It's probably early to start working on it, but where should the filters UI be placed? I suppose the most obvious choice would be having a new "Filter" entry on the "Object" menu, and on context menu. Another option would be to modify the "Fill and Stroke" dialog to incorporate a new filter tab, but I think this would be a bit out of context. Another issue is the layout within this filter UI, which can become very complex if not handled correctly... Any ideas? Not urgent questions, but it would help to hear the community's opinion on this.
Hugo
On 6/23/06, Hugo Rodrigues wrote:
It's probably early to start working on it, but where should the filters UI be placed? I suppose the most obvious choice would be having a new "Filter" entry on the "Object" menu, and on context menu. Another option would be to modify the "Fill and Stroke" dialog to incorporate a new filter tab, but I think this would be a bit out of context.
Why not "Effects"?
Alexandre
Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On 6/23/06, Hugo Rodrigues wrote:
It's probably early to start working on it, but where should the filters UI be placed? I suppose the most obvious choice would be having a new "Filter" entry on the "Object" menu, and on context menu. Another option would be to modify the "Fill and Stroke" dialog to incorporate a new filter tab, but I think this would be a bit out of context.
Why not "Effects"?
I would say not... because they're not the same thing. Our Effects menu contains a collection of scripts that create/manipulate items in ways not included in the SVG spec (nothing about it is non-compliant though, they're just Inkscape specific operations).
SVG Filters on the other hand are a part of the SVG Spec. Given this, to me it doesn't feel Kosher to mix the two (and especially to not have them labeled as Filters or SVG Filters).
I would personally opt for a new menu of "Filters" (SVG Filters would seem unnecessary given that we're an SVG editor)... provided it would be populated with more than just gaussian blur for the next release. Or I could potentially see a filters tool, but that seems like it could potentially be limiting and/or confusing.
For note, the loading of a file with a gaussian blur applied within it (on win32) causes an instant silent crash... that is, whether in the open file dialog when a file is selected and it tries to generate a preview or if trying to open a file from the recent documents history.
Just my .02
-Josh
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On 6/23/06, Hugo Rodrigues wrote:
It's probably early to start working on it, but where should the filters UI be placed? I suppose the most obvious choice would be having a new "Filter" entry on the "Object" menu, and on context menu. Another option would be to modify the "Fill and Stroke" dialog to incorporate a new filter tab, but I think this would be a bit out of context.
Why not "Effects"?
I would say not... because they're not the same thing. Our Effects menu contains a collection of scripts that create/manipulate items in ways not included in the SVG spec (nothing about it is non-compliant though, they're just Inkscape specific operations).
SVG Filters on the other hand are a part of the SVG Spec. Given this, to me it doesn't feel Kosher to mix the two (and especially to not have them labeled as Filters or SVG Filters).
I may be off, but it seems to me that the momentum of configurable menus is pointing to dissolving the Effects menu. The idea being that the functionality should be seamlessly integrated into the application. Can items already be placed in arbitrary menus in the INX files? In the end if would be nice to simply group things based upon functionality, and not discriminate against extensions of any type.
Aaron Spike
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006, Aaron Spike wrote:
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:07:28 -0500 From: Aaron Spike <aaron@...749...> To: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Filters UI
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On 6/23/06, Hugo Rodrigues wrote:
It's probably early to start working on it, but where should the filters UI be placed? I suppose the most obvious choice would be having a new "Filter" entry on the "Object" menu, and on context menu. Another option would be to modify the "Fill and Stroke" dialog to incorporate a new filter tab, but I think this would be a bit out of context.
Why not "Effects"?
I would say not... because they're not the same thing. Our Effects menu contains a collection of scripts that create/manipulate items in ways not included in the SVG spec (nothing about it is non-compliant though, they're just Inkscape specific operations).
SVG Filters on the other hand are a part of the SVG Spec. Given this, to me it doesn't feel Kosher to mix the two (and especially to not have them labeled as Filters or SVG Filters).
I may be off, but it seems to me that the momentum of configurable menus is pointing to dissolving the Effects menu. The idea being that the functionality should be seamlessly integrated into the application.
Isn't this possible already? There will definately be extensions which will need to be grouped with simliar functionality rather than dumped in the effects menu just because they happened to be implemented in a certain way. (Also rather than having a menu item for everything it is worth noting Adobe provides a seperate palette for Actions (scripts) rather than putting them in a menu.)
For what it is worth I would as a user expect the SVG Filters to be included somewhere under effects. There aren't that many of them if I recall correctly, Jasc Webdraw showed all the SVG Filters in a single dialog with nice previews. Users should not _need_ to know how an Effect is implemented but ideally it should still be possible to somehow tell apart an SVG Filter for those who want to know and take full advantages of the functionality they offer.
I expect the Filters menu to eventually be used to show GIMP filters, which could be run on any selection, rasterising it and converting it to an embedded image, and then running the raster filter on it. Adobe has something along these lines which integrates photoshop filters in illustrator and it seems like a good way to integrate the artists work. I believe some work has been done already to get gimp plugins to work inside inkscape (I think that was how the gimp palette support was added if i recall correctly?).
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/
On Sat, 24 Jun 2006 15:05:07 +0100 (BST) Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
For what it is worth I would as a user expect the SVG Filters to be included somewhere under effects. There aren't that many of them if I recall correctly, Jasc Webdraw showed all the SVG Filters in a single dialog with nice previews. Users should not _need_ to know how an Effect is implemented but ideally it should still be possible to somehow tell apart an SVG Filter for those who want to know and take full advantages of the functionality they offer.
