On Sat, 19 Feb 2005, bulia byak wrote:
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 16:20:39 -0400 From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW: on-canvas gradient editing
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 20:00:49 +0000 (GMT), Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
That is very cool. There is a bit of lag between the spot/handle and when the axis/spokes move which makes it feel a bit sluggish
Yeah, I know. I hope to fix this today, I think I now know how.
Great.
The old gradient position widget in Fill&stroke remains for now (and still works), but I plan to remove it as soon as the new on-canvas editing is sufficiently tested. I would welcome any feedback on the new feature.
I expect you can safely remove most of it but it might be useful to have a more controlled way to adjust gradients in addition to the interactive editing...
Hmm. What is "more controlled" about it? It's significanly less
The current gradient system isn't very controlled but I mean that in general a dialog with input widgets like spinners/sliders allow users to specify exactly what they want with much greater precision. Even with a very steady hand it is not always possible to get exactly what you want using a more interactive tool. (Sorry for not being clearer.)
While I'm taking a few minutes to try out the latest and greatest test build I have noticed a few unrelated oddities: There definately should not be ((parenthesis)) used in menu labels. Singular or plural, pick one (one or more can be implied).
Is there a style rule for this somewhere, or is it your opinion?
I cannot believe you are asking me to verify that.
Inkscape has an Object menu that applies to one or more objects. It is not labelled Object(s).
Have you ever seen a popular application with Parenthesis in the menus before?
Do I also need to explain why abbreviations in menu labels are not a good idea?
If I was willing to spend a considerable amount of time I could probably find some to find suitable reference in the the Gnome HIG or Gnome Documentation Style Guide but it such a simple thing it will be dificult to find anything specifically telling you not to do it. (I know all too well that it is poor writing style to use parenthesis exactly because I do it all the time and it isn't very aesthetically pleasing either to have excessive punctuation.)
Document Preferences could be labelled as "Document Properties" or simply Properties (it is in the file menu so it is implied that it is the Properties of the current file). It would help disambiguate it from the standard Preferences (and allow a more terse label).
I disagree. "Preferences" and "properties" sound like synonyms. Having them side-by-side is very confusing. "Inkscape preferences" and "Document preferences" explain exactly what they are, stress both their similarity and their difference, and are totally unambiguous.
You are looking at this one in isolation thinking only of Inkscape. I'm looking at it in terms of Gnome and a variety of other applications and I'm thinking of consistancy and many applications have an item for "Page Setup" grouped with Print and Print Preview (some apps like OpenOffice put this elsewhere like under formatting) and a Properties item (metadata is still a technical term even if you and I might be using it all the time).
While writing my previous mail I was going to say that if Inkscape were following the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines then Preferences would be in the Edit menu but the Edit menu in Inkscape is very crowded at the moment and I'm fairly sure I've already pointed that out so I was going to leave it for another day.
Seeing Inkscape in the menu label for anything other than "About Inkscape" (and even there it is redundant) just seems wrong to me.
I've done my bit, I've provided feedback as best I can. Make of it what you will.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
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