I'll start a new wiki page later, but in the meantime I just made everything into images:
http://postimage.org/image/3u9o23s5h/
http://postimage.org/image/67mgl9izr/
(the second one is really work-in-progress, as there's a bunch of tool control options I'd like to add to various tools)
In the meantime, is there anything else specific that others would like to see added to such a page? Criticism?
By the way, on the topic of tool control bar length, one of the things that seem to take up a lot of place are those horizontal bars you drag to control width, tremor and such. I like the current interface and since I have a wide-screen, I'm really fine with them, but they make take up a lot of place for others.
Long ago I saw the following feature discussed in the Krita mailing list: a numerical box with up/down arrows next to it, clicking the arrows pops up a vertical draggable bar. Thus, you can both input values manually or by dragging the bar. They also explained why it's easier for users to control vertical bars (because for small movements you're moving the mouse up and down with your fingers). The resulting setup only takes up the space of a numerical box. Does anyone think they'd want it in Inkscape? The gain may not be that significant since the text still needs to go somewhere.
----- Original Message ----- From: Jon Cruz <jon@...18...> To: Valerie <valerie_vk@...36...> Cc: Inkscape-devel inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2012 1:12 PM Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Question about tool control bars
On Feb 1, 2012, at 1:02 PM, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
2012/1/25 Valerie <valerie_vk@...36...>:
Is it possible to have two layers of tool selection instead?
[SNIP]
It would be easier to use GtkMenuToolButton, e.g. some tools would have a small arrow near their button that would allow you to select a "sub-tool".
The advantage of your solution over GtkMenuToolButton is that all subtools are visible without requiring the user to click on the arrows to discover what subtools are available, but on the other hand it takes a lot of space on the tool control bar, which is already crowded in some tools (e.g. spray).
Valerie, Krzysztof makes some very good observations on the initial trade-offs. While we are working on making the toolbars both more configurable and also more dynamic/adaptive, we do want to try to keep things working well for the most people right out of the box.
I actually could be very helpful if you could collect this up into a page on our wiki. Both your listing of use cases and Krzysztof's details give a good jumping off point. Also having it on a wiki page will help ensure we don't forget it over time, etc.