export bitmap palette redesign
Hi,
Before working on Object manager I decided to give a quick look at "Export bitmap" palette.
Here are tho mockups:
http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup06.png (vertical orientation) http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup07.png (horizontal orientation)
A few notes
1. I can easily imagine plenty of people who would prefer a longer input box for filename. No probs :) Just exchange "Output file:..." label and input box. That's it.
2. I've removed units switcher, because it seems to make no sense as we already have one units switcher in document properties which works everywhere. However it is present on one of first mockups (http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup03.png).
3. I've placed a output file size counter label on the form, because it would be a nifty feature for those who does web design in Inkscape --- they always want to know how large the file is :) Besides otherwise there will be either empty space or a too large "Export" button.
4. I might be missing some feature plans for this palette. No probs, again :) I can redesign current mockups to make them fit your plans.
Alexandre
Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Before working on Object manager I decided to give a quick look at "Export bitmap" palette.
Here are tho mockups:
http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup06.png (vertical orientation) http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup07.png (horizontal orientation)
IIRC, someone proposed the inclusion in the palette of a preview of the exported bitmap. how about a mocup containing such a widget?
A few notes
- I can easily imagine plenty of people who would prefer a longer
input box for filename. No probs :) Just exchange "Output file:..." label and input box. That's it.
- I've removed units switcher, because it seems to make no sense as
we already have one units switcher in document properties which works everywhere. However it is present on one of first mockups (http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup03.png).
it may be useful to change the units from the export palette: the entire page is using one units type but when exporting a specific detail you may need other units, one case can be if the entire document is intended for one type of usage (print) and the detail for another (web)
- I've placed a output file size counter label on the form, because
it would be a nifty feature for those who does web design in Inkscape --- they always want to know how large the file is :) Besides otherwise there will be either empty space or a too large "Export" button.
i think the usefulness of displaying the file size is increasing when the settings for save can be adjusted (for example export as JPEG and change compression) but AFAIK for now Inkscape can export only as PNG.
- I might be missing some feature plans for this palette. No probs,
again :) I can redesign current mockups to make them fit your plans.
i won't claim knowledge of HIG (because i don't have) but my first impression of this mockup is that it can use more spacing, it looks too dense and busy
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 11:43:54 +0200, Nicu Buculei <nicu@...398...> wrote:
IIRC, someone proposed the inclusion in the palette of a preview of the exported bitmap. how about a mocup containing such a widget?
I can add it as hideable part of the palette (like in GIMP's open/save dialogs), if it's really needed.
it may be useful to change the units from the export palette: the entire page is using one units type but when exporting a specific detail you may need other units, one case can be if the entire document is intended for one type of usage (print) and the detail for another (web)
I do not have such an experience :) But I will keep in mind your vote.
i think the usefulness of displaying the file size is increasing when the settings for save can be adjusted (for example export as JPEG and change compression) but AFAIK for now Inkscape can export only as PNG.
Well, no problems with temporary removing it :)
i won't claim knowledge of HIG (because i don't have) but my first impression of this mockup is that it can use more spacing, it looks too dense and busy
Actually I tried to make this palette as small as possible. The reason is simple: I hate large dialogs/palettes and I'm not the only one. One of most widespread complains about opensource software written in Gtk/Qt is that everything is huge and takes too much place on screen. E.g. look at "Resize image..." dialog in the GIMP. GIMP has gone through HIGification cycle, but still this dialog as larger than it could be.
Alexandre
Hello Alexandre! Nice to hear that someone is working on the export dialog!
i won't claim knowledge of HIG (because i don't have) but my first impression of this mockup is that it can use more spacing, it looks too dense and busy
Actually I tried to make this palette as small as possible. The reason is simple: I hate large dialogs/palettes and I'm not the only one. One of most widespread complains about opensource software written in Gtk/Qt is that everything is huge and takes too much place on screen. E.g. look at "Resize image..." dialog in the GIMP. GIMP has gone through HIGification cycle, but still this dialog as larger than it could be.
