On Wed, 27 Jul 2005, Erik wrote:
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:48:57 +1000 From: Erik <kaver@...68...> To: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> Cc: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Possible bug in 0.42
Hey, we got a mention on the Xarax TalkGraphics list.
http://talkgraphics.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/44419488/m/8051060431
Eobet's note included....
...Currently, I have to admit that the program is utterly unusable, but
Oooh harsh. At first I was going to try and rationalise his criticisms but I got the current release of Inkscape running and I had trouble sleeping last night as a result.
Frankly the usability of Inkscape has gotten worse even if the functionality has increased. To some extent it is because of the increased funtionality that Inkscape is more cluttered and difficult to learn.
The edit menu has a massive twenty one, count 'em 21 items. I doesn't take an expert to know there are problems even I can see Inkscape has serious usability issues. There are many other superficial problems like this some of which I have already pointed out but were ignored. The Inkscape Preferences dialog is a candidate for the User Interface Hall of shame.
If developers were to read through the Gnome Human Interface guidelines, especially anyone touching the User Interface and make lots of minor changes based on it Inkscape could be improved quite a lot but more radical changes may be needed if you really want to satisfy the mass market.
Between them Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand effectively dominate the market and mindshare for vector graphics applications and Inkscape is a very different application. I still seriously believe that we must at least match the behaviours that both Illustrator and Freehand share in common and that requires changing a lot of the keybindings and menu structure. Inkscape has gotten a lot bigger and will only get even bigger so a menu restructuring will be needed anyway soon enough.
I am sorry to say I am dissapointed by Inkscape 0.42 which in some ways has taken steps backward in terms of usability, so much so that I am very reluctant to comment on it just yet. I'm mildly upset my previous advice was ignored, even if solutions I suggest are not always ideal it is particularly disappointing when people miss my point (even if I didn't make it all that clearly) and to see nothing done to address the problems that prompted me to make the suggestions in the first place.
If you are sure you want to hear criticisms about the current user interface, are mature enough not to take it personally and are interested in doing something about my suggestions then please let me know. I haven't had that much time to poke and prod Inkscape over the last few months and I really dont have the time now but I will try and find the time to explain the problems I see.
I wish I had something more constructive to say (the gradient and tiled clones features are certainly cool although a little awkward at first) but there isn't anything wrong with Inkscape that cannot be fixed if you really take a long hard critical look at it.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/