On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, MenTaLguY wrote:
Do you all think "Windows" is a better name for the "Dialogs" menu, or does anyone have any better ideas?
On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Bryce Harrington wrote:
If it were me, I'd put the dialogs for altering object properties (fill/stroke, text, etc.) in the Object menu, the XML Editor to the View menu (or maybe Edit), and the rest to a Preferences menu.
I was hoping that much of the functionaly that is currently in the Dialogs menu will get moved from those dialogs to the secondary toolbar although some will of course need to be left as floating palettes/dialogs.
I was hoping that the XML Editor would be made a bit more seperable. Instead we would have a menu item View 'Source View' or suchlike which would present the XML Editor by default but if the user wanted to would present Conglomerate perhaps or maybe gVIM. I haven't got used to the XML editor yet and I still find gVim more useful because I really like syntax colouring like you wouldn't believe and I usually only look at the source to quickly remove large chunks of SVG or change the numbers of some points (usually rouding them to integers or something).
I think it is interesting from a usability point of view to look at why people are using the XML Editor, what problems is it being used to solve and is there a way to solve these problems automatically so users dont need to use an XML editor? I'll get back to you when I have thought about it in more depth.
Also, some of the dialogs (like Tool Options) feel like they really want to be sub-panes of some larger dialog. So perhaps instead of a menu for Preferences, they could be combined into a single Preferences dialog, accessed via Edit or File.
I'd like to see a unified preferences dialog too, and I'm hoping lots of import/export options can be put there instead of creating lots of extra dialogs or overloading the File Open and Save As (FOSA) Dialogs (and for I change I do realise I'm repeating myself)
Sincerely
Alan Horkan Inkscape Beta Tester ;) http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/