Alexandre
But is the export dialog something that you have open all the time? I understand the need for small windows if it is something that you will have open most of the time, but is the export dialog really one of those? The drawbacks of small windows with little spacing is that they are
As Alan pointed out to me when I was redesigning the upcoming Preferences dialog, one should use headers and space rather than frames to separate content as described here: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/controls-frames.html
Also, did you read the suggestion of bitmap preview in the export dialog? http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1064371&gro... (I belive this is planned for, but if it's not, just forget about it)
BTW, great idea with the dropdown list, much better than the current implentation. - Andreas
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 16:10:13 +0100, Andreas Nilsson <nisses.mail@...563...> wrote:
But is the export dialog something that you have open all the time? I understand the need for small windows if it is something that you will have open most of the time, but is the export dialog really one of those? The drawbacks of small windows with little spacing is that they are
As Ted Gould pointed out in a thread a week ago (http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=6269865&forum_id=...), "Export bitmap" was designed from ground up for constant interaction with a document. I thought it was meant to be a dialog before as well - basically, because a) I got used to any export windows as to a dialog, b) most, if not all Inkscape's dialogs have bo "Close" button, so you never know :)
And, actually, it's quite annoying to deal with large "temporary" windows. If you haven't looked at old gtk1 version of sweep (an audio editor by C. Parker), take a look at its dialogs and compare them to my mockups for them (four most recent entries at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=4854&atid=104854). You will most likley notice the difference ;)
As Alan pointed out to me when I was redesigning the upcoming Preferences dialog, one should use headers and space rather than frames to separate content as described here: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/controls-frames.html
Thank you for reminding me it. I will prepare another couple of HIGified mockups later tonight.
Also, did you read the suggestion of bitmap preview in the export dialog? http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1064371&gro... (I belive this is planned for, but if it's not, just forget about it)
No, I haven't read it before. Nicu mentioned it today. Thank you for the precise link. I'm pretty sure that it's possible to implement easy hiding/showing this preview without leaving the palette.
Alexandre
Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Before working on Object manager I decided to give a quick look at "Export bitmap" palette.
Here are tho mockups:
http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup06.png (vertical orientation) http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup07.png (horizontal orientation)
sorry, i forgot to mention in my first message: i like better the horizontal orientation (looks easier to read)
On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 12:01 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Here are tho mockups:
http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup06.png (vertical orientation) http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup07.png (horizontal orientation)
Cool, I like the look. I like the vertical one because I think that it is more similar to the orientation all our other windows. I think they would be easier to arrange if they are all similar shape.
- I might be missing some feature plans for this palette. No probs,
again :) I can redesign current mockups to make them fit your plans.
One thing that you should probably make room for (but isn't implemented yet) is choosing a format for the save (so, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, etc.) I'm thinking perhaps a drop down selector above the filename?
--Ted
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 08:26:59 -0700, Ted Gould <ted@...11...> wrote:
On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 12:01 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Here are tho mockups:
http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup06.png (vertical orientation) http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup07.png (horizontal orientation)
Cool, I like the look. I like the vertical one because I think that it is more similar to the orientation all our other windows. I think they would be easier to arrange if they are all similar shape.
As for me, I prefer the vertically oriented oen as well, because
a) it's easier to distribute widgets on it :); b) I have a 16:10 ratio laptop screen, which is why I prefer to keep palettes on left and right sides, not on top/bottom ones; c) if we ever come to grouping palettes a-la GIMP, vertical approach will be most likely preferable.
- I might be missing some feature plans for this palette. No probs,
again :) I can redesign current mockups to make them fit your plans.
One thing that you should probably make room for (but isn't implemented yet) is choosing a format for the save (so, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, etc.) I'm thinking perhaps a drop down selector above the filename?
For that I need to know what is faster -- to select one of available formats in a combobox, or to type three letters after the dot in the filename to let Inscape automagically figure out, what export algorithm to use.
Another "little" thingie is that exporting will require defining some settings like compress ration, use of LZW compression algorithm (for TIFF) etc. How a user would like to reach them? I'm not using this palette all the time, so I would like to listen to people, who have other experience. Use cases, please :)
Alexandre
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
For that I need to know what is faster -- to select one of available formats in a combobox, or to type three letters after the dot in the filename to let Inscape automagically figure out, what export algorithm to use.
Users are going to expect both. If you have to pick one, the combo box is probably more important.
-mental
On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 18:40 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 08:26:59 -0700, Ted Gould <ted@...11...> wrote:
One thing that you should probably make room for (but isn't implemented yet) is choosing a format for the save (so, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, etc.) I'm thinking perhaps a drop down selector above the filename?
