On Sun, 20 Feb 2005, Jakub Steiner wrote:
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 18:09:07 +0100 From: Jakub Steiner <jimmac@...653...> To: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> Cc: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW: on-canvas gradient editing
On Sat, 2005-02-19 at 21:48 -0400, bulia byak wrote:
A typical user goes like this, "I think it must be settable somewhere... OK, let's try Properties... Nope... Maybe Configuration... No. Where did I see it last time? Ah! It also has this Preferences thing, dammit. Yeah, there it is. OK, let's hope it will now remember it and I won't have to set it again." It's more trial-and-error than anything else. And it's frustrating.
That is exactly why such things need to be standardized.
So many stantards to choose from ...
Since Inkscape is a multiplatform application, ideally it should follow Firefox' example and structure the menus depending on the platform specifications and usanses.
(nuances?)
Given the nature of Open Source someone will almost inevitably want to make these kind of platform specific changes so I suppose it makes sense to put in place the infrastructure that allows devlepers to manage it in a clean and maitainable way.
menu and "Preferences". Windows and GNOME users are used to "Edit>Preferences" even though it uses a wrong pattern of action>object instead of object>action. These issues have to be tackled globally for the whole platform and not application by application even though I see it's a lot harder change things.
There is so many ways a structure could make sense. To really have a user in mind, have *consistency with the rest of the platform* in mind.
Which platform do the Inkscape developers really want to promote?
Does following the microsoft way really benift the Firefox platform? It seems like it might or is that incidental to the success of firefox?
And since I already mentioned Firefox, I have to express my utter amazement by the design of it. The application is stripped down to solve a basic set of tasks, keeping the complexity down as much as possible.
Unfortunately I think they managed this poorly and threw the baby out with the bathwater. Years of experience were lost, and features are getting reimplmented badly and inconsistently several times over as extension. Ideally they would have devovled pieces in an organised manner and had more official plugins. There are plenty of people dragging their heels and sticking with Mozilla.
extension providing the functionality. Also it lowers the maintenance for the core application. I am hoping to see you guys invest in making a
Modularisation and orthogonal seperation shouldn't necessarily require getting rid of thing. I think the real benfits were laid long before with the seperation of the core Gecko rendering engine.
The Firefox developers didn't really save themselves all that much maintaince work. Mozilla isn't going away and it still requires maintainance. If anything I think they made more work for themselves.
Adding features surely is a noble goal. Looking back at why the Inkscape project started I hope the interest in usability isn't just marginal.
Inkscape is a differnt beast entirely and the Inkscape plugin system looks very promising. Although I seem to keep butting heads with Bulia it is great that there is so much interest in usability surrounding Inkscape and although difficult these discussions ensure decisions are well thought out and the Inkscape developers can justify them with conviction.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Abiword is Awesome http://abisource.com