On 5/17/06, Kevin Cannon <kevin@...1281...> wrote:
I mentioned spacebar because it is the biggest one. I'm surprised it's not implemented. I would strongly suggest that it would be as it's by far one of the most used devices in graphics programs. It's akin to having a web browser without a back button.
I hope you realize that we are not exactly "a browser without a back button". Rather, we are browser that has different - and more - and better! - ways to go back a page. Middle-button drag and Ctrl+arrows are both more convenient than a Hand tool, and of course they are the most used shortcuts in Inkscape.
You asked for more examples. Another one which I immediately noticed was the operation of the zoom tool. In most tools the shortcut is Z, and it zooms in by default. When holding alt the tools changes to zoom out and the cursor has the minus sign on it. Inkscape uses the shift key for the same function though and adjusting is almost impossible. Most people coming to Inkscape will be used to that behaviour, and I think changing it will make the experience much more comfortable for them.
Another good example. First, as is with Hand, heavy users of Inkscape do not ever switch to the Zoom tool at all. It's just not needed. Middle-click and Shift+middle click are way more convenient and don't require switching tools. Ctrl+mousewheel and +/- (no need to press Ctrl with +/-, by the way, saves a lot of time!) are nice too. Second, what you propose would break the consistency of the UI. In Inkscape, the general meaning of Shift is "Do the same as without Shift, only backwards", whereas the meaning of Alt is "Do some fancy variant of the main action". What you're proposing would be exactly vice versa. Third, Alt+mouse may need some setup to work on Linux (by default it drags a window), which is not good for such a basic action. And fourth, finally, despite all this, I may be convinced to sacrifice this little point if enough people voice their concern over it. So far, however, you're the first person to raise this issue (unlike the space-to-hand issue which was voiced by a lot of people).
Another example is the palettes. When trying to adjust the stoke if you click back on the canvas, the palette disappears. It's generally bad practice to have UI elements appear/disappear without obvious user interaction, I think keeping it visible until the user closes it would improve it dramatically. At the moment it feels slightly erratic.
Absolutely, this is the worst bug of Inkscape at the moment. But the problem is, it's not a bug of Inkscape. It's a bug of the toolkit library we use, and it's only on Windows. On Linux, palettes do not disappear like that. There's already a patch for that bug, and hopefully it will be fixed one day.
Another thing I've just noticed is there's no obvious way to rotate an object. When selected you can't do it, and there doesn't seem to be a rotate tool either. While there may be some way in Inkscape to do this, it's not immediately obvious, and does not seem to be discoverable either.
A perfect example! You never really worked in CorelDraw, did you? CorelDraw was the first one to invent the "second click" UI in Selector for getting rotation/skew handles. Just click it again and see the arrows change. It's been around in Corel for many years and was copied by other programs as well, Xara being one example. It's an extremely fluid and convenient UI, much better than the clumsy "rotate tools" in AI or FH.
As for discoverability, maybe you have a point here. But look at the statusbar. It says plain and direct, "Click selection to toggle scale/rotation handles". Sounds discoverable enough to me. I know that AI has no statusbar worth speaking about, so you probably are not used to look for it, but Inkscape is different. A LOT of useful information and context-sensitive hints are in the statusbar, so don't miss them.
Oh, and of course let's not forget that unlike any other vector editor, Inkscape also has keys for rotating selection: [ and ] (or with Ctrl for rotating by 90 degrees, or with Alt for pixel-sized rotation). I use them 99% of the time I need to rotate anything, and I honestly don't understand how the poor users of other apps can live without this basic convenience.
Regarding the hand tool. You mention that it is not a one line fix, unlike the zoom tool thing I mentioned which would be easy to fix if people wanted. However, as a user I would probably say that the addition of the hand tool is more important that pretty much any other bug you have listed.
You know what, we've seen people before coming with exact same attitude... and after they learn the basics of the Inkscape way of doing things, many of their complaints disappear. It's just an observation :)
And, like I said, I will not object to someone implementing the Hand tool if they need it. It's not a one-liner, but not too difficult either. Ask me for directions if you want to work on that.
use. However, if you changed the graphic, so it was a white arrow with a black outline it would make Inkscape immediately more discoverable.
No problem with this one, all our icons are dynamically generated from a single SVG file. Someone just needs to draw an "AI clone" icon set and we'll include it with the release.