-----Forwarded Message----- From: Marek Peteraj <marpet@...83...> To: MenTaLguY <mental@...3...> Subject: Re: inkscape Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 16:33:14 +0100

On Thu, 2003-11-27 at 08:52, MenTaLguY wrote:

On Tue, 2003-11-25 at 11:40, Marek Peteraj wrote:

...

Hi Mental,

i just learned about inkscape, seems to be a very cool project, and as i'm not subscribed to the mailing list yet, i'd like to make a few suggestions:

(sorry for the belated reply; I've been buried in mail)

np :)

May I have your permission to forward your message to the Inkscape mailing list?

Yes of course, you can also forward this one.

I hadn't seen a recent version of the GIMP for some time; I wasn't very impressed with it the last time I used it, but it looks like they've made some major changes to the UI. I'll have to work with it some more soon and get a feel for what's new.

Check out the latest release(iirc 1.3.22, i'm still on .18) and take your time to organize and dock your dialogs and toy around with it to get the feel of the UI :) Also see my gimp screenshot.

Also i've made an inkscape screenshot to demonstrate why the gimp UI is so efficient(i'm a heavy gimp user, it's my everyday tool so to speak, it's been like that since 1.0 versions)

Everybody bashing the gimp UI please forget 1.2 :) and check out the latest release of the 1.3.x development cycle, toy around with docking and reorganizing dialogs.

So here it is:

http://www.pleasewipeyourfeet.com/webtest/pr/inkscape.jpg

In apps such as gimp and inkscape, tools and tools options/settings need to be accesible immidiately. Gimp solves that issue by providing a combined dock/tabbed interface. You click on a tool in the toolbox and the appropriate options appear in the tool options dialog, so there are general tool options dialogs which is bound to the toolbox.

http://www.pleasewipeyourfeet.com/webtest/pr/gimp.jpg

see the brush tool selected in the toolbox on the left, the brush tool options bottomright.

The options in inkscape are accesible only through a menu, and thery're not dockable in any way which leads to a mess (13 dialogs open!). Gimp 1.2 suffered from the same problem.

Gimp tends to organize the tools and options very efficiently, it seems to me that the key for designing such UI would be to determine what a tool is, isolate it and set the options for it. See the transformation dialog or the text dialog in the screenshot. Can these be tools? Of course they can :) Can Fill/Stroke or align be a tool? I think it can. Then put all those tools in a static toolbox. (and ask jimmac to make some cool stock icons :) Settings should be put else where, see gimps preferences.

The toolbox should offer only drawing tools or tools closely related to drawing(as i stated in my previous mail). The current tree-like menu is a misconception and should be removed from HiG IMO. The purpose of hiding the tools should be to save some extra space and to organize tools in a logical way. 1. More nodes will introduce even more space consuption so it's not a win at all to use it for that purpose, and there are lots of tools that are not related to each other so what happens is that you make a node called 'miscelaneous' and put all those unrelated tools in there. This doesn't solve the 'break into categories' issue at all. 2. Gimp 1.3.x has introduced a somewhat shuffled toolbox(new tools added etc), and i had some hard time getting used at that. Node-like organizing introduces continuous 'shuffling' in that you always end-up having different nodes opened and closed, the toolbox changes it's size each time you expand/collaps a node. So the purpose of organizing into categories gets totally broken. 3. In a professional environment, where you need to work fast and reliable, a static toolbox is the most efficient thing you'd find. Once you learn it, it never changes. The tools need to be accesible immidiatelly, expanding and collapsing will just slow down the user and distract him from his work. Besides why would you want to toy around with collapsing/expanding when you just need a tool to work with? 4. If i want to use a tool which i haven't used yet and i'm not quite sure what it does, the category won't help me to understand that, for example "touch up" category won't explain what a smudge tool does. Stock icons should be as self-explanatory as possible, and tooltips should be used. If you still don't know and haven't managed to figure by trial&error, the manual should handle the rest.

Another important point is: The C-SDI interface is a perfect replacement for a WiW like environment(window-in-window, see the screenshots in previous mail) when combined with the dock/tabbed UI and should be *enforced* by HiG for apps like gimp and inkscape or DTP apps, not considered to be removed. Compare the gimp screenshot with the other screenshots i've posted.

Also once the user learns how to use one app, it's easy to learn how the other one works, which is also the purpose of HiG i guess - to unify the UI experience.

A good idea would be to talk to the gimp developers and work together on UI usability issues in the future, the results would be included in next revisions of HiG for similar types of apps.

There are 3 major advantages in adopting the gimp UI where possible: 1. unifying the UI in the graphics-aps domain 2. avoid reinventing the wheel, gimp has been developed since 1997(afaik) and can already be considered as a mature professional raster-based app. 3. adopting the UI from an opensource app instead of its proprietary counterparts(no WiW, docking for example).

Simply put, it's time for gimp to have a professional vector-based brother :)

Marek