Some criticism though. Skip the whole deal about duplicate snippets for objects and values, it only makes simple things more complicated. If I want to use the X position of an active object as a value, I'd simply insert X( "Active" ) as the value.
This also makes it harder to update snippets when an easier expression is found. I've already found a rather huge mistake. For example:
Between Two Objects - Euclidean (normal) uses the nice and simple expression:
Sqr((>X Point 1<->X Point 2<) pow 2+(>Y Point 1<->Y Point 2<) pow 2)
while Between Two Points - Euclidean (normal) uses the bloated expression:
Sqr( ((>X Point 1<->X Point 2<)*(>X Point 1<->X Point 2<))+((>Y Point 1<->Y Point 2<)*(>Y Point 1<->Y Point 2<)) )
In addition to the mistake about having a poorly written expression in the list, don't you spot another? The first one uses values too, while other distance related "Object" snippets reffers to X(">Object 1<") etc. I noticed that this mistake occured in at least one other snippet, so be sure to validate them all again.
Having separate snippets for objects and values fails at many points.
* People might forget to update the math in both of a twin object/value snippet.
* People might forget to use values in Value snippets and objects in Object snippets.
* It's hard to teach people who write snippets what the difference is, and to not make the mistake in the two points I made above. They have already been made after all, and my experience tells me that a lot of people are not careful enough to keep an eye open for these things.
* The ease of use. It's easier to remember a smaller list of snippets, nobody wants to have duplicates of everything (it clutters the list), and everyone who even only knows the basics of how expressions works should understand they can use anything as values, including positions and alterable values of objects.
Although I guess twin snippets for object/value can have it's upsides, the downsides outweight them by far. The only reasonable soliution is if twin object/value snippets can be integrated into a single snippet with a object/value selector. Having the object/value variations as two lines of text next to each other should make it a whole lot easier to keep them in sync.
Edit:
Looks like I had forgot to get the latest version of the snippets, but as I did, I spotted that the issue with the distance snippet which used values instead of objects was fixed. However, in this case, the maths was replaced by the ones in the bloated expression which used too much parenthesis and didn't take advantage of "pow 2". Even the fix was a fail. This is why I really think the system must change. Oh, and "Between Two Points - Approximation.ini" is still wrong.
Despite my criticism, don't forget the "this is an awesome piece of software" aspect in all this.
Edited by Nifflas (10/29/08 07:16 PM)
