The goal here is to make app templates usable for default templates
that we can ship with Blender. These only have a custom startup.blend
currently and so are quite limited compared to app templates that fully
customize Blender.
But still it seems like the same kind of concept where we should be
sharing the code and UI. It is useful to be able to save a startup.blend
per template, and I can imagine some scripting being useful in the future
as well.
Changes made:
* File > New and Ctrl+N now list the templates, replacing a separate
Application Templates menu that was not as easy to discover.
* File menu now shows name of active template above Save Startup File
and Load Factory Settings to indicate these are saved/loaded per
template.
* The "Default" template was renamed to "General".
* Workspaces can now be added from any of the template startup.blend
files when clicking the (+) button in the topbar.
* User preferences are now fully shared between app templates, unless
the template includes a custom userpref.blend. I think this will be
useful in general, not all app templates need their own keymaps for
example.
* Previously Save User Preferences would save the current app template
and then Blender would start using that template by default. I've
disabled this, to me it seems it was unintentional, or at least not
clear at all that saving user preferences also makes the current
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D3690
This is quite confusing in the current UI, with both startup.blend and
workspaces.blend containing a list of workspaces. In practice you'd usually
want to save workspaces to both files.
The downside of having a single file may be that you then can't disable
certain workspaces by default, but we could add a setting for that.
This commit does the main integration of workspaces, which is a design we agreed on during the 2.8 UI workshop (see https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.8/UI/Workshop_Writeup)
Workspaces should generally be stable, I'm not aware of any remaining bugs (or I've forgotten them :) ). If you find any, let me know!
(Exception: mode switching button might get out of sync with actual mode in some cases, would consider that a limitation/ToDo. Needs to be resolved at some point.)
== Main Changes/Features
* Introduces the new Workspaces as data-blocks.
* Allow storing a number of custom workspaces as part of the user configuration. Needs further work to allow adding and deleting individual workspaces.
* Bundle a default workspace configuration with Blender (current screen-layouts converted to workspaces).
* Pressing button to add a workspace spawns a menu to select between "Duplicate Current" and the workspaces from the user configuration. If no workspaces are stored in the user configuration, the default workspaces are listed instead.
* Store screen-layouts (`bScreen`) per workspace.
* Store an active screen-layout per workspace. Changing the workspace will enable this layout.
* Store active mode in workspace. Changing the workspace will also enter the mode of the new workspace. (Note that we still store the active mode in the object, moving this completely to workspaces is a separate project.)
* Store an active render layer per workspace.
* Moved mode switch from 3D View header to Info Editor header.
* Store active scene in window (not directly workspace related, but overlaps quite a bit).
* Removed 'Use Global Scene' User Preference option.
* Compatibility with old files - a new workspace is created for every screen-layout of old files. Old Blender versions should be able to read files saved with workspace support as well.
* Default .blend only contains one workspace ("General").
* Support appending workspaces.
Opening files without UI and commandline rendering should work fine.
Note that the UI is temporary! We plan to introduce a new global topbar
that contains the workspace options and tabs for switching workspaces.
== Technical Notes
* Workspaces are data-blocks.
* Adding and removing `bScreen`s should be done through `ED_workspace_layout` API now.
* A workspace can be active in multiple windows at the same time.
* The mode menu (which is now in the Info Editor header) doesn't display "Grease Pencil Edit" mode anymore since its availability depends on the active editor. Will be fixed by making Grease Pencil an own object type (as planned).
* The button to change the active workspace object mode may get out of sync with the mode of the active object. Will either be resolved by moving mode out of object data, or we'll disable workspace modes again (there's a `#define USE_WORKSPACE_MODE` for that).
* Screen-layouts (`bScreen`) are IDs and thus stored in a main list-base. Had to add a wrapper `WorkSpaceLayout` so we can store them in a list-base within workspaces, too. On the long run we could completely replace `bScreen` by workspace structs.
* `WorkSpace` types use some special compiler trickery to allow marking structs and struct members as private. BKE_workspace API should be used for accessing those.
* Added scene operators `SCENE_OT_`. Was previously done through screen operators.
== BPY API Changes
* Removed `Screen.scene`, added `Window.scene`
* Removed `UserPreferencesView.use_global_scene`
* Added `Context.workspace`, `Window.workspace` and `BlendData.workspaces`
* Added `bpy.types.WorkSpace` containing `screens`, `object_mode` and `render_layer`
* Added Screen.layout_name for the layout name that'll be displayed in the UI (may differ from internal name)
== What's left?
* There are a few open design questions (T50521). We should find the needed answers and implement them.
* Allow adding and removing individual workspaces from workspace configuration (needs UI design).
* Get the override system ready and support overrides per workspace.
* Support custom UI setups as part of workspaces (hidden panels, hidden buttons, customizable toolbars, etc).
* Allow enabling add-ons per workspace.
* Support custom workspace keymaps.
* Remove special exception for workspaces in linking code (so they're always appended, never linked). Depends on a few things, so best to solve later.
* Get the topbar done.
* Workspaces need a proper icon, current one is just a placeholder :)
Reviewed By: campbellbarton, mont29
Tags: #user_interface, #bf_blender_2.8
Maniphest Tasks: T50521
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D2451
This adds the ability to switch between different application-configurations
without interfering with Blender's normal operation.
This commit doesn't include any templates,
so its mostly to allow collaboration for the Blender 101 project
and other custom configurations.
Application templates can be installed & selected from the file menu.
Other details:
- The `bl_app_template_utils` module handles template activation
(similar to `addon_utils`).
- The `bl_app_override` module is a general module
to assist scripts overriding parts of Blender in reversible way.
See docs:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/advanced/app_templates.html
See patch: D2565
Brecht Van Lommel
Julian Eisel
Campbell Barton