Better UI

[edeetee]

The current UI is not useful for what I want.

Reasons

I don't think egui is the best option. Want a more mature framework.

I'm not sold that the full node graph layout is the best for what I want.

Node graphs end up looking messy and chaotic without a lot of supporting containerization and abstraction. They are useful for conceptualizing the flow of data but fail when dealing with complex webs of data.

In TD, I often end up defining my main data sources with named nulls and referencing them later on. It would be good for a rendering framework to be centered around this.

Often, I have nodes set up in chains and only connect them together at the end.
Also I often end up doing the same thing repeatedly

This is kind of solved with containers but the workflow for this is slowed down.

I mention these things because maybe there can be some clean approach that fixes both of these problems.

Solutions

'Recipes' + 'Implementations'

Have half of the window show the recipes you have and the other half allow for complex connections between the recipes. I see this being problematic because it stops being able to just use the graph for simple things. Also this is pretty much just like having TD open with two windows, one inside and one outside the COMP.

Auto-aligned node graph

Instead of a free node graph, show the nodes as a grid where one dimension shows the data flow and the other dimension shows different element groups. I see having problems with understanding the flow of data when you have nodes that have a lot of input

More naming and referencing

I need a UI that forces you to do what I do in best case TD. Clearly named minimal graphs that are reusable.

[edeetee]

I think this UI should also make reusing and abstracting things simply