Is there a reason for the differences between the UI for Grid and Guides ?
Currently:
a) Guides are visually "on" by default - but there are no actual guides. Menu "View->Guides" initially does nothing - since there is no guide to show/hide. b) Grids are visually "off" by default. Menu "View->Grid" creates and shows a grid if there is no grid. c) Guides are created/deleted via the Edit menu d) Grids are created/deleted via the Document Properties dialog.
Comments in the code refer to some sort of backwards compatibility
// show guides if not specified, for backwards compatibility // hide guides if not specified, for backwards compatibility
Propose to change the Guide UI to match the Grid UI as below.
1. Guides would be "off" by default (if not specified in the doc) 2. Toggling "View->Guides" would create guides (same as "Edit->Create Guides Around the page") if there is no existing guide. 3. Add a button : "Document Properties->Guides->Remove Guides"
4. Remove menu item : "Edit->Create Guides Around the page" 5. Remove menu item : "Edit->Delete All Guides"
On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 8:50 PM, John Smith <john.smith7545@...36...> wrote:
c) Guides are created/deleted via the Edit menu
Guides are also created by a click-drag off a ruler on to the canvas (I believe they're also deleted if dragged back onto a ruler). Also, if you double-click a guide there is a delete button in the dialog that comes up. Just mentioning other methods of add/delete here.
Cheers, Josh
On 27/05/2012 06:10, Josh Andler wrote:
On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 8:50 PM, John Smith <john.smith7545@...36...> wrote:
c) Guides are created/deleted via the Edit menu
Guides are also created by a click-drag off a ruler on to the canvas (I believe they're also deleted if dragged back onto a ruler). Also, if you double-click a guide there is a delete button in the dialog that comes up. Just mentioning other methods of add/delete here.
Another method to create guides: Menu 'Object > Objects to Guides'
This command has an accompanying preference setting whether to keep the object or not after the "conversion".
~suv
John Smith wrote
Is there a reason for the differences between the UI for Grid and Guides ?
Is there a reason for not having such difference? Guides are not grids. They can also have different colors. :) Given your proposals, I suppose you don't use guides too often or at least not with all their possibilities. About me, I always use guides and never use grids so having guides on and grids off by default makes a lot of sense for me (that's my opinion: I expressed it just to let you know that there could be a reason for the difference, and it's in the way you use them).
John Smith wrote
a) Guides are visually "on" by default - but there are no actual guides. Menu "View->Guides" initially does nothing - since there is no guide to show/hide.
Well, also the current layer is on but there's nothing to show on it! :) How does having guides on hurts the user that doesn't use them?
John Smith wrote
b) Grids are visually "off" by default. Menu "View->Grid" creates and shows a grid if there is no grid.
I'd vote for not creating a grid, in this case. We could have that command grayed out until a grid is defined, or turn the command into opening the grid definition dialog if none is defined. A grid has a lot of parameters and needs to be defined before being shown: creating a random one (for the user, intended: Inkscape cannot know what the user needs) is not a good idea to me.
John Smith wrote
c) Guides are created/deleted via the Edit menu d) Grids are created/deleted via the Document Properties dialog.
Again, they are different tools. You don't create so many grids per document, you create some at the beginning and then show/hide them. Guides are continuously created and deleted and, more important, moved, rotated, snapped, ... (not duplicated, unfortunately, at least not yet). To me they are more like objects rather than a grid, and this is a point I hope will be improved soon in Inkscape: I'd like to be able to select a bunch of guides and move/rotate them altogether or duplicate them, or assign them to different layers... All things that have already been asked/proposed. So, my opinion is that a grid is something that you attach to the document and there it stays, guides are objects continually edited. I don't feel current locations are inadequate.
John Smith wrote
- Guides would be "off" by default (if not specified in the doc)
You hate guides, don't you? ;) Why not having grids on by default so as soon as you define one you'll see it? If you want to have guides off and as soon as you create the first one they are turned on, that's fine. I'm not going to notice any difference, so that's good. :) (though I wouldn't see the point of adding lines of code to achieve this).
John Smith wrote
- Toggling "View->Guides" would create guides (same as "Edit->Create
Guides Around the page") if there is no existing guide.
