Some suggestions for the fill and stroke dialog
Dear Inkscape developers. The current fill and stroke dialog is a big dialog that takes up 1/4 of my screen and has lots dirrerent of stuff in it. I'll try explain some of it's problems trough a short user case.
--- Joakim is a graphic designer. He makes a lot of illustrations for different clients and is under a constant time pressure. He is currently working on a project where the AD has decided that they will use flat colors and stokes of varying width.
1. Joakim has the fill and stoke dialog up most of the time. It is space consuming and he has to move it constantly or hide it in order to see his artwork. 2. He has to do a huge amount of clicks because he moves between fill style and fill color all the time. 3. He is working in RBG color space, but has the ability to choose CMYK, even if the document is not in that color space. This confuses him. 4. He do not use dash pattern at all for this project. This only takes up space for him. 5. The markers are hard to overview (this is not really important for Joakim right now, but it might be in his next project). ---
I have thought about these problems for a while and come up with a quick mockup with some ideas. http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/new_dialogs_mockup.png
What I have done in this mockup is: - Splitted up the current dialog into smaller dialogs for better customization to suit an artists current workflow.
- The font size is set to small to make the dialogs a bit narrower. - All dialogs are equally wide to make them easy to line up. - If the document is in the cmyk color space, it only shows the cmyk color settings. - I guessed most people uses the stroke width more than the other settings in this dialog and put the more rarely used options in an expander. - The markers are in their own dialog as well, and structured in a way that makes them easier to overlook. Names could be displayed when the mouse hoover over a marker.
BTW. I know this looks a lot like Adobe Illustrator. And yes, I am very accustomed to the interface of that program, and am a bit inspired by it. But hopefully this can spur some discussion on how to better handle the color and stroke dialog/dialogs
- Andreas Nilsson
On Fri, 4 Feb 2005, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
What I have done in this mockup is:
- Splitted up the current dialog into smaller dialogs for better
customization to suit an artists current workflow.
- The font size is set to small to make the dialogs a bit narrower.
- All dialogs are equally wide to make them easy to line up.
- If the document is in the cmyk color space, it only shows the cmyk
color settings.
- I guessed most people uses the stroke width more than the other
settings in this dialog and put the more rarely used options in an expander.
- The markers are in their own dialog as well, and structured in a way
that makes them easier to overlook. Names could be displayed when the mouse hoover over a marker.
Thanks, I've added this mockup to our mockups directory for Gtkmm. Good ideas. I like the marker palette especially.
Bryce
- Joakim has the fill and stoke dialog up most of the time. It is space
consuming and he has to move it constantly or hide it in order to see his artwork.
I agree it's big, but what we need much more urgently is:
- a palette at the bottom of the screen, like in Skencil or Xara (see our wiki for screenshots)
- a current color indicator (like the one in the "color selector" in your mockup), except that it must not be in any dialog, but at the bottom of the main toolbar, on on the left of the horizontal palette
With these, 90% of reasons to open fill&stroke will be eliminated, and its size won't matter much anymore.
- He has to do a huge amount of clicks because he moves between fill
style and fill color all the time.
With palette, you click to change fill, shift+click to change stroke (same as the dropper tool now). Again, using fill&stroke for this will be much less frequent, so there's no need to break it up.
- He is working in RBG color space, but has the ability to choose CMYK,
even if the document is not in that color space. This confuses him.
I don't understand this. All graphic apps allow me to switch color modes. Why can't Inkscape?
- He do not use dash pattern at all for this project. This only takes
up space for him.
It does not take much space, it's just a tab. You don't open it if you don't need it.
However another thing which is needed much more frequently than the rest of that tab is stroke width. So a copy of that spinbutton must be placed somewhere in the main interface (selector controls? or somewhere next to the current color widget?)
- The markers are hard to overview (this is not really important for
Joakim right now, but it might be in his next project).
With this I 100% agree, and the marker widget on your mock-up is similar to what I proposed long ago. Someone please implement it!
