On Sun, 3 Sep 2006, Jon Phillips wrote:
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:33:38 -0700 From: Jon Phillips <jon@...235...> To: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> Cc: inkscape-devel <inkscape-devel@...6...> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Lorem ipsum extension
On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 16:45 -0300, bulia byak wrote:
In case someone missed it, we now have a very nice extension by Jos Hirth that creates a "Lorem ipsum" random text of given length. Nice!
"Lorem ipsum" is a clever name but almost too clever. (Excellent idea though and it is alwasy great to see people creating more effects and extensions already.) Although "Lorem ipsum" it is an expression probably well known to typesetters it is not exactly self explanitory for the average beginner. It doesn't convey the idea of filling in a space with largely meaningless sample text. A more obvious could save user from having to try each effect to figure out what it is supposed to do, or have to trawl through the manual (no matter how well written the manual is, not needing to read it is even better).
I changed its name to "Lorem ipsum", moved it to the Render submenu
Why Render? It is creating a block of real text as opposed to rendering a path or other shape isn't it?
Maybe a submenu "Effects, Text" or something general like that? (A suitable category to add piglatin or caesar cipher effects and other fun bits and pieces.)
I'm mentioning this now given the difficulty of moving anything later. This might be a good time to plan ahead and try to setup some categories in the effects menu. A whole submenu and four menu items for a "Fretboard Designer" will quickly lead to overcrowding. I only barely know enough to be able to guess that Fretboard designer is probably related to some kind of diagram for guitar music but the labelling it is entirely non-obvious to anyone who doesn't already know what it is.
I dont have any definative suggestions on what suitable categories might be just yet but perhaps as we get a few more effects things will become clearer.[1]
Developers might also want to try and keep a clear record of maintainers for each effect because there will inevitably come a time when things need to be reorganised and updated. Many effects will be useful but some will only appeal to a niche audience and they will not all necessarily make great defaults to show off what inkscape can do or streamline common tasks.
See how the GNU Image Manipulation Program gradually accumulated a very large collection of plugins - everyone wants to be included by default - without gaining quite so many developers resulting in long term maintaince burdens. (Call me paranoid but at least by saying this I reduce the chances of it actually happening unintentionally.)
Jos, great job! What else are you working on? It would be great to have a good brainstorm about other extensions people want. Here are five off the top of my head:
One of the menu feature requests listed in the tracker was "Ungroup All" something which could presumably be quite easily written as an extension (and possibly be rewritten in C++ later if deemed important enough when people start using it).
I challenge other people on the list to stir up 5 more extension ideas of your own and post them,
Or if you cannot think of your own pick one of the many existing request: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=93438&atid=604309
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
[1] Looking to Adobe Illustrator for reference wasn't helpful at all but I looked so I may as well mention it somewhere.
Google images, screenshot of Adobe Illustrator Effect menu: http://www.applelinks.com/reviews/gifs/cs2-ill-effect.jpg