Making mundane sub-devices

As promised in the last entry, I had to make a sub-device to improve the usability of layer manipulation in many significant ways. It's interesting that this threw me back into the world of the conventional GUI, as I had to start making things like split-panes, and then adding buttons to initiate some of those useful functions that had been missing. Unfortunately, early attempts are both boring and annoying (as Luke tells me is true of all programming).

(yes, a boring sub-device)

And this was followed by some tasks that were at least a bit more layer-like, but with more of those tricky rendering decisions ... where a visual cue is needed to indicate the metaphor, but none of the options are quite as attractive as one might have hoped. For example, choosing between these two options of slightly tilted cards to make the ordering of the layer stack clear: