Sorry if it sounded like that. I just said the same as Bryce - everyone works on what interests him/her.
In the below responses to your comments, note that I'm not speaking on behalf of all Inkscape developers. I only express my opinion.
the old F1 ... keybindings are a bit weird, and I will bet the target audience of former Sodipodi and Corel Draw users is smaller than the Illustrator/Freehand audience. of course I'd love to have both but it doesn't make for a great default approach.
I'll have to write seperate mail suggesting keybindings we should other keybindings we should rationalise to reduce the learning curve for former Illustrator/Freehand users, they have quite a few keybindings in common we could probably also use.
Already discussed, I'm not convinced, not a regression in 0.42.
Not a regression I admit...
using the commands bar/options bar for both the tool defaults and changing the properties of the current object is weird (therefore harder to learn) and I still dont particularly like it.
Already discussed, I'm VERY MUCH not convinced (I think it's one of the best things in our UI), not a regression in 0.42.
... but a certain category of user which I fall into is never going to be satisfied with behaviour substantially different from what they are familiar with. I just feel these are things that Inkscape would be slated for if reviewed by a mainstream Graphics magazine. Myself I'll probably get used to it eventually.
maybe it will grow on me, maybe I will be proven wrong but it is radically different and I'd be very surprised if it works.
(Having said that the selection behaviours Freehand uses are pretty weird but it makes the Selection tools very powerful allowing you to break apart shapes and in effect use the boolean operations implicitly. If that doesn't make much sense nevermind, or try out Freehand or Flash and you might get a sense of what I mean.)
the tools: node tool doesn't include any labels in the Commands bar would help if some of the items were labelled. same goes for the Zoom tool, too many similar icons are hard to disambiguate and text would help.
May be a good idea. Can you make a specific proposal?
Think Priority text, like on a standard toolbar.
I suppose at least Add Remove(Delete/Merge/???) should be labelled.
A single label to help group the three corner/node types might be enough rather than needing to label everything, at least for now.
rectangle tool "Not rounded" inconsistent should be Reset, other tools labelled default should be renamed to Reset (use a verb not a noun).
Disagree, I think this was already discussed. The labels say what this button does SPECIFICALLY. "Reset" tells me nothing and will likely scare me away.
The layout of the commands bar could benefit from some tweaking, I'm not sure what exactly would be best. (It would really help if I had access to Illustrator and Inkscape side by side but I dont believe I do, might be able to work something out with the multimedia students though.) I took a bunch of screenshots of the Photoshop toolbars which I should dig up for reference and make sure are mentioned in the Wiki.
(If the first space on the Commands bar showed the currently active/selected Tool like how Adobe Photoshop does this would make it easier to keep track of what was going on and for anyone who wanted to turn off the toolbox to make more space but it seem unlikely that users would actually want to do that in practice except on extremely cramped displays.)
I guess I'd prefer something like this (would all be on the Command bar as one line:
Recangle X [ ] Y [ ] Height [ ] Width [ ]
[/] Rounded Corners X Radius [ ] Y Radius [ ]
This information is currently included in the main selection tool but something about not having with the Rectangle tool where you need it doesn't seem quite right. (So I'm suggesting adding it to the rectangle tool, not necessarily suggesting touching the Select too just yet)
(Must look at the Commands bar for zoom too).
freehand/draw bezier/text tools have nothing on the command bar. colour picker has only one item.
Sure, we're working on it. Lots of ideas on what to put there. Just wasn't ready in time for 0.42.
It is just a bit of an eyesore. If I ever see dead space I ask myself if there is a problem and I'd be surprised if someone reviewing inkscape missed that these tools were incomplete.
Again it is the whole management of expectations, and it is important to try and head off criticism by warning users things are incomplete and planned to be worked on.
Help, Modifying and Redistributing Inkscape. :( must resist urge to kill
Not my area - Peter, can you comment?
It is cruft, an unnecessary distraction. I would really like to see this bit of marketing propoganda removed entirely from the user interface. It will probably need to be mentioned in the documentation anyway but the license is important to Free Software Evangelists not to users who want to draw stuff. Distributors should read the Licensing information, users shouldn't need to worry about it and windows users have already been required to agree to the License in the installer. (And users do not need to agree to the GPL just to use the software, only if they wish to redistribute modified versions.)
This particularly hit a nerve because the GIMP harasses users with inane questions the first time you run it, including displaying the License. There are better places for evanglism than this.
And to have a menu label steal the promiment position at the end of the list and then to have a five word label is not at all aesthetically pleasing to put it politely. (Sorry the more I do this the more hypersensative I get to these anomolies.)
"Help, About memory" is not a useful user (artist not developer user) feature should at the very least be hidden from release builds (this is what I was referring to earlier).
Maybe we'll hide it for 1.0 when we patch all leaks. For now it's useful to those who can use it, and pretty nonobtrusive for others.
grumble, mumble, mumble. fair enough I suppose but I prefer how Mozilla hides away this kind of thing in a Debug menu and if the effects menu can be hidden I'd prefer to have a hidden Debug menu for this sort of thing.
Help About Inkscape. I'd prefer if this were simply Help, About like most Gnome programs.
