per page, and it's so annoying having to deal with each of those bubbles, even in photoshop, especially when there's like 13 per page.
Solving this problem universally and correctly would probably be good enough for a PhD thesis. I looked into some areas of computer vision research, and doing this correctly would be very, very tough. Doing it in a stupid application-dependant way would only be very hard. I spent about 20 hours messing around with a few approaches a few years back, but didn't come up with anything workable. It isn't anything that will happen soon. I have a reasonable idea for a "click inside the bubble near the border" approach that might work, but I don't have time to play around with it when I don't find it too tough to just draw the bubbles myself.
trado wrote:
This would definitely make editing manga much easier than photoshop in more ways than one.

-I noticed that when the program has a bubble set to Dynamically Resize, it doesn't center the text completely.
Image
Yeah, but working on graphics code like that is hard and boring. If you can determine that it consistantly is X pixels off in one way or the other let me know. It might be something simple like I'm including a space at the end of each line when I'm computing text width - that would be an easy fix. It might be something more complicated (like, I'm incorrectly measuing the length of the longest line in the shape, or I have some other crazy offset stuff going wrong.) I'll check for the space thing anyway.
trado wrote:
-Option to have it not export with the vanity line at the bottom. That's what the file name is for imho.
Easy enough I guess. I'll look at doing that for the next revision.
trado wrote:
This is a personal improvement that I would love, mostly because I like translating into a file while looking at the raws:

-I'd like to be able to just mark up what are bubbles on the page without having to input translations, and then have the program take my text script and automatically input all of them into the bubbles that I marked up. I do a simplified script format, where I just number the bubbles instead of putting char names, so it wouldn't be hard for the program to see what goes where. Also have it look for certain chars before the bubble number that tells it whether to bold or change font or whatnot.

I can give you better detail if you plan to do it, but it might be hard to impliment depending on how your program is structured. I just don't have the raws sometimes when I'm translating and use my hardcopies instead.
That's too much trouble: writing parsers for file formats sucks (I do that in my real life for work) and it isn't something that I would need, so I don't think I'll do that. Since I've been using GMAO, I just translate with that. It has an option to create HTML scripts if you need to do something like that, and since that uses XSL you can always configure how the output is generated...
trado wrote: That's all I can think of right now, but yeah, there you go.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll work on GMAO a bit this weekend and get those three requests done:

* Log in and remember login on re-boot
* Option to remove Vanity string
* Type directly onto new bubble setting a default character and language
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Post by FuguTabetai »

By the way, for the bubble that you show up above, try this:

Create an oval over the entire bubble (extending out over the imaginary clipped part.) Then, off to the side or something, draw a rectangle large enough to cover the whole thing. Drag the rectangle on top of the oval, holding down "alt" (or option on mac) and intersect the two, creating a nice clipped oval.

That's a new feature, and I like it. There are problems though: if you move the thing after you make it, it will change into some really funky polygon. So don't move merged objects. Also, don't mess with their control points. That really screws things up.
trado
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Post by trado »

trado wrote:

-I don't know how hard it'd be, but say you click in a bubble, have the program detect the edges of the bubble and make a text bubble automatically so you don't have to draw one. Then you can just click and put in your translation. One of the projects I trans/edit has a lot of bubbles in it per page, and it's so annoying having to deal with each of those bubbles, even in photoshop, especially when there's like 13 per page.


Solving this problem universally and correctly would probably be good enough for a PhD thesis. I looked into some areas of computer vision research, and doing this correctly would be very, very tough. Doing it in a stupid application-dependant way would only be very hard. I spent about 20 hours messing around with a few approaches a few years back, but didn't come up with anything workable. It isn't anything that will happen soon. I have a reasonable idea for a "click inside the bubble near the border" approach that might work, but I don't have time to play around with it when I don't find it too tough to just draw the bubbles myself.
A guy on irc named Pnyxtr made a scan rotation program that has you draw two points and it connects them and uses that to guess where the edge is, and then the program uses that to rotate the scan to make it straight. Here's the site to check it out and play around with it. http://hem.bredband.net/pnyxtr/rotation/rotate.html

You could approach it like that, where you start on say the left inside of a bubble, and click, and the programs goes over until it hits a black pixel, then you do that for the top, right and double click on bottom to close it. While you're defining the 4 points or after you close it, the program uses the lines created and walks like 4 points per line till it reaches more black pixels, going 3 pixels up and 3 pixels whatever direction the bubble edge is.

