On Tue, 2009-12-22 at 01:12 -0800, LucaDC wrote:
Why has the spray tool icon been positioned so "high" in the vertical toolbar?
That's where it was in the patch from the students, however, it can be moved. It's well paired with the tweak tool though honestly. Actually, I hadn't used the tweak tool too much before (the operations that modify a path aren't predictable enough outside of the "circle" for me), but now with the spray tool it's been wonderful for modifying those sprayed objects.
My suggestion is to group "basic" tools (selection, node tool, zoom, rectangle, ellipse and so on) in the higher part of the toolbar and more complex tools (eraser, connectors, tweak, spray and so on) in the lower, so the "complexity" of tools increases along the toolbar. I refer to the complexity of a tool not on a "number of parameters" basis, but on the way it modifies the drawing: adding an ellipse or a text is a basic operation, erasing part of a path with the eraser tool or tweaking objects is not.
Fair enough points, however, modifying a core part of the UI like that would probably need a good amount of testing with our users. IMHO, not a 0.48 task... 0.49 is a refactoring cycle though, so it might be the right time to get some UI/UX people to contribute ideas prior to it. Additionally, there is a lot of existing documentation which might become less useful for WYSIWYG (picture shows the UI like so) users.
I understand that this is quite a subjective matter, but I think that many people should agree at least in that the spray tool is "more complex" than select, zoom, rectangle, ellipse, text, and beizer tools.
Definitely subjective. Personally, I use a zoom tool in any graphics app far less frequently when good shortcuts exist (such as inkscape has). I can honestly say that I have only used it in Inkscape when double-checking documentation about inkscape. Ctrl+Mousewheel (and the number keys) are totally sufficient for me. So I would personally say that since it doesn't actually affect anything (other than view), it should be the absolute last tool in the toolbar (again, subjective and just my opinion).
The toolbar seems quite scrambled also when referring to F1-F8 quick select keys.
Probably not when it was initially implemented. :) I do agree though. I don't use the F-keys for primarily that reason.
Thanks for bringing up the Toolbox organization. I do think that this subject is worth discussing... provided it doesn't turn into a tango icons discussion. ;)
Cheers, Josh