In previous versions of the keyguard designer, the size of cell openings was specified indirectly by setting the width of the horizontal and vertical rails between the rows and columns of openings.
Starting with this version, you directly specify the height and width of rectangular cells.
As before, the corner radii of these rectangular cells are specified via the “cell corner radius” option, and the diameter of circular openings is set via the “cell diameter” option.
This change in grid layout design has led to several changes to the Customizer (click on the image below to enlarge it):
Some of these changes will have no effect on the designs you created with previous versions of the designer:
- The section’s name has been changed from Grid Layout to Grid Info to be more consistent with similar sections elsewhere in the Customizer.
- The “number of columns” and “number of rows” items have been reversed to match the order in which these terms are used in normal conversation.
Other changes will require that you update the designs you’ve already created with previous versions of the designer:
- The “horizontal rail width” and “vertical rail width” options are no longer available. They have been replaced by “cell height” and “cell width”. When you start a design, these two options will be set to 25 mm until you change them.
- “rail slope” and “rail height” have been replaced by similar options called “cell edge slope” and “screen area thickness”, respectively. These options will be set to 90 degrees and 4 mm, respectively. It makes sense to carry the values you already have for rail slope and rail height directly over into these new options. Note that “screen area thickness “ has been placed in the Keyguard Basics section next to its companion option, “keyguard thickness.”
The name of one option in “Special Actions and Settings” called “split line” has been changed to “split line location” to clarify its purpose. You can directly transfer your value for “split line” to this new option (click on the image to enlarge it):
Getting Help from the Keyguard Designer
The keyguard designer will try to help you replicate your previous designs for use with this version and these new options. When you open a Preset associated with an earlier version, the designer will compare these updated options to the comparable ones in the latest version and notify you that you may want to update your Customizer settings. These recommendations will be shown in the Console pane (click on the image to enlarge it):
If you make the changes recommended in the Console pane, your updated design should match your previous design. Once you save your updated Preset, you will no longer see these recommendations.
There are five temporary options at the end of the Special Actions and Settings section. They hold the values you assigned to the old options in previous versions of the designer. They are only included in the customizer to make the recommendations in the Console pane possible (click on the image to enlarge it):
As the comment says, you shouldn’t change any of these values. In six months to a year, after everyone has upgraded to a newer version of the designer, these options will be removed.
What if You have too many Designs/Presets to Update?
If you have tens or hundreds of designs and making these changes one design at a time seems too painful, send your JSON file or files to upgrade@volksswitch.org, and we’ll update them for you to match the latest version of the designer.
What if you’d rather do it yourself?
We’re happy to share the upgrade program we’ll use to upgrade the Presets of others. Send an email message to upgrade@volksswitch.org and let us know that you’d like a copy. It’s a Python program you will run via the command line interface on a Windows PC or the Terminal app on a Mac.