On 2007-February-15 , at 23:03 , bulia byak wrote:
* The somewhat cryptic "F:" and "S:" labels in the selectedstyle indicator (at the left end of the statusbar) and in tool's style swatches are now spelled out as Fill: and Stroke:. We believe this makes the interface, even if less space-efficient, a bit more friendly for newbies. [[Note that I'm still not completely sold on this idea, but decided to try it out. Please voice your opinions.]]
I think the redundancy between the status bar swatches and the tool's style bar swatches could be used in this case: use complete words in the tool's style and keep F and S in the status bar. Those are far away from each other but one easily spot them changing at the same time when fill or stroke is changed. Having complete words in one place helps to understand what they represent. It's not a perfect solution because fill and stroke swatches are not present in all tool's styles but it helps and does not take more of the precious space in the status bar (on a "classic" laptop screen with 1024x768 resolution, the messages in the status bar are already cut quite often). What do you think about this? Another thought thank come to mind regarding this redundancy is to move the status bar swatches at the end of the tool's style bar for all tools. I am not thinking at modifying all tool's style bars but at adding a new tool bar (with F and S swatches with complete label + opacity spin button and maybe a blur spin button) next to the tool's style's bar. I think there is ample room for it (even on a 1024x768 display) except maybe for the calligraphy tool but some spinbutton widths in this bar could be reduced. It will probably take some time for long time Inkscape users to adapt but I am including myself in those and I personally would prefer having more room in the status bar. Just a thought...
* The style swatches at the right end of object-creating tools'control bars now open the Preferences page of the corresponding tool when clicked. Also, now these swatches display a tooltip explaining its purpose (e.g. "Style of new rectangles", "Style of new calligraphic strokes", etc.)
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/