On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, bulia byak wrote:
Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW: Trace Bitmap dialog redesign and new parameters
On 11/14/06, Jon Phillips <jon@...235...> wrote:
Oh, but what happened to the other possible backends ;)
Since they are "possible", nothing could happen to them :)
How confident are people that other backend will be added? Since there is an existing backend that works well enough it seems like there isn't a huge incentive to add others.
Seriously, since (1) the single "Potrace" tab looks confusing,
I chose not to mention it but a single tab looked very strange, and since there was only one implementation available it didn't make sense to expose users to the potrace brand name. The tab probably should have been labelled General (as Microsoft almost always does with the first tab, and often uses Advanced for another tab label) or maybe "Trace".
Since the dialog is being overhauled now might be good time to make it follow the HIG too. Relabelling the OK button to Trace might be a good idea. The word "SIOX" could either be treated as a brand name or plain jargon and not exposed in the interface at all, certianly the section heading should be "Foreground Extraction" and then maybe the checkbox item could explain further that it is using SIOX foreground extraction.
Based slightly on how the GNU Image Manipulation Program does things it might be better to either omit the credits for potrace entirely or make them a little more visible by putting them in a stock GtkAbout dialog with a button at the bottom of the dialog. (Having credits everywhere gets ugly, a mention in the main About dialog might be enough but if you are going to insist on having them in the relevant dialog you may as well have a bit of detail and show the information in a consistent standard way in a GtkAbout dialog.)
The misshapen Update button is not at all aesthetically pleasing. Derek mentioned the workflow and if you assume the default workflow is to only configure things occasionally and then stick with the settings you are satified with then it makes sense to have the preview on the first page and hope you can optimize the work flow to become (first main tab) Preview -> Trace, at least in the general case.
(2) we can do all kinds of tracing, including color, with potrace, I decided to hide the "multiple back-ends" aspect for now. If we indeed add another back-end one day, it will be easy to add top-level tabs to accommodate it.
I'll assume you could not possibly be suggesting tabs within tabs. We saw from the old preferences dialog how that got ugly fast.