Nicer Arrow Tool

[leogx9r]

A very small enhancement IMO and this is more of a pet peeve of mine but I'd really like a nicer looking arrow tool, particularly a curved back to the arrow as it looks a bit more "professional".

For example, here's how ShareX's arrow tool looks:

Flameshot's for comparison:

Relevant code in ShareX's library for the curved drawing is located here.

[veracioux]

I do think what you propose looks better. Not sure if we should make it the default (not sure how attached the users are to the current one). But I do think there should be a way to change the arrow style between those two (and another one, see #1977) from the side panel.

I don't have a solid idea on how to implement your proposed arrow style, so I'll put this on my queue for investigation. But my queue is rather full at the moment so you may have to wait, unless someone else wants to do it.

[leogx9r]

@veracioux Thanks for the attention on this. I believe Qt should have a similar method of drawing a curve like C#'s GraphicsPath.

From what I can see there's a couple methods of going about this:

• Have separate drawing methods for each "arrow type" where the configuration file's entry allows you to execute the given arrow drawing method. A bit messy if we start adding more and more arrows though due to code bloat.

• Optionally replace the "default" (current) arrow with the one referenced here, it's basically the same thing but better (I believe there wouldn't be any issue doing this since it seems to be a minor aesthetic tweak). That way you have two versions that can be toggled on a hotkey, like Alt as you suggested. IMO this is probably the best option since having to keep adding arrows catering to each user seems a bit silly in the long run. A default and an alternative seems "sane enough".

Also a bit strapped on time else I'd have attempted to make a pull request myself so no rush if your work queue is filled. 😄

[veracioux]

@leogx9r We should still wait for more people to weigh in, especially @mmahmoudian, before making any changes.

[mmahmoudian]

My vote is on customisability. This arrow thing was partially discussed already although under an ambiguous title:

#1487 (comment)

Imho it should be so that user select a default arrow style (e.g what we have, curved back, three connected lines similar to #1977) and they should be able to switch to alternatives when needed through the side panel. This pose the issue that the default one should be selected from the config which might add some extra work for the devs.

This topic brings me to an idea: can we have it so that the arrow heads are stored as SVG in a folder. This way we implement it once and users can add their custom SVG to a specific folder (e.g ~/.config/flameshot/custom_styles/arrows/) and Flameshot just load the default one with whatever additional arrow user provided. Disclaimer: I reaaaally have no idea how easy or hard it is to implement this considering the size and color change.

[veracioux]

@mmahmoudian I love the SVG idea.

Off the top of my head, I don't have a grasp on the implementation details. I'm going to mark this with some labels in the hope of attracting potential contributors. If no one takes this up, it will be on my task list.

[leogx9r]

The SVG idea also came to mind when I suggested the above. Would it be somehow better to add a UI to select defaults from the folder list? I quite like the idea of being able to switch arrows on-the-fly via a hotkey as proposed in #1977 so a UI implementation where you can select a "primary" and "secondary" arrow style would be nice. What do you all think?

[veracioux]

@leogx9r Actually, after this discussion, I'm having second thoughts about the arrow feature I suggested in #1977. Now it feels like just a way to slap the Alt modifier to the arrow tool. How many people would use it? And how often? I think we should add a way to select the arrow from the panel, and stop right there. I suggest to have the arrows loaded from the ~/.config/arrows directory or something similar. So any image file you put under there will be listed in the panel.

[mmahmoudian]

Changing arrow style via keyboard shortcuts would probably be an overkill. I think having the following would be enough:

1. Being able to load from a folder
2. Being able to select a default (or perhaps the last used can become the default) and of course the fallback is the one we already have.

Regarding the folder structure, I think all Flameshot extensions can go under one parent folder (e.g ~/.config/flameshot/extensions/) and then there can be subfolders (e.g arrows/, scripts/).