On Jan 22, 2006, at 3:17 PM, Eric Wilhelm wrote:
Additionally, it should also be clear to the user exactly what is happening. If they don't understand the linked paradigm, they probably won't be using it, but if they do, they will want an easy way to see whether an image is a link or inlined. IMO, most of the negative feedback from users comes from their preconceived (and rightly so) notion of how the import paradigm works (e.g. "if I import something, it is _in_ this document and if I want to change it I have to delete the object and import a changed version") and the fact that inkscape does not behave in that way (thus, "import" is the wrong label for the linking action that inkscape currently supports.)
I think this hits on the crux of the matter.
Instead of trying to patch existing behavior, let's try to back up and focus on the big picture and user's end goals.
I see that already we've hit on two very different use cases. One thing would be to see if there are any more, or any significant refinements of the existing two.
Also... it seems to be that the problem can be summarized as "average users think *this* is going on when actually *that* is going on. So instead of switching "this" for "that", perhaps we could just make it clear of what was going on to begin with. Driving factors here could be discoverability, transparency and least surprise.
Some UI indication, along with a "hey, this is going on" dialog with a "don't show me this again" checkbox is a common way to address this sort of problem. Getting the details figured out for all workflows, and what is common and what is not are probably key things.
(Oh, and one minor aspect might be the feature that's been mentioned where a user could right-click on a linked image to get it opened for editing in The GIMP, or some other preferred app.)