Horrible. There are already snapping options for page borders. Guides around the page are of very specific use and seldom created. As already pointed out by ~suv, should we real guide-users have to delete all those four guides every time? Or should we have newly created layers off by default and then when you turn them on you create some random object on it to see that it has been turned visible? I think the idea is basically wrong. This approach is good for dummy users that run Inkscape for the very first time: you show them what it's possible to do. The second time you use it, all this becomes useless and inconvenient. What about a demo version of Inkscape?
John Smith wrote
- Add a button : "Document Properties->Guides->Remove Guides"
I know people that don't like adding buttons on the GUI too much. :) But I'm in favor of this: deleting many guides is not easy and navigating through the menu isn't too. I know this option woudl be good for heavy-guide-users only, and I feel we are not so many so I can understand if it's dropped: GUI space is precious.
John Smith wrote
- Remove menu item : "Edit->Create Guides Around the page"
Why? How should one then create them when really needed?
John Smith wrote
- Remove menu item : "Edit->Delete All Guides"
I wouldn't. Menu items parallel to GUI operations are always useful. Not everybody like clicking on buttons to see what they do (or spend time reading tooltips) so the feature would become less discoverable.
Regards. Luca
-- View this message in context: http://inkscape.13.n6.nabble.com/Grid-and-Guide-UI-tp4964555p4964558.html Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
On 28/05/2012 10:19, LucaDC wrote:
John Smith wrote
- Add a button : "Document Properties->Guides->Remove Guides"
I know people that don't like adding buttons on the GUI too much. :) But I'm in favor of this: deleting many guides is not easy and navigating through the menu isn't too. I know this option woudl be good for heavy-guide-users only, and I feel we are not so many so I can understand if it's dropped: GUI space is precious.
You do realise that the proposed button is buried even deeper than the current top-level menu item? The proposed location of the button requires the user to to open the 'Document Properties' dialog, switch to the 'Guides' tab, click the button, and close the 'Document properties' dialog again. I'd vote to keep it in the menu ;)
~suv
Ugh, no: I didn't realize that! Thanks for pointing out. I was thinking (dreaming) about a toolbar button... :) Anyway, deep or not I'd always keep the menu too.
-- View this message in context: http://inkscape.13.n6.nabble.com/Grid-and-Guide-UI-tp4964555p4964560.html Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Two brief comments:
On 28-5-2012 10:19, LucaDC wrote:
John Smith wrote
Is there a reason for the differences between the UI for Grid and Guides ?
Is there a reason for not having such difference? Guides are not grids. They can also have different colors. :)
Grids can have individual different colors too. ;-)
On 28-5-2012 10:19, LucaDC wrote:
John Smith wrote
b) Grids are visually "off" by default. Menu "View->Grid" creates and shows a grid if there is no grid.
I'd vote for not creating a grid, in this case. We could have that command grayed out until a grid is defined, or turn the command into opening the grid definition dialog if none is defined. A grid has a lot of parameters and needs to be defined before being shown: creating a random one (for the user, intended: Inkscape cannot know what the user needs) is not a good idea to me.
The created grid is not random. The default grid parameters can be set in the Inkscape preferences dialog. It is very convenient and time saving to create a default grid when pressing '#' for the first time. So we should keep the "Menu "View->Grid" shows grids, and creates grid if there is no grid" behavior.
Regards, Johan
Johan Engelen-4 wrote
On 28-5-2012 10:19, LucaDC wrote:
John Smith wrote
Is there a reason for the differences between the UI for Grid and Guides ?
Is there a reason for not having such difference? Guides are not grids. They can also have different colors. :)
Grids can have individual different colors too. ;-)
Sure, I intended that guides can have different colors than grids... :) Anyway, it was a joke: I think that people tend to consider grids and guides as being almost the same because they are both straight, thin, infinite, used for snapping and have the same color. But, indeed, the use cases of either are quite different. I was just trying to point this out.
Johan Engelen-4 wrote
The created grid is not random. The default grid parameters can be set in the Inkscape preferences dialog. It is very convenient and time saving to create a default grid when pressing '#' for the first time. So we should keep the "Menu "View->Grid" shows grids, and creates grid if there is no grid" behavior.
That's right, I know it's not random. I intended that for any user that has never defined a grid by himself, the default parameters could seem "random" in the sense that someone else has chosen them and they could be far from what the user wanted. What I was proposing, in order to highlight the features of grids, is not to define a default grid but, instead, prompt the user with the defaults definition page (if they have not been defined yet), so he'll learn what he can do and set the default parameters to what makes him happy. I don't think that someone that has never set an Inkscape grid in his life will press '#' expecting a grid to be shown. :) Of course I agree about creating a grid if the default parameters have already been set.
