On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 10:54:57AM +0100, Tobias Ellinghaus wrote:
Am Montag, 4. Dezember 2017, 13:42:36 CET schrieb Tavmjong Bah:
Hi,
Hi.
I've been looking into replacing the Gimp Spin Slider widget (e.g Blur/Opacity in the Fill and Stroke dialog). The widget is licensed under GPLv3 and is the only reason Inkscape as a whole is licensed under GPLv3 rather GPLv2.. The board sometime ago agree that being a GPLv2 program was desirable (I don't remember the exact reasoning).
Did anyone approach the GIMP folks and ask them if they could re-license the sliders as GPLv2+? That way you could improve the current design instead of starting from scratch – and maybe GIMP could benefit, too.
Yes, Krzysztof Kosiński did so last year. I don't have cc's of the email discussions but Krzysztof said one of the authors of this particular widget did not accept the GPLv2+ relicense request.
Glad you asked, that's certainly a pertinent question.
Bryce
Just a thought ...
[...]
As far as I can tell, the Gimp version of the slider makes three changes:
- It allows for a label inside the widget. This is a nice space saving
feature. The widget handles changing the label text from black to white as the progress bar moves across the label.
- It allows for a non-uniform scale by adding a "gamma" factor.
Those two are great features that I would like to see being kept.
- It adds the ability to drag the progress bar to change the value. If
one drags from the top (down arrow cursor) the change follows the cursor directly. If one drags along the bottom half (double headed cursor) the change is finer and relative to the current value.
I've always found that dragging the progress bar to be a bit awkward. One problem is that one can not start the drag at the far right of the widget as that area is reserved for typing a value directly in. Also, the different functionality of starting the drag in the top of the widget vs. the bottom of the widget is confusing.
I never used the lower part of the sliders. IIRC it was meant as a help when using them with touch devices or pen/tablet. No idea if it really helps with that.
Since I am rewriting this widget, I can adjust it to what people want:
- Do you want the progress bar?
Absolutely. Maybe even more prominent than the current thin line in the bottom as Inkscape shows them. Actually GIMP itself is a lot better in that regard, showing a full height progress bar and the mouse-over highlights mentioned by others.
- If so, should it be the full height of the widget (quite a bit more
complicated)?
Full height please. The current design in Inkscape makes it really hard to quickly see what's going on.
- Do you want to be able to drag the bar? With one/two methods?
As I wrote, setting the value by clicking/dragging in the top half is essential. I never used the lower half. Without dragging it wouldn't be a slider anyway, would it? ;-)
- Any other changes?
Please keep the numeric value and label inside the slider. Screen space is scarce, and the longer a slider is the more fine grained I can control it with the mouse. Another benefit of the label being inside the slider is the cleaner look when several sliders are shown above each other. With labels outside of the slider you either have to sacrifice a lot of slider space to align the left edges to fit the longest label, or you have ragged left slider edges which looks terrible.
Thanks,
Tav
Tobias
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