On Fri, 2004-04-16 at 09:37, Carl Hetherington wrote:
Sounds sensible to me. I suppose we should check the Gnome HIG, if we're following it. I'd probably say "Save - Take the entire document and stuff it into a file from which the document can be losslessly recovered by Inkscape." e.g. save doesn't contain PS because saving as PS loses information.
I don't know how I like this - I kinda like being able to do a save with 'lossy' formats. Remember that the only formats that aren't currently lossy are 'Inkscape SVG' and 'Compressed Inkscape SVG'. Currently, if you save with a format different than those, you'll get a dialog on close reminding you that data may have been lost and allowing you to save again. I like this for save.
One of the reasons for that is that now we can open and save Adobe Illustrator files. I don't think that either of the filters are currently very good - but they could be useful, and will hopefully get better. But, I think it would be reasonable to open up an Illustrator file, edit it in Inkscape, and then want to save it. I don't think the user should have to 'Export' at this time -- they should just be able to save.
The distinction that I was trying to make with Export and Save is what happens to the document. If you had a document that you were working with that was Inkscape SVG, and you wanted a EPS version to send to a buddy, what do you do? Well, currently you'd save it as EPS, then you'd have to reopen it as SVG (or save it twice) to get back to your editable state. Instead, I was thinking that you could just export it. The export wouldn't change the name of the file, the save format, set the 'lossy' bit, or even adjust the modified state. It would almost be an orthogonal action to save - that doesn't get in the way of the variables that we use to track saving internally.
So Open and Import are the same, except that Import pastes its data into the current document and Open creates a new window?
That's what I'm proposing, yes.
--Ted