Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

Some suggestions: I was doing something and then suddently I got a red error message, "The document cannot be rendered in it current state", instructing me to click the Node Graph button.

1. I couldn't find that button. Perhaps show a picture of it or just embed it in the error message.

2. Make the error text selectable.

3. Let me report the bug straight from the app?

I got the same error when I was doing the tutorial (which went quite well) and was doing the steps for circular repeat of the sun rays. Pressing Ctrl-Z undid practically all the work instead of just the last wrong change (not sure what caused it).

Simply using the brush tool triggered this error for me.

That's a recent regression, thanks for mentioning that. We'll get that fixed ASAP. I should also mention that the brush tool isn't well-supported and will be fully rewritten early next year. It currently has some quality and performance issues because it has to generate a texture on the CPU of the width and height required by the entire stroke bounding box, which quickly hits a performance wall.

Ah yes, good find: the stroke node can only apply to vector data, but when you use the Circular Repeat node, it now produces group data (as it should have always done). The fix is to put the Stroke node first to avoid the type error. I'll see what I can do to update the tutorial with that info, and to try to make the Stroke node more robust so it could apply to all group elements.

I'm surprised that Ctrl+Z undid more than one step, I've never seen that before. If you get the chance to reproduce that and write up the steps, please file an issue since we'd like to take a look into that.

Update: the issue with following what was shown in the tutorial is now fixed. Now the Fill and Stroke nodes apply to the vector contents of group data, which was the problem. (We made Circular Repeat produce a group of vector shapes to properly preserve styling information like gradients, which was why it broke.)

Update: that's fixed now. It was a super recent regression which is how it didn't get caught earlier. Thanks for the report.

Thanks for the feedback. What you've encountered is a type error— basically a programming language's compiler telling you that your code is invalid. It's not a bug per-se, although sometimes it is caused by our nodes not being as general as they should be. We just fixed an issue where the Stroke and Fill nodes only applied to vector data but didn't apply to group data (where the group contained one or more vector data). Those kinds of problems, when sensible, should probably get issues filed against them.

The red error message does tell you where to look:

> Check for error details in the node graph, which can be > opened with the viewport's top right _Node Graph_ button.

So in the top right of the viewport, and it's the button labeled "Node Graph". Is it possible your window was very small and the button got scrolled out of the way by other buttons? I'm open to feedback about how you may suggest improving the text of that message. It would currently be hard to make that dialog more visual or interactive, unfortunately, but that'll be something worth building towards improving in the future with improved diagonstics all around.

I can try to reproduce but don't want to go through all the steps every time in case things go wrong again. Is there a savepoint/export/import kind of feature?

I think a tutorial regarding basics such as how to find shortcuts, do's/dont's for new beginners might help.

I suggest putting a button in the error dialog that goes straight to the Node Graph.

If I click with a drawing tool on the drawing and my drawing disappears and gets replaced with that screen, that's 100% a bug, no matter how we try to phrase that.

I'd suggest allowing bug reports directly from the app. You can capture highly useful context with the report. You have highly technical people here eager to help your wonderful creation!

Yes, that should never happen. If you ever encounter that, please report a bug describing the situation in which it occurred. The Brush tool bug was fixed yesterday, so that particular one shouldn't happen anymore.

We have this for crash reports. Perhaps that's a good idea to add a menu button for reporting other bugs. Do you have suggestions as to how to make that discoverable?

You can save the document and reopen it later just like in any other program. You might not be able to reproduce the graph validity error anymore because we fixed the specific bug you encountered. The input hints bar at the bottom shows what buttons you can press in any context, but that's a good idea to mention it in upcoming tutorials because I've noticed that users tend to ignore it. Hover tooltips and the app menu also both display shortcuts, which are worth pointing out in future tutorials as well. Thanks for that suggestion.

1. When this red error message is displayed, I'd have loved to see a "report this bug/issue/incident" next to it. That button would have opened a dialog box for me to write in, and telling that the context would be shipped with my bug report.

To me it looked like a crash, but I do understand that programmatically it wasn't a "crash" or an unhandled exception.

2. Since this is a pre-alpha/alpha/beta version, there's nothing wrong with a green button with a picture of a bug anywhere in the interface. Just open a dialog explaining that although horrified, you'll be thrilled to learn of any bugs.

Ah yes, you made me realize we could check if the node graph isn't open and tell the user to report a bug in that situation, which must have arisen from a tool or other WYSIWYG aspect of the program causing a node graph error. But we wouldn't show it if it arose from the user just noodling around with the nodes. That's a good idea that'll be worth us implementing, thank you for the suggestion.