On Thursday 28 July 2005 11:52, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/inkscape_new_prefs_mockup2.png
Alexandre
Might I suggest a different approach to preferences?
It's probably not GNOME- HIG–compliant, but I think it would be best to have application-level defaults and application-level preferences, with document-level overrides.
So, for instance, the document preferences dialog would have, instead of a normal boolean checkbox, a tri-state checkbox, which allows using the the application preferences, or overrriding them with a new value. Similarly, the application preferences dialog would allow you do stick with the defaults in inkscape itself, or override them.
This would have a number of advantages:
* An upgrade to inkscape that introduces new preferences or new defaults for usability reasons would not be 'lost' by upgraders who have saved different choices on specific items.
* If a user had deliberately chosen a feature they liked, even if it was already the default, it would remain even if an upgrade changed that default for everyone else.
* Sharing documents for collaboration would be easier, since you wouldn't be sharing all of your personal preferences in the document, but just what is important for that document itself.
* Code-duplication would be reduced, since the document-preferences and application-preferences would be virtually identical. With clever architecture, it might be also/instead possible to use the same preferences for tool dialogs/panels/rollups in the main window.