Sorry, replied to Ben only. Here's a forwarded reply.
On Sun, 17 Nov 2019, 19:47 C R, cajhne@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, thanks for taki g the time to contact us and share your thoughts.
IMO the first four bugs I mention here are so major that many first time
users will decide not to use InkScape again, which is unfortunate as it’s a really great app.
Inkscape is a different program than Illustrator. It's not meant to be a copy, nor is it designed as a free version of that software. As a long time Illustrator user myself, I can say that if feature parity is what you seek, it's going to be a bad time. I feel the same way when forced to use Illustrator CC, because some problems they have not fixed even after all these years. Some are things that Inkscape users would certainly miss going to Illustrator. So with that in mind, let's proceed...
Using vanilla 1.0beta1 on MacOS Catalina 10.15.1 (19B88) with default
preferences set.
(1) Surprise Quit
- Open Inkscape.
- Close ‘New document 1’
- BUG - Inkscape has now quit. There is no reason why the application
should depend upon the existence of a document window.
This is one thing that's just plain different about Inkscape. There is no main window which acts as a container for open Inkscape documents. Each time you open a new Inkscape document it makes a window for it. It would take a major redesign to have a container window which mirrors how Illustrator works. So no, unfortunately this is not a bug. :)
(2) Location of preferences menu item.
- BUG - Preferences is in the Edit menu rather than in the ‘Inkscape’
menu Actually, many items in the Edit menu, which are to do with application level settings, should be in the Inkscape Menu.
Inkscape is cross platform, which means that there may or may not be an Inkscape menu at all, which is a MacOS convention. This is why those items are located in the Edit menu, which is a fairly standard place to look for preferences if you've used Adobe products and most other graphics tools on Windows and Linux. Hopefully the placement of the preferences item is not something which will trip you up often. If it is, I recommend learning the hotkeys to bring it up.
(3) Surprise Preferences panel dimensions.
- Open Inkscape.
- Open the preferences panel.
- BUG - The panel height stretches across the entire vertical size of
the screen, with no ‘preference tab’ content that deep. The panel width is unusually narrow, with some form elements being clipped by the panel. (Eg, System, Interface) Moreover, the nested tree is surprising, with the higher nodes (eg behaviour) showing minimal details, with no documentation / hints whatsoever.
That does sound like a bug. I recommend reporting that one in our GitLab bug tracker as per the instructions on the website.
Tracker here: https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/issues
Our Mac OS build functions without the need for xquartz now, which was a universal pain in the ass to install, so please bear with us while we continue to make the new build better.
(4) Panel/Dialog focus problems.
- Open Inkscape.
- Open the preferences panel.
- Drag the preferences panel so that the traffic light (close /
minimise / zoom) sit over the centre of ‘New document 1’ 4) Click once on the RED (close) traffic light. 5) BUG - Focus is transferred to ’New document 1’ and the preference panel fades. (See following cropped screenshot).
Yep, that looks like a bug too. Please report it here so our Mac team can address it: https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/issues
(5) New ellipse uses previous ellipse controls.
- Open Inkscape.
- Give focus to ‘New document 1’
- Create a ‘pacman’ using the (very cool) pie tool.
- Deselect, and draw a new ellipse.
- BUG- (By default) the new ellipse is the pacman, not a new ellipse.
- BUG- (If you believe that 5 is the correct behaviour) a single click
with the ’ellipse tool' SHOULD generate the identically dimensioned previous shape at the mouse position. 7) Both of the above behaviours should be controlled by preferences. There is a ’style’ preference available, but default style and default shape are different.
5 is expected behaviour, and 6 is a wishlist item I guess? Anyway not bugs. If you want to create exact copies of a shape at the mouse cursor, just drag the original shape around and tap the spacebar while dragging. This will drop new copes of the original shape.
Inkscape remembers what shape you last made. If you want a complete circle back, just click the complete circle button at the top of the screen and it will be a circle from then on, until next you change it.
Is it weird to draw multiple pie shapes? Yea, probably. :) However this behavior is constant with the rectangle tool and star tool which you may very well want to say, keep making rectangles with the same corner radius over and over. It would be a pain to keep having to round corners, no? So yea, it's weird, but it makes sense if you think about it as a unified tool set. The fix is easy enough too. Single click, sorted.
(6) Outline Display Mode Outline Display should (or should be set by preference) show polygon/object centres.
Wishlist item/feature request. I agree this would be a nice feature though.
(7) Measurement Tool (Language). It’s the first time I’ve heard of a starting measurement point being called a Knot. If you are going to use specialised language, provide a strong hint as to what that is.
Well it's not a vertex or a node. We could call them handles perhaps, but then that might be confused with the handles on bounding boxes etc. At any rate, this is not a bug so much as a convention of the software.
(8) Font sample text.
Nearly all fonts include a sample text to show / highlight the font. Your font dialog does not use that, doesn’t provide a preference to allow for it. Many font names are incorrect, and likewise do not always show the correct sample (because the InkScape characters are not always represented) See ‘Baghdad’ as an example below (with Font Book overlay)
Yes, this is a bug. Please report it in our GitLab bug tracker.
https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/issues
Thanks for taking the time to help us make Inkscape better.
-C.Rogers
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