Re: [Inkscape-devel] Re: layer commands we need

On Sun, 6 Mar 2005, bulia byak wrote: Well the difference is that if you want to keep working on a layer you can hide it temporarily and flatten the rest and keep working with a more managable two or three layers. You want to Include "Merge Visible" but not both with "Flatten Image"? I suppose that works, hadn't thought of it that way. Hopefully it wont confuse artists with bad habits too much. I definately agree that Show All Layers is worthwhile functionality, irrespective of any layer merging functionality. Siblings seems extremely confusing to me, I hardly ever use the word siblings (brothers, sisters, family but almost never siblings) and I'm a native English speaker and as I user I wouldn't be sure what exactly it might mean (i did already have to ask) so it is bordering on complex jargon. I'm still trying to understand what exactly you mean. Are you thinking of having an option called 'Merge sibling layers' that would merge the current layer with the layer below it and also the layer above it? This seems like overkill, it is confusing because I think it would be a rare enough use case. If the user wanted to merge three layers they could start on the top and merge down twice (it would of course need a good keybinding, preferably the same as either the GIMP or Photoshop but I think this is a common workflow at least from all the graphics tutorials I've gone through in magazines). Merging down repeatedly is really very effective, almost elegantly simple in its effectiveness. I would urge you to implement the necessary infrastructure, but include menu items for the more straight forward "Merge Down" and whichever of "Flatten Image/Merge Visible" you prefer or both (and as usual I'm a firm believer in keeping consistant with other applications and I think this is a good case for it). With that familiar functionality and the show/hide options you intend to implement users should be able to efficiently do all they need to do. I would hope that user-developers in need of more complex functionality would be able to implement it using extensions. I'd be intersted in hearing more of what layer functionality you think would be useful as I might try implementing something similar as a Script-Fu script for the GIMP. This all seems very complicated to use and catering to very specialised cases. Are we confident that most users will even use layers? I would have thought the average user with small projects would stick to groups and moving things around on one layer (it was years before I started using Layers in Dia and then only to break up more complicated diagrams). Sincerely Alan Horkan Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Dia is for Diagrams http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Alan's Journal http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Abiword is Awesome http://www.abisource.com