- If the document is in the cmyk color space, it only shows the cmyk
color settings.
SVGs version 1.1 documents cannot use CMYK at all, so this is irrelevant. The CMYK selector is just a convenience. And then, even if I have a CMYK document of some kind, why on earth can't I use HSV or RGB to find a color I want, and have it converted to CMYK by the program?
- I guessed most people uses the stroke width more than the other
settings in this dialog and put the more rarely used options in an expander.
See above, once you have stroke width in the main interface, the expander is not needed.
- The markers are in their own dialog as well, and structured in a way
that makes them easier to overlook. Names could be displayed when the mouse hoover over a marker.
Separating markers does make sense, though maybe not into a dialog but into a new tab in fill&stroke.
BTW. I know this looks a lot like Adobe Illustrator. And yes, I am very accustomed to the interface of that program, and am a bit inspired by it. But hopefully this can spur some discussion on how to better handle the color and stroke dialog/dialogs
Frankly, I find the interface of AI a disaster. It does not even have a helpful statusbar! :) And all those tiny windows scattered all over the screen make me dizzy. I spend most of the time trying to find what I need among them.
Myself, I'm more influenced by Xara. And the Xara approach is to make the most common tools/options part of the main interface, so they are always at hand. We've been following this principle from the start, and even went further than Xara itself in it, by placing the quick layer selector in the statusbar (and it was a very good idea IMHO, though we need a traditional layers dialog as well). People seem to like this approach, and I very much want to continue it, not Illustratorify the interface without real need.
So: can you please do another mockup, with a palette, current color indicator, and stroke width all in the main window, as described above? Once we have them, I think we can leave fill&stroke more or less as it is - even if clumsy, it's logical.
Hi guys, back again* and giving my comments :)
On Fri, 2005-02-04 at 04:13 -0400, bulia byak wrote:
- Joakim has the fill and stoke dialog up most of the time. It is
space
consuming and he has to move it constantly or hide it in order to
see
his artwork.
I agree it's big, but what we need much more urgently is:
- a palette at the bottom of the screen, like in Skencil or Xara (see
our wiki for screenshots)
- a current color indicator (like the one in the "color selector" in
your mockup), except that it must not be in any dialog, but at the bottom of the main toolbar, on on the left of the horizontal palette
Hmm, from Adobe I'm used to having it under the main toolbar, an it's make sense to be there, but with the current layout it would be too small. So maybe I'd just put two buttons in front of the color-selection bar/palette at the bottom.I think that would make a lot of sense.
With these, 90% of reasons to open fill&stroke will be eliminated, and its size won't matter much anymore.
Well, you'll still have to have a dialog to change the colors (opening via double click) and you'll have to have a dialog for stroke stuff. Concerning the CMYK vs RGB argument, Andreas gave: I think it should be a drop down, because you've gotta be able to define RGB colors, even when you're in a CMYK document, but the standard of the drop down has to be set by document prefs.
- He has to do a huge amount of clicks because he moves between
fill
style and fill color all the time.
With palette, you click to change fill, shift+click to change stroke (same as the dropper tool now). Again, using fill&stroke for this will be much less frequent, so there's no need to break it up.
(There also should always be one empty color field to add new colors and you'll have to be able to drag colors within the pallete. Furthermore: have a Inkscape setting to have _no_ colors in the palette at startup. That's the way I'm working, predefined colors (other than black and white) are unnecessary for me and hinder the workflow, while other people might want to have them.)
- He is working in RBG color space, but has the ability to choose
CMYK,
even if the document is not in that color space. This confuses him.
I don't understand this. All graphic apps allow me to switch color modes. Why can't Inkscape?
Point is that maybe this should be a document setting, because you either want to do stuff for print publishing or for computer publishing -- a mix doesn't really make sense. Still see my comment above.
- He do not use dash pattern at all for this project. This only
takes
up space for him.
It does not take much space, it's just a tab. You don't open it if you don't need it.
True. I even think with the change of the color choosing process as outline above, the two dialogs should be split.