For that I need to know what is faster -- to select one of available formats in a combobox, or to type three letters after the dot in the filename to let Inscape automagically figure out, what export algorithm to use.
Another "little" thingie is that exporting will require defining some settings like compress ration, use of LZW compression algorithm (for TIFF) etc. How a user would like to reach them? I'm not using this palette all the time, so I would like to listen to people, who have other experience. Use cases, please :)
I prefer to have the combo box because I hate requiring file extensions for anything. I think that they are an evil hack, but I understand the need to support them.
Currently the life cycle for extensions is load->preferences->execute (and unload some time later). From the programming perspective I think using the same preference life cycle would be nice and simple. This would mean that another window would pop up when a format that requires it. I don't know that this is the most eloquent, but it is certainly the easiest to program.
--Ted
Ted Gould wrote:
On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 18:40 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
For that I need to know what is faster -- to select one of available formats in a combobox, or to type three letters after the dot in the filename to let Inscape automagically figure out, what export algorithm to use.
I prefer to have the combo box because I hate requiring file extensions for anything. I think that they are an evil hack, but I understand the need to support them.
the combo box is useful because a simple user is not expected to know which is the list of all supported formats for export and in the absence of this list has to guess in order to type the extension name. for the advanced user, typing may be faster, so both options should be present.
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 09:46:06 +0200, Nicu Buculei <nicu@...398...> wrote:
Ted Gould wrote:
On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 18:40 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
For that I need to know what is faster -- to select one of available formats in a combobox, or to type three letters after the dot in the filename to let Inscape automagically figure out, what export algorithm to use.
I prefer to have the combo box because I hate requiring file extensions for anything. I think that they are an evil hack, but I understand the need to support them.
the combo box is useful because a simple user is not expected to know which is the list of all supported formats for export and in the absence of this list has to guess in order to type the extension name. for the advanced user, typing may be faster, so both options should be present.
Before I start doing discussed things like
- get rid of bytes counting label - add combo for file format - add hideable preview - HIGifize
I'd like to know, whether I should keep in mind batch export. I haven't found any RFE neither at SF that has "batch" in summary, nor in Wiki.
Judging by my own experience using usual guides for slicing is not very nice, and it's not really awaited by people with Adobe or any similar background. Again, my experience maydiffer from yours.
Alexandre
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 09:46:06 +0200, Nicu Buculei <nicu@...398...> wrote:
Ted Gould wrote:
On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 18:40 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
For that I need to know what is faster -- to select one of available formats in a combobox, or to type three letters after the dot in the filename to let Inscape automagically figure out, what export algorithm to use.
I prefer to have the combo box because I hate requiring file extensions for anything. I think that they are an evil hack, but I understand the need to support them.
the combo box is useful because a simple user is not expected to know which is the list of all supported formats for export and in the absence of this list has to guess in order to type the extension name. for the advanced user, typing may be faster, so both options should be present.
Before I start doing discussed things like
- get rid of bytes counting label
- add combo for file format
- add hideable preview
- HIGifize
I'd like to know, whether I should keep in mind batch export. I haven't found any RFE neither at SF that has "batch" in summary, nor in Wiki. Alexandre
Did you get a sufficiently solid answer to this?
Bryce
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:29:50 -0800 (PST), Bryce Harrington
I'd like to know, whether I should keep in mind batch export. I haven't found any RFE neither at SF that has "batch" in summary, nor in Wiki. Alexandre
Did you get a sufficiently solid answer to this?
I'm afraid I haven't. I'd like to get a better idea what people understand under "batch export" and how it should work. Well, time to go to users list, I guess.
Alexandre
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:29:50 -0800 (PST), Bryce Harrington
I'd like to know, whether I should keep in mind batch export. I haven't found any RFE neither at SF that has "batch" in summary, nor in Wiki. Alexandre
Did you get a sufficiently solid answer to this?
I'm afraid I haven't. I'd like to get a better idea what people understand under "batch export" and how it should work. Well, time to go to users list, I guess.
Good idea. I've not needed to do batch exports from within Inkscape so don't have a good idea of how this would be used. A few times I've needed to do a lot of svg2png conversion, but I used Inkscape from the commandline to do it.
