Dev:Wish list

Got a great idea for a new feature, just add it here, or on the [requests tracker]. Please add a rating of how essential this feature is to your workflow according to the following scale:

1. "Well, it might be nifty. To someone."
2. "I probably would make use this"
3. "It's not essential, but I'd really like to have this at my disposal."
4. "Synfig would be soooo much better with this change"
5. "I can't/won't use Synfig without it!"

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• Arbitrary Color Channels — The ability for the user to create any number of custom channels for various purposes.

• Autorecover History — It would be great if autorecover could also recover the associated history of a file in the event of a crash.

• Render target filetype — the ability to save as .mng [1]

• Layer Convert (4) (2) — The original intent of this feature request has been solved and documented - How do I....Fill an Outline? - but it would still be nice to have a way to convert one sort of path layer to another. (Downgraded to level 2) Snap 12:32, 17 Jan 2006 (PST)

• Layer hide boolean parameter (3) — An animatable way to remove a layer from visibility and consideration in tools. And as an option, to hide the layer in the layer list while it is invisible. This crosses over functionality from the Amount Parameter, the Show/Hide checkbox in the Layers Dialog, and builds upon it as well, allowing the Layers Dialog to dynamically unclutter. (This feature request is a refactoring of the Amount Parameter)

• Vector fill bucket (3) — Like the traditional bitmap fill, but this fills the area clicked out to the nearest boundary paths with a region of that area, set to the foreground color (it actually would create a new region layer).

  Alternatively, a single-duck layer object, that performs a simple bitmap fill from its (animatable) location, with its stored color value. (This second approach is similar to the behavior of one of Softimage's TOONZ[2]'s tools)

  If this is implemented, it will probably be necessary to change the existing "fill" tool's name and icon to a "color injector" (hypodermic needle / turkey injector icon) tool, as that's closer to describing what it does.

• redraw tool (4-5) — Intutive reshaping of path-based layers. See link.

• Restore Default Layout (3) — It's very difficult to put all the dialogs back where they were when you started the program, if you've closed them. In addition, with many programs, if you've done something with your window manager to take a window's position off screen, this command is sometimes the only way to bring them back.

• Gnome HIG Compliance — This should solve all complaints about the layout, without requiring Synfig to be "just like program (x)". See UI Reloaded for progress on this.

• Feedback for smooth move tool (3) — This tool does what a lot of folks are looking for, warping selected ducks in a "soft" fashion. But it's not very obvious what sort of effect it will have, from the tool's interface. It needs some sort of momentary center-of-action and radius indicator at the very least. Perhaps an "influence gradient" overlaid on the canvas once Synfig's core is sped up?

• Networkability (2) — Like Inkscape's "inkboard" feature (using Jabber), or Blender's Verse server [3], or OpenCanvas's Networking option.

• Riding ducks (2) — Not chocobos. The ability to link a duck from one shape to an arbitrary position on another path, without creating an extra shape duck on that path.

• Intuitive tangent modification (3) — (BBQ Pulled Duck) Inkscape has this for still handles - basically, grab a section of the spline between handles, and pull it around, the program automatically alters the tangent handles to match. What would be really neat is if you could do the same for temporal handles - be able to grab the spline between keyframes, and yank it around, and have Synfig automatically adjust the key interpolation to match. Not sure exactly what the workflow in the UI would be for this, however.

• Plugin API (1) — Would be nice to enable additional functionality to be added to the program without it necessarily needing to be in the Synfig source tree. According to the Synfig 0.61.01 roadmap on deepdarc.com, there is a plugin API already implemented. So instead, this may be a Wiki Wish for documentation, depending on how much has already been completed. Snap 19:57, 13 Jan 2006 (PST)

• Python support (1) of some sort will no doubt be demanded by the userbase eventually, for studio-specific automation of tasks, noncompiled plugins, etc. I (SnapSilverlight) don't have any particular use for it at the moment, tho'.

• mod_synfig (1) — For Apache. Render .sif to some format like png/mng on access.

• synfig nsplugin (1) — Let Mozilla and Mozilla-based view synfig files in-browser.

• Image filmstrip import (2) — Allow import of a series of images (TGA, etc) as frames of an animation, on a layer.

• Align function (3) — Align objects at a common border (as in Inkscape)