However another thing which is needed much more frequently than the rest of that tab is stroke width. So a copy of that spinbutton must be placed somewhere in the main interface (selector controls? or somewhere next to the current color widget?)
Hmm, disagreed. Put the other stroke stuff into an expander like in the mock-up, so that you can hide and show it easily, when you need it. In general I don't like the idea being able to do the same thing at multiple places.
- The markers are hard to overview (this is not really important
for
Joakim right now, but it might be in his next project).
With this I 100% agree, and the marker widget on your mock-up is similar to what I proposed long ago. Someone please implement it!
I'm not yet sure, how the selector in the mock-up is supposed to work. Wouldn't it make sense if it had tabs at the top for switching between start, join and end markers? Or maybe you should just have a Markers dialogue without any lines shown in the preview and you drag them and drop them into the stroke-style dialogue as start, join or end marker.... I think that would make a lot of sense, because that way you can easily use any marker anywhere.
- If the document is in the cmyk color space, it only shows the cmyk
color settings.
SVGs version 1.1 documents cannot use CMYK at all, so this is irrelevant. The CMYK selector is just a convenience. And then, even if I have a CMYK document of some kind, why on earth can't I use HSV or RGB to find a color I want, and have it converted to CMYK by the program?
It's true, but for some reason graphic programs usually distinguish a little stronger between the color spaces.
- I guessed most people uses the stroke width more than the other
settings in this dialog and put the more rarely used options in an
expander.
See above, once you have stroke width in the main interface, the expander is not needed.
See above, I think the expander is the better idea :) Oh... and below... I just had another idea.
- The markers are in their own dialog as well, and structured in a
way
that makes them easier to overlook. Names could be displayed when
the
mouse hoover over a marker.
Separating markers does make sense, though maybe not into a dialog but into a new tab in fill&stroke.
hmm, that make me think of something. why not put everything in separate tabs? Like [stroke weight], [caps and joins] (including miter limit -- miter limit needs a spinbox!), [pattern] (this might as well get more options like in Corel, where you can define your own pattern styles) and [markers].
BTW. I know this looks a lot like Adobe Illustrator. And yes, I am
very
accustomed to the interface of that program, and am a bit inspired
by
it. But hopefully this can spur some discussion on how to better
handle
the color and stroke dialog/dialogs
Frankly, I find the interface of AI a disaster. It does not even have a helpful statusbar! :) And all those tiny windows scattered all over the screen make me dizzy. I spend most of the time trying to find what I need among them.
Myself, I'm more influenced by Xara. And the Xara approach is to make the most common tools/options part of the main interface, so they are always at hand. We've been following this principle from the start, and even went further than Xara itself in it, by placing the quick layer selector in the statusbar (and it was a very good idea IMHO, though we need a traditional layers dialog as well). People seem to like this approach, and I very much want to continue it, not Illustratorify the interface without real need.
Hmmpff, the quick layer selection?? Maybe it's a good idea, once there is another layer/objects dialogue, but as is right now, I haven't yet managed to make layers part of my workflow. I only notice them, when for some strange reason I can't move one object behind another.
K, that's it for now.
Take care guys!!
David
*I sent in my laptop because my CDRom was broken, and they sent it back to me with a new hard drive. I still don't have things set up the way I'd need them to be, but at least I can read and write mails again :)
Point is that maybe this should be a document setting, because you either want to do stuff for print publishing or for computer publishing -- a mix doesn't really make sense. Still see my comment above.
Well the question is not that simple :
If you design a "magazine logo" that MUST be the same that the WEB ONE : what do you do ? make the conversion by hand ? choosing CMJK-side (in you RGB draw) is realy a GOOD point. I am suprised that you ask to "reduce" the choice as i thought you would ask to increase it : adding a possible PANTONE palette and maybe a RAL one. ?
hervé
Well the question is not that simple :
If you design a "magazine logo" that MUST be the same that the WEB ONE : what do you do ? make the conversion by hand ?
