On 24 nov. 05, at 21:39, bulia byak wrote:
One more thing to add. I think that the desire to see the default color before drawing with it mostly stems from the traditional, pre-computer, workflow of an artist: you pick a color and then you draw with it, not vice versa. As it is now, Inkscape does not yield to this metaphor particularly well: when you launch it, there's no color to pick anywhere. So it's understandable that you may be subconsciously reluctant to start drawing, without feeling a brush dripping with fresh paint in your hand.
But remember that this is going to change soon. We will have a color palette right in the main interface, above the statusbar. And as I already explained, color swatches work exactly as you expect: pick a color, start drawing. (When we have a palette of stored styles, it will work that way too.) That will be an artist's dream.
Another thing to consider is the subtle difference between color _selection_ tools and color _adjustment_ tools. The Fill&stroke dialog, with its color sliders, is more suitable for slight adjustment of colors. With it, you start with some color and you make changes to it, watching the result _on canvas_ immediately - that is, applied to the selected object where the new color is much easier to evaluate than in a tiny swatch. A color/style palette, on the other hand, is much better for initial selection of the base color, by choosing it from a well-organized logical palette, but is not suitable for adjusting colors at all. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense that with a palette, you can pre-select color with which to draw, whereas in fill&stroke and in selected style indicator you can only adjust the colors of selection. It's simply in the nature of these tools.
stated as this and with the possibility to pick a color in the color palette + a style in a style palette I'll personally be completely happy. ;-)
On 11/24/05, mental@...3... <mental@...3...> wrote:
There's still the issue of how one can tell the "current drawing" color without drawing anything. Maybe a widget at the end of the palette/swatches bar?
Since the "current" color is relevant only for some tools (those that create objects), I'd propose to place this indicator in the right-hand end of those tools' Controls bars. This way: (1) it won't clutter the statusbar (already quite full with stuff), (2) it will be as far as possible from the selected style indicator, to avoid confusion; (3) its relevance to object creation will be more obvious; and (4) its non-interactive character will be more obvious (generally, the further to the right, the less important and less interactive are widgets in our UI).
I'll be happy with that too. A side note though, following (4), the zooming index should be displaced: its interactive and at the left end of the status bar. In fact this is a good excuse for a concern I have about this: in mac OSX windows there is a large handle at the bottom-left side of the windows which obliterates the arrows of the zoom index... :-( In addition, this index changed of position since previous versions. maybe all this could be put before the layers menu?
JiHO --- Windows, c'est un peu comme le beaujolais nouveau : a chaque nouvelle cuvee on sait que ce sera degueulasse, mais on en prend quand meme par masochisme. --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/