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Re: [Inkscape-devel] UI proposal for text in shapes
by Valerie 03 Jun '08

03 Jun '08

Alright, here's what I've got for now (below is the draft of what I'd put in the wiki): Text-UI-improvements Text UI with space, kerning, path and flow Summary: An improvement of the text toolbar functionalities, adding: spacing, kerning, put-on-path, flow-into-shape (with auto align and padding values) and perhaps more font styles (underline, etc.). All this is done without making the toolbar excessively long via usage of drop-downs. http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/5168/textinterface1ix1.png The interface: - (by the way, can the font size value drop-down be made slightly smaller?) - clicking on "Spacing" pops up a temporary drop-down, where you can set the line spacing and letter spacing values. Clicking anywhere else closes it. It is assumed that users would not need to modify these Too often. - the "horizontal layout" button is eliminated to save some space. - more font styles are accessible from the toolbar. However, this may take too much space, so see below for alternate toolbar. - Kerning is also accessed via a drop-down. There you can set values manually, but mouse-over will reveal the shortcuts, so users quickly learn how to manually do kerning instead of having to use the drop-down all the time. A button enables the user to remove all kerning. - the "put text on path" operation is included onto the text toolbar. To use it, you simple select both the text and the path, and click the button. Clicking again removes the operation. - the "flow text into shape" is very useful for charts and comics. However, the current operation is too limited because of the absence of padding and alignment options. More precisions below. Note that I have made heavy use of down-downs. There are two major differences between such drop-downs and popping up a whole Text dialog that makes them hopefully more pleasant to use: - they're Smaller. i.e., less cumbersome. You can access exactly the operations you need without popping up something huge in the middle of the screen. - they disappear as soon as you click elsewhere, so you quickly get them out of the way. - and yet they still allow you to quickly access some operations that are hopefully not Too frequent. Precisions on the "flow into shape" section: - I often make charts, and it is extremely cumbersome to bring up the align dialog all the time just because I want to align a text to the center of a shape. Ideally, this should be automatic. I forgot who first came up with the align grid for Inkscape, but credits goes to him! :) The align grid is as its name implies: clicking on the center aligns the text to the middle-center of the object (as is often the case for chart items and comic bubbles), the top-left option is most use for text boxes. Right- alignment would be handy for Asian layouts. See examples: http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/7099/alignmentbc9.png - Also, the padding is automatic: it basically automatically creates a shape inset of that value, and flows the text into the invisible shape. This way the form can finally be used as the actual border of the frame instead of other complicated work-arounds. - Ideally, the x and y values of padding could be set independently, but it is otherwise not really a problem because in the case of comic shapes, for example, the text would be aligned to middle-center so the top and bottom borders will rarely be reached. Alternate interface: the following interface presents ideas to further reduce toolbar length: http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/8550/textinterface2nb3.png - the text align options would be reduced to a single button with a horizontal drop-down. However, users would probably like to have these options at top-level. - instead of cluttering the bar with font styles, another drop- down could be used. What goes into this drop-down depends on who plans to stuff it: it can be more buttons, check boxes, even complex drop-downs like Open Office (though hopefully not That complex and not That big). This allows users to access a wide range of rare styles as they are made available. - if the x and y padding values of "border" for text flow can be modified separately, then they get grouped into a drop-down as well. Anyway, I know many of you are busy. I'll probably leave this proposal up for about a week, and in the meantime, I'm open to any additional suggestions, or I'll wait longer if anybody gives a more specific date on when they'll have time. As you can see, many of the elements have several possibilities, so there could be additional refinement there as well. :)

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RM's pencil smoothing and tolerance UI: anybody?
by Valerie 02 Jun '08

02 Jun '08

I've tried to apply this patch: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/188381 As you can see, it works, even though I know nothing about patching: http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/106/tolerancecp9.png Since there is a working patch available to enable tolerance control from the toolbar, is there any reason why it hasn't been committed? (apart from the fact that tolerance control does not work from the pref window, but if you can access it from the toolbar, there is no reason to modify it from prefs anymore). This, however: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/188849 Gives me errors (mostly ¡®sp_curve_unref¡¯ was not declared in this scope and similar) Unfortunately I have no experience no the matter. Is anybody else looking into the matter? Better smoothing would be so very welcome.

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Bug with preferences
by Jon A. Cruz 01 Jun '08

01 Jun '08

There's a new bug with preferences that might be the sign of a problem in XML writing. https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/236485 I won't have time to look at this until later in the afternoon. However it looks to most likely be a bug in either the PrefCombo class or our XML writer itself (given the recent changes there).

