Ni... whoa, transparency on dark background is hard to read. xD But it's okay once you've downloaded the image.
So anyway, it does look nice! I did end up thinking about what Josh said about what's "something you'd find in Inkscape and what you don't", and about implementation issues though. I'm wondering if it isn't too hard to code those visual elements (maybe it's not though, I can't tell).
The part I totally agree with is the gradient and the "extrude" view for dynamics. A few thoughts on the rest:
1. Color dynamics
In fact, the existing tiling mechanism is quite far from the ideal solution.
Right now: To have color dynamics, you have to: - Start with unset fill and stroke colors - All objects in group must have and end up with the same color properties - You can only define a start value and %changes (though by defining a start and end value instead, it should be possible to have those then converted into %values)
Ideally: - You can start with any fill and stroke - You can have objects of different color/opacity/blur properties - You can define multiple stops, just like a gradient
Basically, for color/opacity/blur dynamics, your proposed interface works well if there's only a start node and an end node. For the user to be able to add intermediate nodes, the code for the color dynamics mechanism needs to be changed.
This does not prevent us from defining the ideal end interface from the start, I just mean I'll have to note this in the wiki later, so I'm telling you first.
Also, on the group color change, the following feature basically would help a lot (just like "cut operation on groups" is necessary for the "fuse tile" mode):
Group colour/color changes, brightness, contrast, HSV, more: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/171181
Instead of starting with an object with no fill or stroke, you could start with anything you want, even groups of objects with different colors etc. Inkscape would modify the hue of the whole group like when you use the hue slider in Gimp for example.
2. Jitters
There are two things that worry me a bit about the jitters presentation: - Interface clutter: I like the wub-wubs, but it may get messy with more than 2 or 3 of them. Maybe a single static round wub-wub could be displayed around the node if there's - any- jitter (just to warn you that it's there). The user can them
see which ones are available by bringing up the whole thing. - Ease of programming. There aren't that many GUI features in Inkscape, and I don't know how how easy it would be to create a widget like the one you're proposing.
Maybe clicking on nodes could instead just pop up a more usual dialogue with different jitter options and sliders:
X-Jitters [x] Position : |----|--| [ 80 ]% [ ] Width : ||------| [ 10 ]% [x] Opacity : |------|| [ 90 ]% [ ] Hue : |---|---| [ 50 ]% (logarithmic sliders could be nice...)
I wonder if trace properties could also be stuffed somewhere...
Since there is a "preview" button in the wiki proposal, the user can just toggle it on then off and tweak values until he's happy.
Though... the preview feature itself is something that needs some work...