Bryce
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:59:44 -0800 (PST), Bryce Harrington <bryce@...260...> wrote:
Good idea. I've not needed to do batch exports from within Inkscape so don't have a good idea of how this would be used. A few times I've needed to do a lot of svg2png conversion, but I used Inkscape from the commandline to do it.
So did I. Perhaps a GUI facility would be nice to have too, but shell scripts are pretty convenient. You just need to list the ids of the areas you want to export, as explained in the slicing tip I added here:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, bulia byak wrote:
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 16:06:05 -0400 From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> To: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...260...> Cc: Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...>, Inkscape ML inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] export bitmap palette redesign
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:59:44 -0800 (PST), Bryce Harrington <bryce@...260...> wrote:
Good idea. I've not needed to do batch exports from within Inkscape so don't have a good idea of how this would be used. A few times I've needed to do a lot of svg2png conversion, but I used Inkscape from the commandline to do it.
So did I. Perhaps a GUI facility would be nice to have too,
I used to be terrified by the command line. Nowadays if a task is tedious enough I'll bit the bullet and try and script it but I am (in theory at least) a computer programmer.
I wouldn't expect an ordinary user, or the average artist to want to know about the command line.
I briefly thought about the problem but I haven't had the insight or time to come up with a good use case and describe what I think is needed for Alex, sorry. I suppose at a minimum users would want a GUI for exporting each layer as a seperate image without having to go through one at a time.
but shell scripts are pretty convenient. You just need to list the ids of the areas you want to export, as explained in the slicing tip I added here:
- Alan
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 16:06:05 -0400, bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:59:44 -0800 (PST), Bryce Harrington <bryce@...260...> wrote:
Good idea. I've not needed to do batch exports from within Inkscape so don't have a good idea of how this would be used. A few times I've needed to do a lot of svg2png conversion, but I used Inkscape from the commandline to do it.
So did I. Perhaps a GUI facility would be nice to have too, but shell scripts are pretty convenient. You just need to list the ids of the areas you want to export, as explained in the slicing tip I added here:
One word: Windows
Give me an easy installable shell for Windows which will be as good as bash/zsh is, and I will ask no questions :) For now using standard WIndows shell is pain.
Alexandre
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:58:14PM +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
One word: Windows
Give me an easy installable shell for Windows which will be as good as bash/zsh is, and I will ask no questions :) For now using standard WIndows shell is pain.
cygwin.com
pretty easy. :)
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:58:45 -0800, Kees Cook <inkscape@...62...> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:58:14PM +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
One word: Windows
Give me an easy installable shell for Windows which will be as good as bash/zsh is, and I will ask no questions :) For now using standard WIndows shell is pain.
cygwin.com
pretty easy. :)
Not a brilliant idea, sorry :)
1. Users need to figure out what packages they need and then install then (downloading everything 'live'). 2. Cygwin has serious i18n issues that noone wishes to solve.
Alexandre
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 07:10:06PM +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Not a brilliant idea, sorry :)
- Users need to figure out what packages they need and then install
then (downloading everything 'live').
Well, it does install bash by default, but yes, I wasn't following the thread too closely, I thought you meant for yourself, rather than "users". :)
- Cygwin has serious i18n issues that noone wishes to solve.
Ah, didn't know about the i18n issues.
Nevermind! :) no shell for windows! :)
Kees Cook wrote:
Ah, didn't know about the i18n issues.
Nevermind! :) no shell for windows! :)
There is another alternative. In the experimental libs, we have two very nice interpreters. How about, instead of executing Perl in a shell, or executing Python in a shell, we let Perl or Python -be- the shell? Would save a lot of pain.
Bob
Bob Jamison wrote:
There is another alternative. In the experimental libs, we have two very nice interpreters. How about, instead of executing Perl in a shell, or executing Python in a shell, we let Perl or Python -be- the shell? Would save a lot of pain.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!
/me ph43z the dependency and support issues alone... not to mention some others...
is http://mingw.org/msys.shtml what your after?
--- Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:58:45 -0800, Kees Cook <inkscape@...62...> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:58:14PM +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine
wrote:
One word: Windows
Give me an easy installable shell for Windows which will be as
good as
bash/zsh is, and I will ask no questions :) For now using
standard
WIndows shell is pain.
cygwin.com
pretty easy. :)
Not a brilliant idea, sorry :)
- Users need to figure out what packages they need and then install
then (downloading everything 'live'). 2. Cygwin has serious i18n issues that noone wishes to solve.
