Ok, let's try to put this back into context. I understand that as developers, your main concern is the application. I have to be honest and say that as a potential SoC applicant my concerns also match my passion for the project, but I do have an additional time constraint.
Whether that sense of urgency (on my side) jeopardizes the well being of Inkscape is for you to judge, but here is a pre-proposal (nothing formal yet) I'd like to make.
From what has been discussed, it seems some work (assessment of what
has been done, evaluation of needs and interests, optional improvement) could be done on Inkscape's UI. I would be delighted to help with that by maybe conducting a two or three part job as a SoC participant. - Part 1 would include summing up the current UI situation and what has brought it here, evaluate the concerns and needs of users and developers. - Part 2 would consist of doing extensive HCI and usability research to find solutions that could address what has been brought up from Part 1, then doing mock ups, (if possible, several versions), and possibly asking a certain group (users, developers, ... ?) to vote to choose one of them. - Part 3 would optionally be the implementation of theses changes, if any are deemed interesting by the community.
The goal being of course to make out of Inkscape, as Ben said, a "best-of-breed" app that the vector drawing or Open Source communities would be proud of. If no need or concern stems from the first two parts, then this study would at least have the merit to put these questions to sleep by making sure there's no obvious work to be done there, which is not the general opinion as the (limited) discussions here seem to point out.
One last point regarding the team-vs-one guy approach. I'm a firm proponent of the later, because all my experiences in design with a (large-)group have been failures, as it's never possible to have everybody agree on a design or another. What people do agree on are results (in this case, more people coming to use the app and help develop it, less complaints about usability or learnaility). And I think putting trust in someone to do that job and present results almost scientifically (Im using 'almost' because we're talking about design after all !) is the best approach to get results.
Here were my two cents on this.
Tim
On 5/5/06, Ben Fowler <ben.the.mole@...400...> wrote:
On 05/05/06, Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
On Fri, 5 May 2006, Ben Fowler wrote:
Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 11:39:14 +0100 From: Ben Fowler <ben.the.mole@...400...>
[ snip ]
It has yet to be shown that an OSS project can produce a best of breed UI (I think that it is possible, and that to date, no project has put together all the ingredients needed for success), which is why one suggestion of mine was to achieve a purity of design, and perhaps work alone for a period of time.
Purity of design or inconsistent and more difficult to learn?
If you think of the best designs in any area that you are familiar with, my guess is that you could name the designer and assert that it came from the brain of one person. That is what I meant by 'working alone' and 'purity of design'. (I was also assuming that everyone on the dev list actually likes making vector drawings - I know that I do; and perhaps had a generous modicum of what Paul Graham calls good taste http://wingware.com/pipermail/py-design-forum/2003-September/000184.html and http://david.shackelford.org/?p=304).
Inconsistent is a loaded word. "Lets be consistent and force all the square pegs into the round holes."
'Difficult to learn' can mean 'easy to use'. One persons 'good' UI (easy to learn) could be the next man's poor design (hard to do good work with).
As with the more techincal discussions - such as the shared understanding that native GTK for Mac OS X is the only practial way to go - things go more smoothly when a consensus builds and we all pull together. At the moment there is a rough sense of how we all want to Inkscape to have a better/best user interface possible but a clearer vision of how we can all achieve that together would help. Anything which could help us all form a clearer plan and then break that up into smaller shared tasks will really help. Management is an important part of development, something which I think has been a key part of the success of Inkscape so far.
Without disagreeing with you too much, you are describing how to reach a local maximum. This is not going to help becoming best of breed. In fact a better way would be for as many people as are willing to produce a design (or merely a mockup in the GIMP) and have the group provide criticism. Perhaps we need to decide whether we should be seeking to be best of breed, or whether a local maximum (nothing need be added, nothing taken away) is good enough. There is a lot to be said for 'good enough'. Perhaps we need to decide how long we can defer such decisions. Perhaps the longer the better. What will people watching the progress of Inkscape (and for that matter the Gimp) think about its UI being and looking unfinished for the next 55 milestones. My answer would be "Hey, our users are happy and they care enough to send feedback".
Ben
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