On Mon, 18 Sep 2006, Johan Engelen wrote:
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:10:10 +0200 From: Johan Engelen <johane@...1482...> To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Announcing: 'tabs' in the UI for effects.
I did not foresee a big discussion on this topic, as the 'tabs' came as a natural solution to me. Some comments to what has been mailed:
Ever since Opera (and much later Mozilla) used a tabbed document interface it has seemed natural to throw them at everything. It does sort of work like the same way you can hammer a screw into a wooden board.
If you are going to introduce the extra complexity and inconsistency and inflict tabs in what should be a clear and simple user interface why not just go the whole hog and use python+glade to create the extension user interfaces?
In fact, I first wanted to make my own UI, because the funcplot extension really needs to be able to read the SVG and change the UI depending on the contents of the SVG.
You see now you have gone beyond SVG. Maybe Inkscape could support generic plotting functionality but trying to do it all through an extension is too much.
If I knew what problems you were trying to solve I might be able to recommend something, like perhaps plotting your data in Gnumeric and exporting the graph as SVG.
(if you select a function plot, you should be able to change its formula; now you have to recreate a rectangle and apply a new formula)
That is exactly the kind of one off behaviour I would expect from effects and I do think you are making things more difficult than they should be by trying to do it through an effect.
current distro. (if this is desired, then inkscape should come with a separate installer for Python, and not include it in itself)
I'm sure an option to use a common version of Python will come in time but including it by default is a far more robust solution.
I worry about any effect that has so many options that it requires seperate tabs.
I like options :).
I like my penknife too but in most cases I'd be happier with a proper knife or a proper philips head screwdriver and there are many features I will never use, it just happens that a penknife is conveniently portable and good enough when I dont have the real thing.
The funcplot extention should have a "config" tab
I respect your determination to gradually build the parts you need of full graphing system in Inkscape. It doesn't make it a particularly good default and I suspect there are easier ways to achieve whatever results you really want, like perhaps graphing in another application and importing into Inkscape to apply the final touches.
I usually want to make things as versatile as possible, which maybe is bad indeed. (certainly eats up a lot of time)
If you were doing this as a third party plugin for Inkscape I'd say go nuts, provide all the options you think your audience needs.
Take a look at some of the very complicated plugins included with the GIMP. They are certianly interesting but things like a fractal browser aren't particulary useful in terms of creating general artwork. (The can be used to create some very specific features but plugins like Gimpressionist badly reinvents so much of what should be general functionality.)
I see absolutely no problem with tabs for effects UI. If you wish you can consider them just semantic groupings that Inkscape chooses to show as tabs.
I'm sure bulia is the kind of user who will struggle and put the time in to learn the software if he believes it will save him time in the long run. Not many people have that same determination.
Take a look at other software, Gimp, Adobe, etc. and see how their add-ons and plugins are relatively simple. Sure you will see some third party plugins that resemble the cockpit of a 747 airplane but most avoid the kind of complexity that would require tabs.
implementation and was not really intended. Probably that does invite bad and unclear design. Note that the XML syntax for notebooks springs from ease of implementation and having control over positioning. (you can position a notebook halfway for example, with parameters above and below it. Clearly ugly :)
As Jon was saying seperating the content from the presentation is a good idea, so conversely manually specifying the tab positioning is a bad idea for all but the most horribly complicated extensions. My point is that extensions that complicated should be rare enough and complicated enough to merit using glade and python.