On 04/23/2012 10:14 PM, Kris De Gussem wrote:
Although I am contributing frequently to the code, for using anything else then basic functionality, I consider myself to be a newbie.
Same here! I've spend more time coding than actually using Inkscape :-)
For a beginner, there are issues with both questions:
- in the point of view of a novice user: why at all do the buttons
"Snap bounding boxes", "Snap nodes, paths, and handles", "Snap other points (centers, guide origins, gradient handles, etc.)" exist? Without activating these, it is apparently not possible to snap anything. This is confusing for users.
True, snapping has a learning curve. This can be remedied to some extent by choosing sensible defaults. Currently, handles snap to grids/guides by default, so when creating a new shape it will snap to the grid. By now you've probably also learned that we should snap nodes to grids by default. The next thing to do is to try to make it easy for users to discover the snapping features in a natural way. That is, make sure that we have a decently designed snap toolbar. I've tried to improve that in trunk.
- is there a difference between snapping from and snapping to, and do
we actually want this difference? (Keep in mind that every user is different from yourself!) A novice user also does not know, or can hardly deduce it from the interface... Look a bit clearer to the user messages: sometimes you have "Snap ... points" in the message, sometimes "Snap to ... points",
Exactly that distinction has been removed in nightly builds! There's no sources vs. targets distinction remaining in the snap toolbar, nor in its tooltips (if you still find any then please let me know). Yes, there is a difference between sources and targets under the hood, and we should expose that to experienced users. But I've first tried to hide that for newbies, now I only have to expose it again in an intuitive way for power users
but either the user messages are named randomly or these buttons seem to be randomly positioned.
If you see room from improvements anywhere then please let me know. I might have developed a blind spot for that over time.
If it is desirable to have the asymmetric behaviour for part of our user base, then + position the relevant buttons visually well separated from each
Instead, I was planning to hide this completely, and make it only accessible in the document properties dialog. Only one button will be added to the snap toolbar: to open the document properties dialog with the snapping tab in the front (to make these asymmetric options easily accessible and discoverable for the users). All buttons on the toolbar will toggle the relevant snap source AND target simultaneously, making the snap-toolbar symmetric.
+ update the user messages accordingly (user messages in 0.48 werenot self explaining either)
Please suggest better messages! I will implement them, but I figure you've got a lot experience with these things.
+ BUT provide a checkbox to get symmetric behaviour (per Johan)
One can get asymmetric behavior in future versions by setting the sources and targets independently, and if desired these can be stored in the default.svg template.
Kind regards,
Diederik