Alexandre
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On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:46:48 -0800 (PST), John Cliff <simarilius@...36...> wrote:
is http://mingw.org/msys.shtml what your after?
It it supposed to solve a problem with using Inkscape from Windows shell in batch mode?
Alexandre
Hello.
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:58:45 -0800, Kees Cook <inkscape@...62...> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:58:14PM +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
One word: Windows Give me an easy installable shell for Windows which will be as good as bash/zsh is, and I will ask no questions :) For now using standard WIndows shell is pain.
cygwin.com pretty easy. :)
Well, I wouldn't call Cygwin neither pretty nor easy. :)
And for my daily dose of bash, I use Colinux, which is definitely too much for this case.
Greetings!
Daniel Díaz yosoy@...31...
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:01:43 +0300 From: Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> To: Inkscape ML inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Inkscape-devel] export bitmap palette redesign
Hi,
Before working on Object manager I decided to give a quick look at "Export bitmap" palette.
I'll admit up front that I don't have a better answer but I think you are going about this problem the wrong way and I ask you to step back and analyse the problem rather than the palette layout specifically.
Here are tho mockups:
http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup06.png (vertical orientation) http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup07.png (horizontal orientation)
Of the two palettes you have shown I must say I prefer the vertical palette because it is more likely to fit into any future dock (similar to what the GIMP uses). Also the reading flow from top to bottom is marginally clearer than two seperate columns and I think could probably be changed so as not to need frames for layout (while still retaining the clean tight layout).
The bigger problem is the question why is there a need to have a palette left open for bitmap export? I really believe this designed evolved through incremental changes to make export less repetative rather than a solid design to solve specific problems.
I believe the answer is that we need a fully fledged tool that makes it easier to batch export files. (Save for Web in Adobe photoshop being the closest analogy I can think of but it isn't exactly a batch tool.)
I also dont believe it makes sense to try and make the same dialog cover the use case of 'one-off' or occasional exports for ordinary usrs who are not likely to want to use different bounding boxes (page, selection, etc) and at the same time cater to the users who want the more complex repeated export of a sequence of files and quick access to changing lots of options.
Keep in mind that JPEG and other GdkPixbuf support files is something that will likely need to be added soon and I'm sure we will have requests for all sorts of different options. I believe there is no need to dumb things down and that we can cater to power users by seperating out the complex exporter from a much more simple Save As/Export png.
Hope that makes sense. I strongly urge you to step back and try and solve the bigger underlying problems this dialog is clearly trying to address.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Dia is for Diagrams http://gnome.org/projects/dia/
Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Abiword is Awesome http://abisource.com
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 16:20:55 +0000 (GMT), Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
Before working on Object manager I decided to give a quick look at "Export bitmap" palette.
I'll admit up front that I don't have a better answer but I think you are going about this problem the wrong way and I ask you to step back and analyse the problem rather than the palette layout specifically.
Well, we have discussed this before and I was pointed to the fact that we need
1. Save as function. 2. A GIMP-like Export function. 3. An export bitmap palette (Designer C from Ted's report).
I have considered this discussion closed. Looks like I was wrong :)
Of the two palettes you have shown I must say I prefer the vertical palette because it is more likely to fit into any future dock (similar to what the GIMP uses). Also the reading flow from top to bottom is marginally clearer than two seperate columns and I think could probably be changed so as not to need frames for layout (while still retaining the clean tight layout).
I like the vertical one more as well (see my letter below in this thread).
Alexandre
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 19:27:25 +0300 From: Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> To: Inkscape ML inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] export bitmap palette redesign
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 16:20:55 +0000 (GMT), Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
Before working on Object manager I decided to give a quick look at "Export bitmap" palette.
I'll admit up front that I don't have a better answer but I think you are going about this problem the wrong way and I ask you to step back and analyse the problem rather than the palette layout specifically.
Well, we have discussed this before and I was pointed to the fact that we need
- Save as function.
- A GIMP-like Export function.
- An export bitmap palette (Designer C from Ted's report).
I have considered this discussion closed. Looks like I was wrong :)
I'm probably looking at this from a different perspective and not properly understanding what others have in mind.
