Incorrect/misleading indentation in hierarchy

fantasyz

The indentation in hierarchy is incorrect.
Precise speaking, I would say the fold/unfold triangle location is implemented badly. It is not calculated correctly but just append to the left whether an item in hierarchy foldable.

From the screenshot below, the top one shows LegUR unfolded while bottom shows LegUR folded. You can see that the siblings are indented and looks like to be children of LegUR in both folded and unfolded state. :bang:

Nate

I don't see anything incorrect here. :nerd: Items that do not have an expand/contract indicator have a blank space where the indicator would be. This is standard for most/all UIs, eg (while certainly not the most stunning example of good UX) here is Windows:

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The .settings folder has a blank space to the left, where its expand indicator would be if it had children. In your bottom pic which shows siblings, your yellow dotted line is in the wrong place. Your eyes should be looking at this line, in green:

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In other words, the icons are aligned horizontally for siblings, not the expand indicators.

Maybe you would like more indentation for children to better differentiate them from the parent? I will concede that the indentation amount is quite small, eg here it is highlighted in green:

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It is most common for the indentation of the child icons to align with the parent text, which would look like:

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Highlighted:

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Increasing the indentation would cause the tree to use more horizontal space, much more for deeply nested nodes. We purposefully minimized the indentation to reduce how often the tree needs to scroll horizontally.

fantasyz

Ya, I think you are right about the expand indicator positioning. Obviously the Windows's sample looks much more correct to me and in spine the spacing just seems no enough. I now understand your reason to use less space in the child nodes (horizontal spacing) but it doesn't change the fact that it is causing misleading visual to some users like me. I would rather have the row longer than having things hard to read.

Here is Unity Editor sample which works just like the Windows sample and their parent child relation is very clear:

With correct spacing, the relation between rows really is much more easier to read.

I guess a better way to handle this issue is to add an option for user to decide whether they prefer clarity over horizontal spacing but not assume everyone does not have enough screen space...(esp dual-mon, 4k and 21:9 monitor is so common these days.) I personally think the default visual should to be more precise, but some people may like the current tight design so at least having an option to serve both party should be better solution for the problem.

Nate

We've increased the indentation in 3.7.13-beta and made it a setting on the Settings dialog. It ranges from 10 pixels (the old setting) to 20, and the default is 17. Cheers! :beer:

10:
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17:
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fantasyz

Wow! Looks good!
Thanks