On 7/21/07, MenTaLguY <mental@...3...> wrote:
I do think simply calling that option "Filter" is a little weird. How about labeling the blend mode drop-down as a whole "Filter", and changing the "Filter" option to "Custom..."? That may be a better description of what it does, and then it would make sense to put other filter presets there too.
I'm all for adding more preset blending and composite modes to that list, yes. But why do we need "custom" at all? As it is now, it's out of place there. When I'm in fill&stroke, I don't think in terms of choosing among "filter2578" and "filter2593". That is an entirely different task for the different specialized dialog - the Filters dialog. This list in fill&stroke contains various ways of compositing an object over its background, period. A "Custom" there would only make sense if its function would be to allow you to edit a customized expression for compositing (e.g. for the "arithmetic" option in feComposite), but NOT for assigning the overall filter stack for an object as now. That assignment must be done automatically by the Filter dialog (which is where you edit those stacks).
I would also like to see some feComposite presets in that list.
Sure, one thing I would really enjoy is inverting the background - is this possible with feComposite?
This list, like the Blur slider below it, must search the selected object's filter stack for feBlend or feComposite, display the current mode of that filter and let me change it (or add a new filter to the top of the stack, but only if no such filter already exists in the selected object's stack).
That would interact very badly with many interesting filters, as they may be built out of multiple feBlend/feGaussianBlur elements; simply picking the first or last feBlend element (or even all of them, depending on how the filter is designed) won't give desirable results.
OK, that was just one of my ideas, I don't insist on making it that way too much. It may indeed be confusing sometimes, although also useful IMHO. What do others think?