My idea for the workflow was
roughly this:
No matter if you work with imagery or look'n'feel, the user works with not just single image parts but "grids" of imageparts. As stated before, in 90% of the work, graphics will be done handled with 1x1, 3x1, 1x3, 3x3 cell-arrays which are connected both in the raw theme-image (because that's how graphics artists work) and on the screen. So...
1) The user selects a widget in 'project'
2) She adds a number of image-grids, e.g. a single 3x3 grid, which she adapts to the imagery that the artist had made
3) She turns to the look'n'feel page and sees a black screen with a single gui-element on it - or more precisely all the image-arrays that was added in step two, unscaled when compared to how they appeared in step two and positioned in the upper left corner.
3.1) She starts to move them about and stretch them. For instance a 3x3 grid can be moved at stretched/dragged at each horizontal or vertical guide-line. Now comes the scoop: If she right-click on the guide-line, a menu pops up. This menu contains a computed list of obvious interpretations of the current position. The editor chooses a default interpretation, but she can change it all the time. Ok, right-click on the second vertical line of a 3x3 imagery-grid. Then you get:
Code: Select all
Choose how to calculate the position of the x-coordinate:
1) Unified-dim: 0*width + 25
2) Unified-dim: 0.3*width + 0
3) Custom
4) Once content with the result, the user clicks a 'test' button, where she can scale the final widget and see how everything drags along
... Oh, and ofcourse it is also in look'n'feel mode that auxiliary areas can be edited, e.g. the text-area of a textbox etc.