On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 4:47 AM, Tomasz Boczkowski <penginsbacon@...400...> wrote:
Thanks!
It would also have been nice to be able to change multiple swatches at the same time as it might have been if last years color GSOC project had been finished.
How can this be done? Are there any mockups from last year available?
It's definitely outside the scope of your current project, but it's what we hope for one day. I'm pretty sure if we're getting into bonus time territory the SVG2 Hatches would come first (unless those got nuked from the proposed spec and I'm not up to date).
HOWEVER, because you should never be left hanging when cool stuff is involved, I'll give more info. :) There are mockups, but I don't know that they'd do any better than you seeing a tool in action yourself and envisioning things.
There are a couple approaches to UI for it I've seen, but it can best be seen as color scheme editing. When creating a color scheme (or editing any arbitrary set of multiple colors), the UI would be something like https://kuler.adobe.com/ in terms of the wheel functionality. Obviously displaying the colors in a list below would be the small dialog friendly way to go about that piece.
The Fill and Stroke dialog could use a rethinking. I really don't like
that clicking on the Swatch icon automatically creates a new swatch.
The "swatch" tab can be moved to the color notebook and display solid color swatches. It would behave similar to the patterns tab.
Tavmjong is right... but I don't think this is the best place to discuss it in-depth
Simply though, both switching to a gradient or a swatch will create new ones. Switching to a gradient from a solid paint create a new gradient using that solid color paint. Switching to a swatch from a solid color or gradient will create a new swatch using that paint. So, it is at least consistent in that regard.
However, the primary difference is that if you assign a new gradient to an object and that object is deleted, the gradient auto-cleaned from the doc (at least that's how it appears in my quick testing). Swatches obviously remain persistent if you delete the objects they're assigned to.
We should also be displaying gradients in the swatches dialog.
No problem.
This is already possible as mentioned above. However, the fact that it stretches a bitmap preview looks really clumsy (I'm just saying). [1]
Same thing with clicking on the Pattern icon.
I'm afraid I didn't get the point. After clicking the pattern icon a list of patterns is displayed and no new pattern is created.
No new pattern is created, but what does happen is it assigns the first pattern in the list to the currently selected object. Patterns do break the existing paradigm of "create new on switch" though since it just "assigns on switch".
It might be interesting to think on how the Fill and Stroke tabs could be integrated with the new Swatches dialog.
I fully agree. Especially when solid colors, gradients and patterns are equally treated as swatches. My first mockups from this project included a modified fill and stroke interface [1]. They were rejected and replaced by integration of pattern preview widget in a fill and stroke tab. At those time, the mockups didn't involve the swatches dialog. Do you think this idea is worth considering again?
Your mockup creates a much more "rigid" workflow than necessary if you ask me. Do you have GIMP installed? I think something akin to their asset list widget (my term, probably not theirs) would be perfect. An example is their brush selector from the "Tool options" dialog (with appropriate tool selected). It's a less intrusive solution to clicking on the widget you show in the top dialog from your mockup.
I attached a screenshot [2] to save a little time (where the cursor is invokes it). Note that it contains the resizing and list/grid controls and the last button at the bottom right of the pop-up will evoke the brushes dialog if desired (which is open right below the pop-up in the shot). So it's a win-win imho for functionality and usability and is a familiar concept. What are your thoughts?
Cheers, Josh
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/83idwni3swa2814/stretch.jpg [2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/u3h7toqlm8pqn5w/brushes.jpg