Do geometric contructions tool / general Inkscape UX discussions
HI all,
I just noticed the new "Do Geometric constructions" tool in the inkscape trunk, and this got me thinking a few things about this new tool (and inkscape usability and UX in general).
First up, this tool provides (among other things) two new ways to create a circle: "a circle by three points", and a "circle by center and radius". These are pretty neat additions, but my first question when I saw this was why is this in a completely separate tool, not as a sub-tool of the circle tool. I understand these are implemented as LPEs, but from a user point of view, if you want to create a circle, wouldn't you expect these options in the circle tool? If they were in the circle tool, there might even be the option to create a circle with the traditional mode of the circle tool, then fine-tune it with one of the other two "editing" modes, rather than it appear to the user to be three completely separate object types that can't be converted back and forth.
Something similar is also in play with the (present in 0.91 "shape" option of the pen tool) the "shape" option only works when creating a new line with the pen tool, while other tools (such as the star/polygon tool) allow changes in the tools control bar to impact the currently selected object.
I know this is kind of out of the blue, but i have been thinking a lot lately about some of the inconsistencies like this in the inkscape interface, and would love to try to help contribute to fixes / be involved with helping with the usability of new tools we create. Has there ever been anyone involved with doing usablity reviews / testing of this sort? (doctormon, i know you did some last year :) ) I know of plenty of UX people that use Inkscape that would probably be keen in contributing in this area.
cheers, ryanlerch
On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 1:20 AM, Ryan Lerch wrote:
HI all,
I just noticed the new "Do Geometric constructions" tool in the inkscape trunk, and this got me thinking a few things about this new tool (and inkscape usability and UX in general).
It's by no means new :) It's probably 6 years old or so.
First up, this tool provides (among other things) two new ways to create a circle: "a circle by three points", and a "circle by center and radius". These are pretty neat additions, but my first question when I saw this was why is this in a completely separate tool, not as a sub-tool of the circle tool.
Because the idea was the create a set of CAD-flavored features that are not limited to drawing circles, and that idea was, in fact, implemented :)
but from a user point of view, if you want to create a circle, wouldn't you expect these options in the circle tool?
What would you do about drawing bisectors and suchlike? :)
I know this is kind of out of the blue, but i have been thinking a lot lately about some of the inconsistencies like this in the inkscape interface, and would love to try to help contribute to fixes / be involved with helping with the usability of new tools we create. Has there ever been anyone involved with doing usablity reviews / testing of this sort? (doctormon, i know you did some last year :) ) I know of plenty of UX people that use Inkscape that would probably be keen in contributing in this area.
It's definitely something that needs tons of work :)
Alex
I have not been able to find this item on the menu, where is it located?
Alvin
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On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 2:08 AM, alvinpenner wrote:
I have not been able to find this item on the menu, where is it located?
There's an
#ifdef WITH_LPETOOL
in src/widgets/toolbox.cpp, and you might need to check the list of commented out LPEs for relevant effects.
Alex
On 2015-02-26 24:08 (+0100), alvinpenner wrote:
I have not been able to find this item on the menu, where is it located?
The geom tool is not in a menu, it has a tool icon added in the toolbox to the left of the canvas, at the bottom, and displays its own toolbar when active.
The geom tool and the experimental path effects had been enabled for autotools-based builds in revision https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/trunk/revision/13889
AFAICT this change was not ported to the build system config files used on Windows:
https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/trunk/changes?filter_fil...
Regards, V
thanks, I'll check it out,
Alvin
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On 02/25/2015 05:35 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 1:20 AM, Ryan Lerch wrote:
HI all,
I just noticed the new "Do Geometric constructions" tool in the inkscape trunk, and this got me thinking a few things about this new tool (and inkscape usability and UX in general).
It's by no means new :) It's probably 6 years old or so.
First up, this tool provides (among other things) two new ways to create a circle: "a circle by three points", and a "circle by center and radius". These are pretty neat additions, but my first question when I saw this was why is this in a completely separate tool, not as a sub-tool of the circle tool.
Because the idea was the create a set of CAD-flavored features that are not limited to drawing circles, and that idea was, in fact, implemented :)
but from a user point of view, if you want to create a circle, wouldn't you expect these options in the circle tool?
What would you do about drawing bisectors and suchlike? :)
Yeah, that is something that would need to be considered too. What I would love to get from this discussion is some sort of loose consensus on how new features and tools should be integrated into the interface, with a focus on making things behave similarly to the tools we already have.
All the new features being added are awesome and useful, but having them behave in all different ways does make it less useful for artists, IMHO.
--ryanlerch
I know this is kind of out of the blue, but i have been thinking a lot lately about some of the inconsistencies like this in the inkscape interface, and would love to try to help contribute to fixes / be involved with helping with the usability of new tools we create. Has there ever been anyone involved with doing usablity reviews / testing of this sort? (doctormon, i know you did some last year :) ) I know of plenty of UX people that use Inkscape that would probably be keen in contributing in this area.
It's definitely something that needs tons of work :)
Alex
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On 25 February 2015 at 23:35, Alexandre Prokoudine < alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> wrote:
I know this is kind of out of the blue, but i have been thinking a lot lately about some of the inconsistencies like this in the inkscape interface, and would love to try to help contribute to fixes / be involved with helping with the usability of new tools we create. Has there ever been anyone involved with doing usablity reviews / testing of this sort? (doctormon, i know you did some last year :) ) I know of plenty of UX people that use Inkscape that would probably be keen in contributing in this area.
It's definitely something that needs tons of work :)
Regarding UI and UX there was some discussion and work in another email thread lately:
http://sourceforge.net/p/inkscape/mailman/inkscape-devel/thread/CAL6-Be6E45M...
The outcome of that was:
https://github.com/PIWEEK/rethinkscape
There is surely some more discussion needed, though I think that's a good starting point.
Sebastian
On Wed, 2015-02-25 at 17:20 -0500, Ryan Lerch wrote:
I know this is kind of out of the blue, but i have been thinking a lot lately about some of the inconsistencies like this in the inkscape interface, and would love to try to help contribute to fixes / be involved with helping with the usability of new tools we create. Has there ever been anyone involved with doing usablity reviews / testing of this sort? (doctormon, i know you did some last year :) ) I know of plenty of UX people that use Inkscape that would probably be keen in contributing in this area.
You're not the only one thinking about these issues Ryan. I've had to put a lot of code contributions on the back burner while I contribute to the website, but I think conceptually we need to bring generated shapes into alignment.
For example star, 3dbox etc. They clutter up the code quite a bit and to be honest bringing them out of the code into something more like an python extension or LPE. It would certainly express the flexibility of the UI to be able to incorporate extensions into toolbars and tool options.
Sadly this will have to continue to wait this end of the line.
Martin,
Ryan Lerch-2 wrote
... I understand these are implemented as LPEs, but from a user point of view, if you want to create a circle, wouldn't you expect these options in the circle tool? ...
What someone will expect is subjective. I have used Autocad and LibreCAD, which both have separate circle tools. Therefore, I would not expect what you suggest.
Personally I don't want to check what mode a tool is in, and possibly have to change that mode.
Something else I like about the idea of these tools being separate is that the circles created with them can simply be saved using the svg circle element.
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participants (7)
-
Alexandre Prokoudine -
alvinpenner -
Martin Owens -
ravas -
Ryan Lerch -
Sebastian Zartner -
su_v