Perhaps it would be confusing for those who already use the feature, but a case in part is Stuart's comment:
I think getting rid of Save_As would be a very bad idea. I almost always
start a new graphic with an existing file that I review to make sure it will suit the purpose and then ' save_as' the new document in the appropriate location. I never ever have a need to 'save_a_copy' and would prefer to see it gone if we are trying to streamline the interface.
Thing is, unless you're changing the native save format, which you shouldn't be if you're starting a new document to start from, Save a Copy does exactly what you want to do.
I suppose there needs to be a way to bring up the Export Pane, but it should probably be accessed under the Export command, not Save As, considering that the act of saving shouldn't be confused with exporting, which is something that Save As can do.
Alexander says this:
Which is excellent for iterative work on a project, except it shouldn't suggest anything beyond SVG.
This is what Save As does, since you can save in a wide variety of vector formats. Data is lost in saving to these formats.
Mark, you would be right in that this would encourage and make for a good place for extra formats, including ones that Inkscape already supports, but are simply in other dialogs. I appreciate your support.
Ivan, you raise a valid point, and I'm not sure if I detailed on this enough. There are often additional dialogs for different formats. There will be a need to handle this extra dialog in a decent manner, one that follows good design.
I value everyone's input, especially ones like Thorsten's comment. Not only did he raise a valid point, that it might not be so intuitive to remove a feature that many people have used in the past, especially across applications. Also, I looked up and experimented with the two different features, and they do have different behaviors. So, I figure, they both should stay, but the format changing should be left to the Export Dialog. Some might argue that this functionality be left untouched as well, and only the Export Pane be used to implement additional functionality, without removing anything from anything else.
Also, I had to laugh at Thorsten's side-comment. Those poor, poor souls. :'(
At any rate, I've learned some valuable things from this exchange, and will develop this idea further in the Google Doc when I get the chance. Thanks for all the good comments!
- Alex
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 6:22 AM, Joshua Facemyer <jfacemyer@...400...>wrote:
I think there are strong use cases for both "Save As" and "Save a Copy", since they both do different and very useful things. Please do NOT remove either.
However, it would make sense to make all "Save" options only save in the native format.
JF
On 04/13/2010 08:56 PM, Alex Trujillo wrote:
Did you read the paragraph beneath the one you quoted? Perhaps I should go into this idea in greater detail.
The way this would then work out is: Save -- To Inkscape SVG only Save As -- no longer used Save a Copy -- basically making a duplicate of the file, good for backups/revisions Export -- new file in any supported format exported from any area of the document, including the entire document itself.
If there are red flags in terms of removing Save As, think about it. Save As copies the current document, renames it, with the option to save it as a different format. Save a Copy is much more intuitive, as this will simply just save a copy of the current document only in Inkscape SVG while letting the user rename the document, so this is good for keeping revisions (big_project-1c.svg, big_project-2a.svg, etc), this is valuable. Save should not save to any other format than Inkscape SVG, because any other way, information is lost, and this isn't really a real save.
TIFF would be a logical format to add along with JPEG and PNG as bitmap formats in the Export pane as well.
- Alex
On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 5:31 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400... mailto:alexandre.prokoudine@...400...>
wrote:
On 4/14/10, Alex Trujillo wrote:
> I noticed nobody replied to my earlier message,I'm sorry about that :(
> What I want to do is, well, to enhance the export system ofInkscape, make > it more intuitive and integrated by merging the Export As and Save As > dialogs together into a single pane, with selection features that were > developed for the bitmap exporter also being able to work with vector export > / saving.
Um, we sort of had an agreement, or at least an understanding :) that we want to further separate export from saving.
Saving should be possible only for file formats we can reliably open, edit and save back. The rest is exporting. That makes:
File > Save -- to just save an SVG, Plain SVG of Clean SVG File > Save As > same, but save under a different name File > Save a Copy > same, create a new file from current document without opening it File > Export > all the EPS, PDF and so on
But it needs doing.
However, what also needs doing is having more file formats available in the exporting dialog. E.g. exporting selections to SVG, EPS and PDF is still one of quite popular request from what I remember. And of course some people are missing exporting to TIFF.
Alexandre
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