[Gimp-developer] Shifting rotation grid with center of rotation: need help/feedback

[Omari Stephens]

Hi, all

I'm working on a patch which shifts the rotation grid so that a grid 
intersection always falls on the center of rotation.  The simple use-case for 
this functionality is when doing a corrective rotation in a photo with a clear 
horizontal or vertical object.  Maintaining an intersection on the center of 
rotation means that you'd _always_ be able to stick the center of rotation on 
one end of the straight object, align a gridline along the object, and be done. 
  Currently, this is not always easily doable without futzing with the number of 
gridlines.

My current rough-draft patch (against r28237) is up at:
http://ocaml.xvm.mit.edu/~xsdg/stuff/gimp/shift_rotate_grid.v2.patch.txt

At the moment I have a few questions:

1) Let C be the coords for center of rotation, and TC be the coords for the 
transformed center of rotation.  At times, it seems like TC is up-to-date and C 
lags (such as when dragging the center of rotation with the mouse).  But other 
times, C is up-to-date and TC lags (for instance, when adjusting one of C's 
coords with the spinbox in the dialog).  This makes it incredibly difficult to 
make the offset always correct.

I think this happens because gimp_transform_tool_grid_recalc() and 
gimp_transform_tool_transform_bounding_box() need to be called in differnet 
orders depending on where the canonical center of rotation coords are stored (C 
or TC).

When you update the spinbox, the gimp_transform_tool_motion() callback calls 
gimp_rotate_tool_motion() (which sets C from the values in the spinbox), and 
then gimp_transform_tool_recalc(), calls ..._grid_recalc() and then 
..._transform_bounding_box().  So, in this case, TC will be stale at the point 
when ..._grid_recalc() is called (since TC is updated from C in 
..._transform_bounding_box()).

When you move the center of rotation by dragging it with the mouse, however, it 
seems that sometimes ..._transform_bounding_box() is called without an 
accompanying ..._grid_recalc() call, which means that C is stale but TC is 
up-to-date.  In particular, when this happens, C is temporarily set to the 
center of the image, which I find incredibly confusing.  I'm not sure how or why 
this happens.  Any suggestions for how should I fix this behavior so that it's 
correct in either case?

2) I want to only enable shifting when we're doing rotation (as opposed to 
shearing or scaling, for instance).  This is as easy as clamping x_off and y_off 
to zero in gimp_transform_tool_grid_recalc().  From that function, how do I 
determine if the transformation is a rotation?

3) The bounding box is drawn in a different function.  I would like to avoid 
splitting the shift logic across functions (or duplicating it in both).  Any 
suggestions on how to keep the bounding-box aligned with the grid (including the 
shift offset), but still allow the bounding box to work when the grid isn't 
being calculated?

4) Any other questions, suggestions, or feedback?

Thanks,
--xsdg