On Sat, 5 Jun 2004, MenTaLguY wrote:
Date: Sat, 05 Jun 2004 13:57:32 -0400 From: MenTaLguY <mental@...3...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Inkscape ML inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: Inkscape Layers
On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 17:17, Alan Horkan wrote:
if the underlying infrastructure is already there then I would encourage you to add Menu items first which is relatively easy compared to adding a proper layers dialog.
Well, we won't have "layers" per se -- the "layers" dialog would just display a tree of SPItems. Layers are groups are layers, the only difference being maybe the flag I mentioned in the article which determines some details of selection behavior (layer-like versus group-like).
I understand that Layers are really just meta-groups or super-groups, but the methodology of adding items to layers is quite different from selecting items and grouping them, which I think is an easier way for many users to interact with the objects.
I've been using layers a lot recently with the GIMP (and Adobe Photoshop and Jasc Paint shop pro) and now understand much better how convienent a way to interact they are, you can do thinkgs that they give features like "new layer from copy/cut" *
I would suggest it would look roughly like this
Layer New Layer Ctrl+Shift+N Duplicate Layer Delete Layer
Arrange Bring to Front Ctrl+Shift+] Bring Forwards Ctrl+ Send to Back Ctrl+Shift+[ Send Backwars Ctrl+[
Note that these are the Adobe Photoshop keybindings (didn't check Adobe Illustrator). To go a bit off top in the GIMP I despise the use Page Up and Page Down for Arranging items, it is infuriating because it means you dont have these keys for actually going up and down the page, the very things they are intended for.
View (this one you might leave out) Current Only All None Invert
Hide Link Set Show Link Set
I'd should mention that I've recently wrote some scripts to add this functionality to the GIMP, having failed to find the functionality to hide all but the current layer by shift clicking on the 'eye' visibility icon
Merge Down Merge Visible Flatten
Layer Properties *
We already have nearly all of these operations (which apply to anything, not just layers).
"merge down" and friends, however, might be useful to have for groups in general somehow.
At first I just threw that in (during my brainstorming for Dia) but the more I thought about it the better an idea it seemed. Now I need to at least try and sort out a Layers menu for Dia before I go trying to add something like this.
- (at the very least this would put up a dialog allowing you to rename the
layer/group id)
That's already part of the object properties dialog.
Although it is understandable to put some features only in the layers dialog the Gimp developers took it too far and buried things in the context menu of the layers dialog where most users are never likely to find them (discoverability). I only learnt of the "show current layer only" feature while I was meticulously reading through each and every 'Tip of the day', it is terribly hard to discover (it is not in the Procedural Database, so to script it I had to write from scratch anyway).
The GIMP approach also completely discounts the possibility of a user that does not wish to leave the layers dialog open all the time. For a very long time I had a horribly small screen, and still to avoid clutter I prefer not to have many palettes open all the time
There is a discussion in the GIMP Wiki about reoganising the menus, i have suggested the change but I haven't yet gone into the analysis (there is little convincing the GIMP developers, if they initially bluntly reject an idea).
We are missing a couple things, though, aside from the dialog:
- SPDesktop needs to keep track of one SPObject as the current "edit
root" (in which its tools create shapes) -- it would of course default to the top-level SPRoot.
- the various drawing tools need to be modified so they create their
objects under their associated SPDesktop's "edit root"
("edit root" of course roughly corresponding to the traditional notion of "current layer")
From your slashdot post I had the impression that more of the underlying
work had already been done and optimistically thougtht that you just needed to create a dialog.
I realise it is a little irresponsible of me to keep butting in but not being able to code but I'm very pleased to be able to contribute in the only way I am really able.
I hope I've helped give you a little more inspiration.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
* i wrote a script to add this to the GIMP too, (I'm not an inherantly useless programmer but I'm severly limited by the programming languages I've learned and my lack of patience)