On Thu, 3 Feb 2005, Jakub Steiner wrote:
Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 20:57:45 +0100 From: Jakub Steiner <jimmac@...659...> To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Cc: gimp-developer@...135... Subject: [Inkscape-devel] common interface for graphics apps on the "free desktop"
One of the good things about Adobe's product line is that they "work together". Same tasks require the same interface. Shortcuts are consistent.
On the free desktop we have two major graphics applications, Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org) and GIMP (http://www.gimp.org). It will not be uncommon to have users needing both apps in their workflow. I hope you guys agree trying to have similar consistency helps to provide a sane user experience.
There is definately some room to improve consistancy that wont bother either project but as I'm sure you are aware Inkscape quite deliberately has a different user interface from the GIMP so hopefully we can stick to the bits everyone can agree on.
It is probably worth mentioning that Inkscape is likely to implement some form of dock to help manage the Palette windows. It is also likely in the long term that the toolbar widgets in Inkscape will become more flexible allowing a somewhat more flexible layout of the user interface.
To be specific, there are areas where GIMP & Inkscape provide similar functionality in a slightly different way. For now I will ignore the path tool.
An inconsistency that came up while I was working on something is the mouse wheel behavior. GIMP uses shift+scroll wheel to zoom, Inkscape Ctrl+mousewheel. GIMP uses Alt+mousewheel to pan horizontally, Inkscape uses Shift+mousewheel. I've filed this as http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1115612&gro...
According to the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines Inkscape is using the preferred behaviour (and although I would need to double check I am reasonably sure this behaviour is consistant with Apple and Microsoft guidelines).
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/input.html#mouse-buttons Ctrl-scrollwheel-up should zoom into the window or control under the mouse pointer, and Ctrl-scrollwheel-down should zoom out. Zooming in this way should not move keyboard focus to the window or control being zoomed.
It would be cool if somebody found the motivation to write up some extension to the Gnome HIG, defining a standard behaviour for gfx apps (*hint* *hint* ;).
I do agree that a section describing how best to design Palette Dialogs is needed as they need to be compact and are quite different from the standard transient dialogs described by the current guidelines.
Sorry for cross posting, but I hope to initiate some discussion among both camps.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
(Feel free to reply to one list or both but please don't CC me)