I'm not clear on the distinction between 1 and 2 and I don't see how 3 (the Palette) will have room to accomodate the complexity and various options people seem to want.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Dia is for Diagrams http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Abiword is Awesome http://abisource.com
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 18:15:44 +0000 (GMT), Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
I'm probably looking at this from a different perspective and not properly understanding what others have in mind.
I'm not clear on the distinction between 1 and 2 and I don't see how 3 (the Palette) will have room to accomodate the complexity and various options people seem to want.
Alan, I'm not in a rush really. If I want to do something, I want to do it precisely, which is why I've been asking for use cases.
If you're planning to Export to bitmap a different way, please find some time to sit down, think about this function and describe the procedure, or describe it the way you do it in some other vector graphics editor. This would be really nice and most helpful ;)
Alexandre
Alan Horkan wrote:
I believe the answer is that we need a fully fledged tool that makes it
easier to batch export files. (Save for Web in Adobe photoshop being the
closest analogy I can think of but it isn't exactly a batch tool.)
The other day I was remembering the batch export discussion and I wondered how it was going to turn out. I'm neither developer nor designer so I'm sure you guys have better ideas coming.
I though the exports could be stored in the SVG document like guides. There could be two export object types: selections and ranges. Ranges would be similar to an SVG rectangle, the bounding rectangle would be stored. Perhaps visual range cues would be possible too. the ids of objects to export would be stored for selections. There should probably be a way make the current selection in the editor an export selection and make an export selection the current selection in the document. Selection editing could be accomplished like that. I picture a dialog witha list of exports on the left and the standard export palette for the selection on the right. For each selection there could be a checkbox for export on save and a place to configure filename, file type and path.
Is that similar to what others had pictured?
Aaron Spike
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:01:43 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> wrote:
http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup06.png (vertical orientation) http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup07.png (horizontal orientation)
Thanks. The difference with the current one is mostly cosmetic (except for the units thing discussed below), so OK with me if someone wants to implement it.
- I've removed units switcher, because it seems to make no sense as
we already have one units switcher in document properties which works everywhere. However it is present on one of first mockups (http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup03.png).
If you remove it, you need to at least display the units it uses somewhere. And if you display it, why not allow changing it? I agree it is slightly redundant, but removing it does not appeal to me either.
- I've placed a output file size counter label on the form, because
it would be a nifty feature for those who does web design in Inkscape --- they always want to know how large the file is :) Besides otherwise there will be either empty space or a too large "Export" button.
That's a good idea. If only I knew how to calculate that :)
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 14:58:48 -0400, bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> wrote:
- I've removed units switcher, because it seems to make no sense as
we already have one units switcher in document properties which works everywhere. However it is present on one of first mockups (http://techwriter.nm.ru/mockups/mockup03.png ).
If you remove it, you need to at least display the units it uses somewhere. And if you display it, why not allow changing it? I agree it is slightly redundant, but removing it does not appeal to me either.
Don't know if GtkSpinbox allows prefix/suffix like QtSpinbox does (I didn't check API). If yes, a suffix (pt|px|mm) could be added. But I'm fine about bringing back switching combobox.
I'm just waiting for use casesm but it looks like this is not the most appropriate list for them. I think I should go to *-users@ list.
Alexandre
One more thing I don't like about your drafts: the drop-down for selection/page/drawing/custom. Compared to radio buttons, it has these problems:
- I don't see all the choices at once
- to select, I need to click+drag, not just click as before
These are small things, but I don't see any advantage to the drop-down that would justify these minor inconveniences.
On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:40:20 -0400, bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> wrote:
One more thing I don't like about your drafts: the drop-down for selection/page/drawing/custom. Compared to radio buttons, it has these problems:
I don't see all the choices at once
to select, I need to click+drag, not just click as before
These are small things, but I don't see any advantage to the drop-down that would justify these minor inconveniences.
The very first mockup I did had 4 icons for all/page/selection/special.I didn't like the way it looked. But I see a point in decreasing amount of clicks.
As for "seeing all choices", the whole nature of comboboxes is in giving variants :)
Alexandre
participants (14)
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unknown@example.com
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Alan Horkan
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Alexandre Prokoudine
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Andreas Nilsson
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Bob Jamison
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Bryce Harrington
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bulia byak
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Daniel Díaz
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John Cliff
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Jon A. Cruz
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Kees Cook
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MenTaLguY
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Nicu Buculei
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Ted Gould