Recently, the "Sensitive" item in the Object Properties dialog box was changed to "Lock". Presumably this is for consistency with the corresponding layer operation.
The word `Lock' doesn't communicate very well that one can't even select the objects with the mouse (e.g. to view properties), whereas it wrongly communicates that the objects can't be changed.
(Insensitive objects can freely be changed once they're selected somehow, e.g. because they're still selected from when the user changed their item properties, or using Select All, or the Find dialog box, or selecting from the XML editor. I think it would be wrong for the Lock checkbox to deselect things, as that would give different behaviour for clicking Hide then Lock from Lock then Hide, for example, or whatever other changes to the objects one wants to make at the same time.)
We have another padlock icon in the toolbars, but it doesn't mean "The selected object/s are insensitive", it means that the Width and Height spin buttons change in unison to maintain constant aspect ratio.
I intend to change the word Lock back to either Sensitive or Insensitive (or Canvas-selectable?) and change the tooltip for the layer padlock icon to mention the word sensitive. Maybe "Make the selected objects insensitive, i.e. prevent the selected objects from being selectable with clicks or drags in the canvas."
pjrm.
A possible replacement for the padlock icon for "Toggle layer sensitivity" would be a small version of the selector arrow.
Changing the padlock icon (whether with this suggestion or some other) would especially be valuable if we think we might introduce an immutable/read-only attribute later (see Layer testing thread).
pjrm.
On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 19:23, Peter Moulder wrote:
Recently, the "Sensitive" item in the Object Properties dialog box was changed to "Lock". Presumably this is for consistency with the corresponding layer operation.
The word `Lock' doesn't communicate very well that one can't even select the objects with the mouse (e.g. to view properties), whereas it wrongly communicates that the objects can't be changed.
Most drawing applications combine both behaviors (unselectable and immutable) into their notion of "lock". We can investigate whether it makes sense to separate them in 0.41, but for now we need to fix the tools etc to treat such objects and layers as immutable, at least as far as the mouse tools are concerned.
I think it's acceptable (and probably expected) for locked objects to be modifiable from dialogs (e.g. object properties or the XML editor), though.
I intend to change the word Lock back to either Sensitive or Insensitive (or Canvas-selectable?) and change the tooltip for the layer padlock icon to mention the word sensitive. Maybe "Make the selected objects insensitive, i.e. prevent the selected objects from being selectable with clicks or drags in the canvas."
Please don't. Users will expect lock rather than insensitive, which is why we renamed it in the first place. Also note that the layer padlock has nothing to do with the selected objects specifically.
-mental
On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 10:19:12PM -0500, MenTaLguY wrote:
We can investigate whether it makes sense to separate them in 0.41, but for now we need to fix the tools etc to treat such objects and layers as immutable, at least as far as the mouse tools are concerned.
Brisgeek was saying that offhand he couldn't think of a situation where he'd want to mark objects as read-only/immutable (other than having the whole diagram be immutable, as in inkview).
Brisgeek and other drawing people, can you think a bit more about this?
To me (as a non-artist) it doesn't seem very useful to prevent modification with the mouse tool of already-selected objects, as it's easy to deselect them if you've just made them insensitve. Whereas it does seem useful to be able to modify things that you've gone to the trouble of selecting despite them being insensitive.
I'd note that it's less work for it to mean merely insensitive rather than insensitive and immutable from mouse tools. I'd suggest that at least for 0.40, we keep it as meaning merely affecting canvas-selectability.
Most drawing applications combine both behaviors (unselectable and immutable) into their notion of "lock".
We'll keep that in mind, though Inkscape's general policy is that we should find the most useful behaviour, and let other programs catch up.
Also note that the layer padlock has nothing to do with the selected objects specifically.
I understand that. The commonness is that both control the sodipodi:insensitive attribute, whether of the selected objects or of the current layer.
pjrm.
participants (2)
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MenTaLguY -
Peter Moulder