On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, MenTaLguY wrote:
The rationale is that the items on the application (Inkscape) menu relate to Inkscape globally, as a whole. i.e. they operate on the "application" object rather than a "document" object as the File menu does. I've also had very positive experiences with this organization on Mac OS X.
Hrrm. Care to run it past usability@...45...? I dont know as much about the Mac as I would like, I'd like to hear an second (expert?) opinion on this.
I'd add a Help menu, even if you only have the About dialog to put there.
- That's part of the reason too -- I think having a Help menu, but no
actual help is perhaps a bit cruel to the newbie.
At a minimum Inkscape will need a manpage to get into Debian and we can link to that to start with. Initially you could just link directly to the WIKI or something. Inkscape will definately need to have help documentation (maybe we could manage to share some of the generic work with Sodipodi).
I'd be prepared to write a few simple introductory pages to get things started, explaining Vector versus Raster graphics for one thing. Is there a convient way to export FAQ and other help information from the WIKI?
- Also, given we're somewhat tight for space on the menubar, I have a
hard time justifying a menu if it's only going to have one or two items on it for the forseeable future.
Tight for space? In the mockup screenshot you have plenty of room for even three or more top level menus. I'd expect Inkscape to have about seven or eight top level menus, you can pretty safely assume 500 pixel width as being available for menus even on extremely small screens.
Once you decide to have a menubar you may as well use a good amount of it and not have too much dead space.
I must be misunderstanding you I totally do not at all understand the suggestion that space for the menubar is limited.
But for now it seems better than adding another misleading and almost empty menu, then putting the remaining entries in the other menus which are heavily overburdened as it is.
I'd argue that is not misleading, users expect an About dialog in the Help menu (albeit not as much as they expect actual help documentation).
(...you know your menus are too large when you're running at 1280x1024 and regularly get menu scroll arrows...)
I despise those scroll arrows, i might prefer menus that start a new column.
Sincerely.
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/