geomview

[njt]

I have been playing with geomview some.  Overall, it is a great improvement
over MinneView -- in particular, the visual interface seems to work well.
The only feature of MinneView that I miss is the convenient way to
look at a sequence of objects.  Is there an easy way to do this
in geomview?

I think there is a lot of room for improvement in the motion modes.
One operation I would like to use is the a rotatation of
an object about a specified point in space.  This is really a two-parameter
motion -- there is the object which gets moved, and the object which
defines the point in space.  For this to be really useful, there would
have to be a third column of choices in the main panel or some other visual
way to get two arguments.

It would also be nice to be able to treat cameras and lights in the
same way as other objects.  I don't see the conceptual difference
between "orbit" and "rotate," for instance, and I was surprised that
there is no equivalent of "translate" for camera motion.
The same comments apply to light motions.

Why does motion stop when you start another motion?
Maybe that is a design decision, but I would like to have a way to
translate an object back to the center of a window, and not have this
translation interfere with the rotation.

Finally, I noticed that the way continuous motion works confused
some people yesterday -- they had a very hard time getting things
to stop moving with the mouse, and I find it difficult myself sometimes,
especially with objects which take about 1/3 of a second or more
to draw.  The problem is that if you hold the mouse still with the button
down, release the button, and then move away quickly, the object
sometimes starts moving.  I think I know a way to solve this problem.

Nathaniel