OK with me
Stock items make less translation work. I strongly recommend implementing the standard GtkAbout dialog. The standard dialog provides version and contact information that can be easily cut and paste out of the dialog. The inkscape about dialog does not. use the standard dialog, make work then make it pretty later.
Some people were planning to do just that for 0.43.
Rulers are ugly. Turn them off by default.
Can you share your definition of "ugly" please?
Not pretty. If Inkscape were all about Techincal graphics maybe but rulers add visual noise and complexity for new users, and other software I have encountered turn them off by default leaving a clearer cleaner more pleasant default look. Off course uses can turn them on as needed, just as they turn the grid on as needed. Frankly I just think it looks better, keeps things simpler and is worth the small discoverability penalty.
To me they're perfectly OK, not worse nor better than in any other vector app.
Some apps colour them the match the page, others to match the widgets. I'm not sure myself which is best.
Thankfully the rulers on the same level as the page and thankfully Inkscape has avoided the bevelling other software has on their rulers which may look pretty but makes it slightly more awkward to line things up with the rulers as quickly and as precisely.
The word metadata is jargon and we should not need to use it in the user interface.
Nope, it's a well-defined term.
I disagree but I'll leave this one for another day. Look at how other programs do this.
I've complained before about the Document preferences dialog, I think we need to do a split between the "Page Setup" and the File Properties (aka metadata).
OK with me, if anyone makes a patch I won't object.
read the HIG, text should generally be left aligned (sometimes top left) it isn't in this dialog.
I like the current alignment better. Any other opinions?
I've rearrange a few dialogs to use left aligned text and it is substantially more readable. English and other European languages left align text, the only time we do otherwise is for decorative effect not readability. There are a few cases where it may look odd at first but sometimes it requires a few other minor layout adjustment to get things to look right.
The Metadata tab of the Document preference dialog, is disproportionately tall compared to the other Tabs, splitting in two tabs might help (but as part of any Page Setup, Document Properties split that would probably happen anyway).
Group Ctrl+G, Ungroup Ctrl+U. Isn't Ctrl+U being used elsewhere for Unicode input?
Yes, so what?
Okay crap reason, you called my bluff.
using Ctrl+Shift+G would be more consistent with the HIG anyway.
Why can't you simply try it?
Not the point.
or look up in the reference? We DO have Ctrl+Shift+G for ungrouping and always did.
my bad.
Both Freehand and Illustrator use Ctrl+Shift+G would be better if it were the one shown by defualt, we may want to use Ctrl+U for something else later. (I dug up a bunch of keybinding reference cards on Adobe/Macromedia more on that later.)
think as a new user: "How is a Path not an Object?"
Makes sense, please propose a specific reorganization.
Brain melting, implosion immanent. Please see Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, and pray to $DEITY for inspiration. Help wanted.
Fill and Stroke, Swatches, Object Properties are all palettes/docks and should probably be under view rather than Object.
No. We had them all under "Dialogs" before and everyone loathed this. It does not matter what they "are"; what matters is what they DO and what they apply to. From that viewpoint, they would make much more sense in a Selection menu if we had it, not in Object.
I'll avoid this for another while.
The Layer menu includes a lot of "Layer, something Layer" which is redundant.
Agree, redundancy may be reduced here
Minor details, part of the endless tweaking...
having a top level select menu might help sort out some of the imbalance in the Edit menu but it may only serve to move the problems around. The tool "Edit, Find" in many ways similar to Select by ...
Comments make sense, please propose a specific reorganization.
I'm basically wondering if the time has come for a full menu for Select like Adobe Illustrator which would incidentally help slim down the Edit menu but Macromedia Freehand makes me wonder if there might be a better way.
"Help, Keys and Mouse" doesn't make sense, needs a better label.
It explains what it is. What do you propose?
I was particularly on a roll with that one, talk about minor details. The menu lable tells you it is going to be something about keys and mouse, but what? I guess on balance I'd be happier with "Help, Keyboard Shortcuts"
Please don't feel that way. At least I always pay attention to what you say and try to give specific responses, even if I disagree with you. As you can see from above list, I agree with some of your proposals though not all.
Disagreeing with you so often is a lot of hard work but I suppose it keeps me honest.
And almost none of your complaints are new for 0.42, which surprises me because you started by claiming that we have deteriorated in usability in this release.
I got side tracked by other minor criticisms, there is so much more in Inkscape 0.42 (and 0.41) it unavoidably make it a little harder to learn and use. I was overreacting a bit.
I hope others can learn to cast a critical eye on Inkscape because if it sucks to be the only one playing devils advocate
Well, you're far from the only one. We had a lot of discussion with Kevin Wixson for example, and this resulted in a lot of improvement in
I look forward to hearing more from Kevin and Jimmac if they can spare the time. Jimmac particularly as a working graphic designer familiar with Illustrator has very valuable insights.
the Node tool, and as far as I remember most if not all of his criticisms were resolved satisfactorily. So if nobody supports some of your criticisms, well... maybe it's because people like Inkscape the way it is? :)
:P
Have split various other points out into other mails in an attempt to keep this from being even longer. As you may have noticed I sometimes have difficulty concentrating on any one thing for very long and get easily distracted.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/