On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:01:43 +0300 From: Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> To: Inkscape ML inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Inkscape-devel] export bitmap palette redesign
Hi,
Before working on Object manager I decided to give a quick look at "Export bitmap" palette.
I'll admit up front that I don't have a better answer but I think you are going about this problem the wrong way and I ask you to step back and analyse the problem rather than the palette layout specifically.
Here are tho mockups:
http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup06.png (vertical orientation) http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup07.png (horizontal orientation)
Of the two palettes you have shown I must say I prefer the vertical palette because it is more likely to fit into any future dock (similar to what the GIMP uses). Also the reading flow from top to bottom is marginally clearer than two seperate columns and I think could probably be changed so as not to need frames for layout (while still retaining the clean tight layout).
The bigger problem is the question why is there a need to have a palette left open for bitmap export? I really believe this designed evolved through incremental changes to make export less repetative rather than a solid design to solve specific problems.
I believe the answer is that we need a fully fledged tool that makes it easier to batch export files. (Save for Web in Adobe photoshop being the closest analogy I can think of but it isn't exactly a batch tool.)
I also dont believe it makes sense to try and make the same dialog cover the use case of 'one-off' or occasional exports for ordinary usrs who are not likely to want to use different bounding boxes (page, selection, etc) and at the same time cater to the users who want the more complex repeated export of a sequence of files and quick access to changing lots of options.
Keep in mind that JPEG and other GdkPixbuf support files is something that will likely need to be added soon and I'm sure we will have requests for all sorts of different options. I believe there is no need to dumb things down and that we can cater to power users by seperating out the complex exporter from a much more simple Save As/Export png.
Hope that makes sense. I strongly urge you to step back and try and solve the bigger underlying problems this dialog is clearly trying to address.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
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