On 24 nov. 05, at 13:06, Charles Moir wrote:
From: bulia byak
..
P.S. As a "usability hall of shame" footnote, in the same situation (clicking on a color swatch with nothing selected) Xara always displays a "do you want to set the color as default for new objects" dialog. This used to drive me mad.
[snip] I see Inkscape has, for example, as 'Set as default' button in the text dialog. So does this mean that I have different UI for setting the default style or attribute for each of the possible styles or attribute? That's not good surely?
I agree with Tavmjong thinks and what Charles Moir pointed here. Inkscape behavior of retaining the last value OR using _always_ a default is not so convenient. In addition it means going in the prefs, change something, come back to the document... a bit long. In addition, the functionality associated with the "set as default" button in the text dialog is convenient and there should be some equivalent in the styles dialog. What use would it be with last style retained will you tell me? Well I might have two of three different styles of rectangles in a document and let say I draw one with style 1, then a new one with style 2, and now I want to draw some more with style 1. If I select the one with style 1, I still draw with style 2, even if I copy paste the one with style 1, modify its shape, move it around I still will be drawing with style 2... The only way I can draw with style 1 is to modify style 1 and take it back afterwards to its initial value. So here is what seems to solve everyone's desires (IMHO at least): - default behavior is to keep last style, for shapes as well as for text. the pref with only one default is still here but its functionality reduced to documents with really one style for each object only. here is why: - the style dialog is not inactive when no objects are selected - in the style dialog and in the text dialog a there is a button with "use for new objects". this allows 1/ to select an object and use its style as the new drawing style (solving the problem I describe above), 2/ to have some user interaction when changing style attributes with no objects selected: if the user really wants to draw new objects with this style he will click the button, if it is only a mistake (he wanted to change the attributes of an existing object but forgot to select it) he has no reason to click this button, will switch to the drawing and remark that nothing changed because nothing was selected. I can see bulia coming with a usability issue here: the user has to go, check and understand by himself that no object was selected... The "No objects" in thee dialog could be kept to help realize this. Even made a little more prominent maybe.
With this I don't really see the utility of a "default" button because, by definition, if you have a default it will be largely present in your document and you can switch to it by selecting one of your default items.
JiHO --- Windows, c'est un peu comme le beaujolais nouveau : a chaque nouvelle cuvee on sait que ce sera degueulasse, mais on en prend quand meme par masochisme. --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/