More horizontal spacing per layer of child nodes in scene tree

[GuyUnger]

Describe the project you are working on

NA

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

It's hard to see the child parent relations in the scene tree

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

Just add more spacing. There are not many things where I prefer unity's interface, but this is definitely one of them.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

mockup (the line connections are removed because it was quicker to mockup, but they can stay IMO)

example of how it looks in unity

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

NA

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

NA

[zinnschlag]

Adding more spacing will also increase the amount of screen space required. I am not opposed to the proposal. But simply increasing the spacing won't do, since the optimal value will depend on factors like the screen size of the individual user and the complexity of the tree. If this is changed it should be turned into an editor user setting.

[GuyUnger]

Yeah that's what I thought too (should've mentioned it in the proposal), but I think the default value can be increased too. I don't think anyone complains about screen space in unity. Godot has 9 pixels of spacing where unity has 13 and it's just better IMO. And an extra option for people with the screen space would be amazing

[YuriSizov]

I don't think anyone complains about screen space in unity.

That's, frankly, irrelevant. We care about people with laptops and smaller screens and prefer that the UI works for them out of the box. It's much harder to adjust the UI to be smaller when it doesn't fit your screen, than to adjust it to be more spacious when it does.

[Calinou]

We could adjust the indentation level dynamically depending on the scene tree dock's width, but this may still be too much for deeply nested trees or trees with long node names. I would prefer something that works automatically rather than adding yet another editor setting.

[YuriSizov]

I would prefer something that works automatically rather than adding yet another editor setting.

We could reuse the additional spacing setting for the editor trees, maybe?

[Calinou]

We could reuse the additional spacing setting for the editor trees, maybe?

That sounds good to me, but I don't think OP wants buttons to have extra spacing. If you set it to just 3, everything becomes quite spaced out already.

[GuyUnger]

That's, frankly, irrelevant.

if the trade-off is between readability and screen space, looking at software with many users that goes more in the direction of readability and in practice doesn't seem to have problems with space, that's not irrelevant

[GuyUnger]

@junkajii for me that would be enough spacing! having it aligned like that looks much more clean and orderly too

[AaronRecord]

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

It's hard to see the child parent relations in the scene tree

It only affects selected nodes, but godotengine/godot#48546 helps with that.

[jcostello]

...But simply increasing the spacing won't do, since the optimal value will depend on factors like the screen size of the individual user and the complexity of the tree...

For me, I can see the ideal alignment value, just align the next icon to the previous Node text.

There is a problem there in the example. The spacing suggest that AnimationPlayer and AnimationTree are nested and child of CollitionShape2D where in fact they are child of Player at the same level

[EricEzaM]

Am I missing something here? Make a custom theme for your editor based on the editor theme and change Tree / Constants / Item Margin and set it to about 22 to 24. Unless you mean you only want this for the SceneTreeDock, in which case yes, it would need to be done in the source code.

[Zireael07]

99% sure that the askers want it ONLY for scene tree dock - the defaults are fine for other tree views imho.

[JoanPotatoes2021]

Could we expose a customizable property to the editor settings?

[YuriSizov]

Technically, yes, we absolutely can, but we also don't want to overburden users with niche settings.