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW : LPE stacking
by Valerie 01 Jun '08

01 Jun '08

Once again, congratulations on the terrific work done with LPE stacking! I'm having a blast putting all sorts of shapes on Spiro lines (which convinces me more than ever that we should have Spiro lines as a sub-mode of Pencil and Bezier: it'd basically be an automatic Spiro line upon a bezier, minus the annoying bezier skeleton popping up all the time, yes? ;) ) Now that was a blast! http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/2219/lpesqm7.png I tried deforming a text with Envelop by the way but found a bug instead: the LPE dialogue didn't let me do effects with Text so I tried to convert it to path first. Result: Inkscape seems to crash if you select the text then the edit tool (F2). The console says: (inkscape:7044): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid cast from `SPText' to `SPLPEItem' Does the same problem occur to anybody else? I suppose I should file a bug. There is no such bug on 0.46 though, and an exported text can be deformed just fine.

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW : LPE stacking
by Valerie 31 May '08

31 May '08

> Hello, > Our student project is now finished. Thanks to our mentor Johan, our > work is now in main trunk. For us it is a real pleasure to see that. > > Our goals were : > - LPE stacking : Check it out > - LPE for groups : has already been committed > - LPE envelope : we created 2 deformation effects, the first one > is "Envelope", the second is > "Lattice" and is based on the d2sb2d object from 2geom. > They are not designed for the same use. Indeed, while the lattice offers > an accurate deformation, this deformation is only determined by > control points. > It also allows the user to move inner control points, which can't be > done with the Envelope deformation. The power of the Envelope > deformation is the absolute control of the shape of the envelope. All this is excellent, excellent news! Thank you for all your contributions! I'm pretty excited, and I look forward to trying them tomorrow! How about some screenshots by the way, for a formal announcement as Inkscape news? ;) As for the praise your teacher gave you, I have no doubt it is well-deserved! Any plans in particular from now on (apart from LPE bug-fixing, that is)?

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Blueprint for "Geometric Drawing" SoC project
by Maximilian Albert 31 May '08

31 May '08

Hi all, to "officially" kick off my GSoC project I have made my initial draft available as a LP Blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/tech-drawing I'd be glad if folks added their suggestions and ideas there (and/or reorganize stuff if it seems helpful) so that I can get an impression of which features are most wanted and how people imagine them to work most smoothly UI-wise. As for coding, during the last 1-2 weeks I did some experiments with LPEs in various directions. Some of these are in SVN already, but overall it was mainly to get an impression of what is already there and what still needs to be done in order to integrate LPEs more tightly into existing tools. In the next few days I'm going to write an email summarizing my thoughts and giving an overview of the first steps I'm planning to take. Max P.S.: As I'm still not subscribed to inscape-user, feel free to forward my email there.

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Resource paths on win32
by Bob Jamison 31 May '08

31 May '08

Ok, This path stuff on win32 has been biting us for a long time now. :-) So I added some code to prefix.cpp to provide a macro, WIN32_DATADIR, that works similarly to BR_DATADIR, so that paths are calculated now, rather than static. So INKSCAPE_EXTENSIONDIR, for example, will always be valid, no matter what the CurrentDirectory is. In fact, we should make sure that CurrentDirectory does not affect resource loading at all. It seems to work OK. If anyone sees an Inkscape win32 build that looks like icons/menus/etc might be missing, please let me know. But I really consider this a short-term fix. If we actually jumped into the deep water, quit using strings for paths and started using URIs, then this problem might disappear forever. bob -----Original Message----- >From: Albin Sunnanbo <albin@...1900...> >Sent: May 29, 2008 12:35 PM >To: Bob Jamison <rwjj@...127...> >Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Resource paths on win32 > >Hi >I did some bugfixing with extensions a while a go. The new native win32 >file dialogs changed the current path when browsing the file tree. >I guess this might be related. > >// Albin > >Bob Jamison skrev: >> Hi, >> >> wormsxulla alerted me to a problem with the Tutorial menu items not being able to load a tutorial file. The error is something like "can't load file \share\tutorials\blah.svg". Which makes me think that Inkscape has forgotten its path some time since startup. It must have known -during- startup, else you wouldn't get your icons or translations. >> >> Has anyone done anything recently to change the path-prefixes, or CurrentDirectory of Inkscape? This was working before. >> >> >> bob >> >> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft >> Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. >> http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ >> _______________________________________________ >> Inkscape-devel mailing list >> Inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel >> >