Another idea to push that even further and get the one click per bubble feature, using the above model, is to make a click on the left inside of a bubble, and have it go straight left over until it finds the edge. Then the program goes right like 5 pixels and then goes up till it hits black, and keeps doing that till it can't go up, and then switch to going down and then right, drawing points where it hits the black. Of course, if the text is really close to the bubble edge, it'd be harder to define, but you could have an option that tells the program how many pixels to start going with.

If it's not too clear, I did somewhat of a representation though it's not completely accurate in the spaces it moves:
Image

Red dot is your click, black is the line the computer would follow, and blue is the end points. I realized you could probably use the the space between the click pixel and the first blue one, and use that as the amount of spaces the program starts moving from the edge pixels. Though with this, you'd probably have to shrink the bubble 2-3 pixels on all sides at the end, so as not to white out the edges.

Image

Here's kind of what would happen on a crazy bubble, but if the program outputs a sucky bubble, you could always try somewhere else to click or just do it yourself, but pretty much most bubbles aren't spiky.

I realize this might add more points than necessary, but if you mark what the left, top, right and bottom more pixel are when it switches directions, then you could just average the points inbetween those, so there's like 2-4 inbetween. Afterall, the bubble doesn't need to be a perfect round shape, just needs to be a basic container.

Anyway, I don't program in java, but this is how I'd approach it if I was programming it. Might help you think of a good way to do it. If you want to talk to pnyxtr about his program and such, I've pmed you his email.
Last edited by trado on Wed Sep 27, 2006 10:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by trado »

-Make rightclick exit a bubble or poly-bubble when you're in bubble creation mode instead of having to finish it and then delete it.


Don't create bubbles if you are going to delete them. I almost never delete bubbles.
I was just saying this because I kept accidently clicking when I was in bubble create mode, so it'd start one when I didn't mean too. Probably just me not use to the program.
trado wrote:

-Refresh the Project tree without collapsing it: it was kind of annyoing to have to go through the tree on the left every time I created a page. Also being able to delete bubbles from the file tree, and add the delete hotkey to it..


Yeah, doesn't that blow? I've spent hours trying to stop the tree from collapsing when I add a new node to it. I've spent hours trying to get it to automatically select the most recently added page. I haven't had any luck. I hope to fix that eventually, but since this is just a hobby, it hasn't really been a priority. I only add a page say, every ten minutes when I'm translating. So it isn't a major deal to me.

For bubble deletion I just use a right-click to delete them. I never have the tree expanded far enough to show the bubbles (they don't even have good names, just all their text.)
So you're saying you tried having it just load the page right after you add it? Doesn't seem all that hard since you could just use the function that opens the page you clicked and just have that happen after you add it, though I guess I can't really say without seeing the code.
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Re: Suggestions/Critique I guess?

Post by FuguTabetai »

trado wrote: -I noticed that when the program has a bubble set to Dynamically Resize, it doesn't center the text completely.
Image
I tracked this down. The problem is that each line has a space (" ") character at the end, and that was being taken into account when laying out the line and sizing the text for centering. I was able to fix the centering problem, but it totally messed up direct text entry into the bubbles (because well, if you remove the spaces at the end of a line, and try to type more text... You can never create new words.)

Anyway, I'm thinking about this now, and will have a solution that centers things but still lets you do direct text entry. I hope.
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Re: Suggestions/Critique I guess?

Post by FuguTabetai »

trado wrote: -I don't know how hard it'd be, but say you click in a bubble, have the program detect the edges of the bubble and make a text bubble automatically so you don't have to draw one. Then you can just click and put in your translation. One of the projects I trans/edit has a lot of bubbles in it per page, and it's so annoying having to deal with each of those bubbles, even in photoshop, especially when there's like 13 per page.
Working on this in version 1.9.6. Right now it is infuriatingly bad. I've got some ideas on why now though, and will think about it. This is also fairly complex, but has been a fun problem to play around with for the past month or so. I hope to improve it to reasonable usability in the next two or three months. It depends on how much time I'll be able to find for programming (as opposed to translating) though.

As always, thanks for the suggestions.
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