Some nice ideas there. Here are my thoughts:
My experience with touch interfaces has been on three different tablet computers: the Wacom Cintiq Companion 2, HP tm2 and the Apple iPad with Wacom Cintiq Creative Stylus' 1 & 2. I've used ASP on only the Wacom and HP tablet computers of course but I've included the iPad for UI comparison.
Anyway, regarding the video demonstration: I like the buttons idea--that's much quicker to get to panels and it reduces clutter. Undo and Redo can be accessed on the Cintiq Companion 2's Express keys of course but on-screen virtual buttons are a must for tablets that do not have programmable buttons on the bezel. I draw comics in Manga Studio and I really like using it on a tablet precisely because much of the UI is accessible by on-screen buttons, native and custom. (Yes, I know the UI can be modified through scripts but certain situations are fairly common should be standard options.)
ASP 11 has touch rotation and zooming but it seems a little unstable when I use it. Often times, the layout will flip 180 degrees when rotating it only a few degrees. This is on a Cintiq Companion 2 and I don't know if this problem issue is unique to this tablet but I suspect not. In the past, I experimented with touch on my old Tablet PC--I can't recall if I tried it with ASP, but I know it generally worked better in other programs. That said, I usually had this feature disabled for most graphics programs because I found it sometimes interfered with my workflow. I think this was because most programs are not really designed with touch in mind, and touch is enabled more as an after-thought. By comparison, there is a paint program on the iPad called Procreate that is 100% touch and gesture driven,
and it's intuitive and a joy to work with. But Procreate's UI is so different from anything else out there, I would think a program like ASP will almost have to be completely re-designed to be nearly as touch-friendly. That said, I would certainly welcome any touch-friendly improvements ASP's devs can come up with.
I used to work on an HP tm2 with Windows 7, which is a convertible laptop with a touch and Wacom penabled screen. Five years ago, this tablet PC was ahead of the game but its one downside was the low screen resolution. Because many of ASP's of panels are more or less fixed in place they tended to block too much of the workspace. I managed to get a lot of work done on this computer but it got awkward at times.
For example, the Bone Constraints panel opens up right in the middle of the screen on this computer. That UI choice has been a
horrible idea on lower res screens because the user cannot see the effect of his settings until after he closes the panel (in which case, it may as well be modal,) or unless he pans his focus to the narrow area to either side of the Bone Constraints panel. This panel really needs to be a tear-off or otherwise moveable panel.
When I got my Companion 2, I thought my problems were solved--this tablet has a super high screen resolution screen (2560 x 1440) so it should easily accommodate opening all the panels while leaving plenty of workspace. Well, that's good except the extra-high resolution introduced a whole other problem: now all the tool icons and graphical elements are too tiny to be recognizable or usable. For example, on the Companion's 13 inch screen, all the icons look about 1/8" square so they all pretty much look like the same blobs. The color palette is only an inch square, so each color tile is about 1/8, making it difficult to select specific colors. ASP 11 has a feature for scaling the text in the UI but it really needs something for the icons and graphics too.
(To be fair, Photoshop's UI scale problem is far worse on an high density screen, even in the latest Photoshop CC 2015 version. I've been in touch with some of the devs, so at least I know they are aware of the issues and looking for solutions.)
In recent weeks I've experimented with lowering the screen resolution and adjusting the UI with the Windows 8 options,but this introduced odd problems to other programs that had looked just fine at the Companion's native screen res and scale settings, so I finally went back to the defaults. To address the scale issue, I think ASP really must include the option to either allow Windows 8/10 to scale the UI or give the user more options for scaling it within the program. (Having both options would be great!)
Regarding using Toon Boom products on a tablet, it's been a mixed bag. I really liked using Storyboard Pro on my tm2 until version 4 came out. I think the problem was that they essentially abandoned compatibility for old tablet tech for new, which was a bit frustrating since I didn't know this until after I purchased the upgrade. I wound up removing it from my tablet PC and using it only a my desktop after that. Recently I moved it to my more modern Companion 2 tablet, so maybe I'll feel differently about it once I start using it again. I use Harmony at work--not on a tablet but I do use it on a full sized Cintiq there. Being able to draw directly in the program is its greatest strength. For drawing, my main quibble with Harmony is probably that it's not as easy to edit paths in the program as it is in ASP, but I would love to see ASP adopt some of the their drawing concepts. I just installed my license of Toon Boom Animate Pro 3 (which is nearly identical to Harmony,) on my Cintiq Companion but I haven't had a chance to use it much on this computer yet but I imagine the experience is similar to using Harmony on the Cintiq at work though. Anyway, yeah, I would love to see the drawing tools in ASP improved further. I think 11's drawing tool improvements is a very good start but it can still be better. In fact, I would direct the developers to look at Smith-Micro's other flagship product Manga Studio for some ideas.
If the ASP developers would like to ask me questions or have me test something on this tablet, feel free to PM me. Thanks for listening guys.
G.
P.S., I'd like to thank Fahim for starting this thread. I know the developers are very busy people but I hope they've been able to pay some attention to it. I think there are a lot of great ideas here and, for me anyway, it's been educational.