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Re quest: Calligraphy Tool - Union and difference button toggle
by microUgly 30 May '08

30 May '08

I actually posted this idea on the forum last year (http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=304&p=1693) and then being without a PC with Inkscape for almost 7 months meant I never got around to posting here for developers opinions. I believe that most artists, when inking a drawing, will ink a line with many strokes to accurately control the shape of the lines. The problem at the moment is that multiple strokes create multiple shapes. You can hold SHIFT so they only form one shape, but this is awkward when you're using it most of the time. So I would like to see a toggle on the Tool Control Bar that allows for union without holding SHIFT. Likewise I would also like to see a toggle that has the opposite effect and performs a difference. This toggle obviously conflicts with the new Eraser tool so I'll let you guys debate which is more intuitive or less cumbersome (I assume the erase tool will share the exact same tool controls as the calligraphy tool) This is a simple screenshot of what I'm talking about - http://www.microugly.com/images/calligraphy-union-difference.png -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Request%3A-Calligraphy-Tool---Union-and-difference-bu… Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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UI proposal for Freehand with automatic LPE (stroke effects)
by Valerie 30 May '08

30 May '08

Hey Bulia! Happy now? :) http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/5248/lpeiz6.png You'll notice that I've submitted several proposals in one. I included them in one mock-up because I needed to make sure everything fits (they seem to, the current version is just about the same size as the toolbar for the selection and calligraphy tools). The 4 components (which ones to be included to be seen are): 1. The Width x base unit component. If you set your base unit to 0.2 pixels for example, you can increment the width of the stroke in increments of 0.2 pixels with just the directional keys. :D 2. I'd like to see Mode there too, because I rather like the smoothness of the freehand tool in Karbon14. Instead of Karbon14's "exactness" and "combine angle" text though, I just called it "smooth", because it's pretty intuitive, not to mention short. :\ I'm not sure if it will get added, but I'd be pretty happy if it were. For those who've missed it, the output of Karbon14: http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9927/karbon14px5.png (for me, Inkscape's current output is closer to Curve with exactness of 5, not more) 3. The drop-down allows you to chose the behaviour of the line! Either a normal, simple line, LPE with presets, or LPE with clipboard items. Lots of fun, no? You can create a shape and make a true vector brush out of it! (example: you do a leaf shape, you copy it, and you start "drawing" it in various sizes everywhere on the file. Whoo-hoo! How pointless! Moving on) Anyway, the presets drop-down allows you to access dotted lines for normal lines and pre-defined shapes for LPE lines (I'm naming them calligraphy just because. If you name them Live Path Effect or Pattern Along Path, most users will probably not get it...) 4. Finally, I wouldn't have markers accessible from the top-level. Again, this depends on whether people agree or not, but I find it handy when doing charts. Very. Actually, I've just noticed that I forgot the "pattern copies" components of LPE. Aww geez. Maybe for Clipboard, there could be sub-modes that take up the place the Markers buttons would. Icons: - single instance of a small shape - single instance of a shape stretched - multiple instance of the shape along the path - multiple stretched instances of the shape along the path Not as necessary for those pre-defined calligraphy shapes though. Anyway, Bezier would get the same features as freehand, minus Mode and Smoothing.

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Toolbox management proposal (presets and tool toggle)
by bulia byak 30 May '08

30 May '08

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 3:11 AM, Valerie <valerie_vk@...36...> wrote: >> the user to add and remove tools from a "tool pool" onto a single >> toolbar? > > Because usually, people use specific sets of tools for specific tasks, > common groups of which can be determined: OK, then, let's ship with several predefined task-oriented toolbars and allow the user to modify any of them by adding or removing tools. I guess at this level it's basically the same as Jon Cruz and you propose, except that I don't want to add as many new tools as you do :) > So basically, you're proposing complex strokes as a sub-mode of pencil and > pen? Yes. For example, a drop-down with a list of LPEs with some preset parameters and a "last used LPE" entry, and separately from that a drop-down with profiles as in your mockup, implemented as pattern-on-path LPE (and therefore disabling the LPE chooser, until we can support more than one LPE per path). > That's workable. How do you propose to settle the UI issue of fill vs > stroke color? With LPE, the stroke Is the shape, after all (though I > suppose said shape/stroke doesn't need its own stroke). This is a relatively minor point - but Calligraphic pen works fine using the current fill color for its "strokes" and nobody complained so far :) -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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