As I said, I'd have a document standard but still give users the possibility to choose another color space from a drop down. But if I have a document for printing I want every new color to be cmyk respectively pantone by default. That's all. Unfortunately the web-logo will never look exactly the same as the print logo... that's just a matter of screens being totally different all over the world. While it may look right on your computer, it won't on the one one of most people.
David
David Christian Berg wrote:
Well the question is not that simple :
If you design a "magazine logo" that MUST be the same that the WEB ONE : what do you do ? make the conversion by hand ?
As I said, I'd have a document standard but still give users the possibility to choose another color space from a drop down. But if I have a document for printing I want every new color to be cmyk respectively pantone by default. That's all. Unfortunately the web-logo will never look exactly the same as the print logo... that's just a matter of screens being totally different all over the world. While it may look right on your computer, it won't on the one one of most people.
David
Well.. Thats a point. But that is why pre-press use ICC . What do the companies that have a logo used for press (danone, etc...) AND web ? (the web-logo will never look exactly the same as the print logo) so what ? never mind the web-logo ? The fact is yes "it may look right on my computer, it won't on the one one of most people." But at least it will look ok on GOOD screens (that is a good starting point.) and anyway, that is MUCH better to chose CMJK that just .. "I fell it is ok, i can tell you , i am the professionnal".
hervé
On Fri, 2005-02-04 at 07:12, herve couvelard wrote:
I am suprised that you ask to "reduce" the choice as i thought you would ask to increase it : adding a possible PANTONE palette and maybe a RAL one. ?
Can't do PANTONE, the licenses required are very expensive.
-mental
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 10:45:07 -0500, MenTaLguY <mental@...3...> wrote:
On Fri, 2005-02-04 at 07:12, herve couvelard wrote:
I am suprised that you ask to "reduce" the choice as i thought you would ask to increase it : adding a possible PANTONE palette and maybe a RAL one. ?
Can't do PANTONE, the licenses required are very expensive.
IIRC, the roundabout was meant to be open universal format of color schemes, so that anyone who has a license could make a PANTONE palette for himself.
Alexandre
On Fri, 2005-02-04 at 07:12, herve couvelard wrote:
I am suprised that you ask to "reduce" the choice as i thought you
would
ask to increase it : adding a possible PANTONE palette and maybe a
RAL
one. ?
Can't do PANTONE, the licenses required are very expensive.
Would we get in trouble if some clever person made "P-Colors" which were kinda like Pantone equivalent colors? Essentially they are Pantone colors, w/o the Pantone name/branding, and if you highlight them it gives a tooltip showing the Pantone equivalent's info. Does that make sense?
I kinda see it the same way as if I buy generic labels, on the package it tells me what Avery template to use. (I guess that's not REALLY the same, but it kinda is)
-Josh
Heh. Or someone could make an Inkscape plugin, and "accidentally" post it on the web.
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
Would we get in trouble if some clever person made "P-Colors" which were kinda like Pantone equivalent colors? Essentially they are Pantone colors, w/o the Pantone name/branding, and if you highlight them it gives a tooltip showing the Pantone equivalent's info. Does that make sense?
I kinda see it the same way as if I buy generic labels, on the package it tells me what Avery template to use. (I guess that's not REALLY the same, but it kinda is)
-Josh
Quoting "Joshua A. Andler" <joshua@...533...>:
Would we get in trouble if some clever person made "P-Colors" which were kinda like Pantone equivalent colors? Essentially they are Pantone colors, w/o the Pantone name/branding, and if you highlight them it gives a tooltip showing the Pantone equivalent's info. Does that make sense?
From memory, at least according to the legal verbage Pantone prints in the
inside of their swatch booklets, even just cross-indexing to Pantone colors isn't allowed without a license (which also requires a lab evaluation of your product).
-mental
participants (10)
-
unknown＠example.com -
Alexandre Prokoudine -
Andreas Nilsson -
Bob Jamison -
Bryce Harrington -
bulia byak -
David Christian Berg -
herve couvelard -
Joshua A. Andler -
MenTaLguY