Not going to address all your points, covered some of them elsewhere but bring them up again if you feel I've neglected anything.
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.
We've gotten complaints about a lot of things, but blank command toolbars has never been one of them as far as I know.
It takes a someone like me to complain about nothing doesn't it!
It is cruft, an unnecessary distraction. I would really like to see this bit of marketing propoganda removed entirely from the user interface.
It was added because a strict reading of the license requires it (yes, debatable, I know).
The General Public License was never intended to have an obnoxious advertising clause.
I think ultimately license information would be better as a link/button in the about dialog rather than a separate entry on the help menu, an approach which is not unheard-of in commercial applications.
But to do that, we've got to rewrite the about dialog first.
Using the standard Gtk about dialog should take care of most of the functional requirements of any new About dialog. Adding the artwork back in without making things too big might require a few adjustments but following the standard API will probably save hassle in the long run.
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.
Likewise.
I wish I had the time and the skill but I'll see what I can do.
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.
Freehand is the one app I suspect many of us have not had much experience with... it might be particularly helpful for you or someone more familiar with it to document its interface for our reference. (Wiki?)
I have only used it briefly myself as the trial version has timed out but i can still read through the documentation (the inset tool is quite interesting). I've used Flash a bit more than I have used Fireworks and there are similarities in the various products. Also do not be fooled, Fireworks is worth looking at too because even though it is used to generate raster graphics in many ways it works more like a Vector graphics application, it has on canvas live gradients similar to Inkscape.
It would be helpful if you could start capturing some of the less controversial items in the RFE tracker, to make sure we don't forget them again.
Added some reports, will have to add more as I remember them.
Others such as the menu restructuring, to accomodate future expension in a managable way and my wish to make reorganise some of the keybindings require a bit more planning and detailed description on my part.
- Alan