I'd like to make a note here: while there are only a handful filter primitives, there is a vast amount of possible filters.
For example feConvolveMatrix filter primitive is capable of doing box blur, gaussian blur, emboss, sharpening... and plenty of other effects. It's just matter of parameters.
A SVG filter is not limited to having a single filter primitive - it can have several of them and pass output of one filter primitive as the input of some other filter primitive. In programming terms, a filter can be thought as an acyclic directed graph (ADG) of filter primitives.
While grouping a bunch of canned filters in single dialog would be an relatively easy choice, I don't think it would really be a good one.
On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 15:05 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
For what it is worth I would as a user expect the SVG Filters to be included somewhere under effects. There aren't that many of them if I recall correctly, Jasc Webdraw showed all the SVG Filters in a single dialog with nice previews.
Hmm. The thing with SVG filters is that they're really just a set of composable building blocks; most "interesting" filters are going to be built of several, forming a (possibly branched) pipeline. I'm not sure a menu is a good UI for that.
-mental
On Sat, 24 Jun 2006, MenTaLguY wrote:
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 16:31:37 -0400 From: MenTaLguY <mental@...3...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Inkscape ML inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Filters UI
On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 15:05 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
For what it is worth I would as a user expect the SVG Filters to be included somewhere under effects. There aren't that many of them if I recall correctly, Jasc Webdraw showed all the SVG Filters in a single dialog with nice previews.
Hmm. The thing with SVG filters is that they're really just a set of composable building blocks; most "interesting" filters are going to be built of several, forming a (possibly branched) pipeline. I'm not sure a menu is a good UI for that.
Presenting them similarly to Live Layer Effects* might be useful but they are applicable to any object so that would only be an extra rather than the only way of presenting them.
I'll have to rummage around and see how other programs present their equivalent to SVG filters (but not using SVG as their native file fomrat may be forcing them to do things in a certain way).
The only point that I really wanted to make at this time was to discourage any rush to create and use the Filter menu for some other purpose which would block it being used in a way similar to Adobe. I vaguely recall Macromedia offered something similar allowing reuse of functionality from Fireworks directly in Freehand but as always I'm a little fuzzy on the details and I encourage you to play around with demo versions of other software and find out for yourselves.
On 6/24/06, Alan Horkan wrote:
I believe some work has been done already to get gimp plugins to work inside inkscape (I think that was how the gimp palette support was added if i recall correctly?).
Just like you used to say, "I recommend to stop and think better" :)
With GEGL merging into main codebase of GIMP there will be new plug-in archtictecture. Old plug-ins will most likely be supported via a bridge.
Alexandre
On 6/23/06, Hugo Rodrigues <haa.rodrigues@...400...> wrote:
It's probably early to start working on it, but where should the filters UI be placed? I suppose the most obvious choice would be having a new "Filter" entry on the "Object" menu, and on context menu.
What would that command open? A dialog? I would like to avoid the illustrator's approach with a menu chock full of commands and each command opening its floating dialog. Instead, what I envision is a Filter tool in the main toolbar, which would do several things:
- when an object with a filter is selected, it displays in the controls bar its topmost filter with its numerical params
- it lets you choose any other from the stack of filters applied to the object, using a drop-down list; the controls change accordingly to the filter type
- it has controls for adding new filter to the stack (from a list of all filters implemented), reordering filters, and deleting filters
- it lets you drag various filter-specific handles on the canvas, for those filters where it makes sense (e.g. visually adjusting blur radii for gaussian blur)
This sounds like a lot of things, but I think with some inventiveness they will fit into the controls bar.
Additionally, we can have a submenu in the main menu with commands: add new filter, remove top filter, remove all filters and probably others. Same commands can be added to context menus also.
In addition to all this, gaussian blur needs to be treated specially, as it's such a fundamental thing. I want to add a blur radius spinbutton everywhere we now have opacity controls, i.e. in the selected style indicator in statusbar and in fill&stroke.
Compared with the illustrator-like dialogs, it would have all the same advantages as the on-canvas gradient editing has compared to the old gradient editing via the fill&stroke dialog.
The path effects (effects that only change the shape of paths, implemented on top of SVG in compatible way) will have a very similar interface, except that they will have an Effect tool of their own. They can also be stacked, chosen from list, edited both on canvas and via numerical fields in the controls bar, etc.
Let me know what you think about this. If this sounds good in general, I will create a few mockups to make this more obvious.
bulia byak wrote:
Instead, what I envision is a Filter tool in the main toolbar, which would do several things:
I have to say that this sounds like one of the best ideas I've ever heard! Handling both SVG filters and Path Effects like this will probably be as intuitive as you can get.
Let me know what you think about this. If this sounds good in general, I will create a few mockups to make this more obvious.
Personally I think it's excellent... can't wait to see the mockups. :)
-Josh
On 6/24/06, bulia byak wrote:
- it lets you drag various filter-specific handles on the canvas, for
those filters where it makes sense (e.g. visually adjusting blur radii for gaussian blur)
Sounds very much like implementation of some Picasa filters :)
Let me know what you think about this. If this sounds good in general, I will create a few mockups to make this more obvious.
I would say, go for it :)
Alexandre
participants (8)
-
Aaron Spike -
Alan Horkan -
Alexandre Prokoudine -
bulia byak -
Hugo Rodrigues -
Joshua A. Andler -
MenTaLguY -
Niko Kiirala