Digital Light & Color

In the Text and Arrow Tool, if I shift-click on a point and then press Text button, a text control appears. I can write text and hit the 'running man' to show it on the preview. But, closing the Text control removes the text attached to the latest control point (one way to preserve it is to shift-click on another location and then close the Text Control).

The logic is sound, I think, but somehow I always have a desire to close (or at least minimise) the Text Contol (to e.g. keep drawing arrows) and I keep forgetting that I also remove the last label with it (which can be recovered if I immediately hit the Text button again, but can't if I shift-click on another point instead).

Also, if a previous line, with a text box attached, is clicked on, the Text Control appears with the proper, previous text. Closing the Text Control removes this previous text label - something I rarely intend.

I was thinking that maybe hitting the 'running man' would also mean that the text box is committed as well to the output, but that would remove the nice idea that the Text button toggles the text box associated with the current line on and off. So maybe this could work - closing the Text Control after the text is committed by the 'running man' would close the Text Control, but keep the Text button depressed (and thus preserve the latest text entry or in other words remember the Text button state rather than resetting it to off)?

One additional observation: if the Text and Arrow is reopened, it seems to remember the last current line and its attributes, but the 'Snap line slope to 45 deg...' always resets to 'off'.

I remember when I originally implemented this there were separate buttons for enabling text and opening the text control, but that was also awkward. I agree the current solution is not optimal but I'm not sure what is the best way to fix it. I have fixed the problem with Snap to 45 degrees for the next release.

Here is the solution I came up with -- if there is no text box already, clicking the Text button adds a text box and brings up the text control window to let you edit the settings. If there is a text box already, clicking the Text button displays a menu with two options: Remove Text Box or Edit Text Box. Remove gets rid of the text box and closes the text control window, if any. Edit creates a text control window if necessary and lets you edit the text settings. Closing the text control window now has no effect on the current arrow. This seems to cover all the bases and lets you close the text window without losing the text.