On Sun, 2005-02-20 at 19:39 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
Jakub Steiner wrote:
That is exactly why such things need to be standardized. Since Inkscape is a multiplatform application, ideally it should follow Firefox' example and structure the menus depending on the platform specifications and usanses. Mac users will be looking for an "Inkscape" menu and "Preferences". Windows and GNOME users are used to "Edit>Preferences" even though it uses a wrong pattern of action>object instead of object>action. These issues have to be tackled globally for the whole platform and not application by application even though I see it's a lot harder change things.
There is so many ways a structure could make sense. To really have a user in mind, have *consistency with the rest of the platform* in mind.
i'm not thrilled by the Firefox approach, it makes the support difficult, one should ask the user what OS is using before directing him to the correct place in menu. the same for documentation: it should mention all possible locations for every supported OS.
Well maintaining so many language versions sucks in a similar manner. The question is if it's worth it. I'm saying yes, that interface consistency is worth it.
The number of items that would be different is not too big. As far as I know the documentation now is XML that's processed with an XSLT stylesheet, so creating platform dependent version isn't all that complex really.
Let me reply to Bulia's comment on having some more sane structure than what the HIG suggests (or generally the Mac/... HIG, not sure if Windows have interface guidelines).
It may sound like a good idea to play on your own field if you think you can design a better structure. But look at MS Internet Explorer, they do the same -- the box model in CSS specifies the width and height doesn't include the padding of the box, so you need to be careful about using % units since padding is added to that. MS didn't like that idea and have width and height be defined so that padding is subtracted from this amount. While it may sound like it's making the % units more useful, the fact that only IE has this behavior makes all web designers cry.
Similarly Inkscape doesn't try to interpret SVG differently from what the SVG spec says. It does uses its own namespace to extend it, but whatever you save as SVG will be interpreted by a standard SVG renderer. You don't have circles defined differently than in SVG because it's more efficient (yes t would rock if I actualy knew enough to give a better example). Unfortunately there is no single standard, interface guidelines for all platforms, which makes this a little worse of a situation.
cheers