On Fri, 16 Apr 2004, Ted Gould wrote:
On Thu, 2004-04-15 at 09:16, Carl Hetherington wrote:
OK. I'm a bit confused about the Import dialogue, though. Is it right that on Linux the menu only offers "SVG", and no other types? ATM, the Windows version offers "SVG files" and "Image files" as selection options.
[snip]
I think that we need to decide what functionality we want accomplished by 'Save', 'Open', 'Import' and 'Export', and then strive to make it happen. Here is what I'm thinking:
Open - Take a file and make a new window with it
Save - Take the entire document and stuff it into a file
Import - Take a file off the hard drive and put it into the current document
Export:
- Take the current document and save it, without changing the name of
the current file or anything else about the current document (ie modified or anything like that)
- Take a selection, and put that selection, by itself, into a file.
Sounds sensible to me. I suppose we should check the Gnome HIG, if we're following it. I'd probably say "Save - Take the entire document and stuff it into a file from which the document can be losslessly recovered by Inkscape." e.g. save doesn't contain PS because saving as PS loses information.
When I say "lossless" I mean "save from Inkscape and re-load into Inkscape gives you the same thing". So suppose we had a completely functional PS export but that Inkscape could not fully load PS files that it had saved. Then PS export would be lossy.
So Open and Import are the same, except that Import pastes its data into the current document and Open creates a new window?
Then Save and Export are the same, except Save is always lossless and export is always lossy.
Issues
- Should the two different exports be different menu items? Perhaps:
"Export Document" and "Export Selection"?
I'm not fussy. Either that or a tick box in the Export dialogue.
[snip]
Okay, what do people think about all that. It is was kinda a brain dump.
Likewise.
Cheers Carl