Luca
-- View this message in context: http://inkscape.13.n6.nabble.com/Grid-and-Guide-UI-tp4964555p4964578.html Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Kill it with fire ;)
One does not simply kill it with fire, will sent it directly to Mordor ;) Consider it dead.
Please hold off with big changes to guides and evaluate the UI after GSoC has finished.
Looking forward to that !
Why not greying out the menu option "View->Guides" when there are no
guides.This seems like an easy solution.
Checkmarks
How about adding checkmarks/ticks next to the View menu items that are "on" (including all those in the Show/Hide submenu). Then users can clearly see what is "on" without having to toggle to check.
Related item, added a patch to toggle the guides on/off by clicking (without dragging) the ruler, useful ? https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/951580
On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 10:50 PM, John Smith <john.smith7545@...36...> wrote:
Propose to change the Guide UI to match the Grid UI as below.
- Guides would be "off" by default (if not specified in the doc)
- Toggling "View->Guides" would create guides (same as "Edit->Create Guides
Around the page") if there is no existing guide. 3. Add a button : "Document Properties->Guides->Remove Guides" 4. Remove menu item : "Edit->Create Guides Around the page" 5. Remove menu item : "Edit->Delete All Guides"
Please no. Reading the bug report, the entire issue seems to be based on the assumption that toggling guide visibility when there are no guides is confusing to the poor, easily befuddled users. This, of course, is a false assumption ;)
I could get behind something like:
Document with guides in 'visible' state: Menu item changed to read 'View->Hide Guides'
Document with guides in 'hidden' state: Menu item becomes 'View->Show Guides'
But for everything listed in the bug report... kill it. Kill it with fire ;)
Chris
PS - I recently did a fresh OS install so I'm back on 0.48 for now, but I don't recall the guide behavior being any different in recent trunk.
Please no. Reading the bug report, the entire issue seems to be based on the assumption that toggling guide visibility when there are no guides is confusing to the poor, easily befuddled users. This, of course, is a false assumption ;)
I can certainly understand this assumption. I get confused by features that appear to do nothing when I enable them. "Does that actually work, or is this a bug? Under what situations does it actually do something? Why is the menu option available, when other no-op menu options are greyed out, eg Undo when there's no undo stack?"
Anyway, I don't see a huge need to fix the guides' behaviour, and am certainly opposed to the functional changes suggested at the start of this chain.
However, a simple fix for this and other similarly not-immediately-obvious functions could be to display a notification giving the reason why the feature doesn't appear to do anything. Eg "There are currently no guides in this document. Click and drag a ruler to create one." The message/status bar at the bottom would be appropriate for this (not a popup dialog!).
On a tangentially-related note: I believe there should be the ability for certain features to be able to highlight the status bar on various messages, perhaps with a brief orange pulse, to draw the user's attention to it. I'm always missing the useful messages in it, even though I'm very much aware of its existence. My classic is to try and draw onto a hidden layer. Try again. "Why isn't this working?" Try again. Again. Oh, "Current layer is hidden"...
- Bryan
On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology <bryan@...2310...> wrote:
Please no. Reading the bug report, the entire issue seems to be based on the assumption that toggling guide visibility when there are no guides is confusing to the poor, easily befuddled users. This, of course, is a false assumption ;)
I can certainly understand this assumption. I get confused by features that appear to do nothing when I enable them. "Does that actually work, or is this a bug? [...]
Ah - but toggling guides when there are none *does* do something. It shows you that there are actually _no guides_ ;) I would consider any other behavior a bug.
IMO this is not a problem at all, or else one that could be solved by GATFM (Glancing At The Fine Manual). When creating a new document the first thing you *could* do is turn off visibility on the base layer. You likely shouldn't do that -- it would be silly -- and yet, you are free to do so.
Using a graphics program to its fullest requires knowledge and some research. That being said, features should be as easy to discover as possible. Which is why I'm all for toggling the menu command between 'Hide Guides/Show Guides' [1], but 1000 times against hiding the action deep on some tab in the document properties. And at almost no point will I want or need guides round the edge of the page. That's what the page boundaries are for ;)
Chris
[1] is this even feasible? I know next to nothing about how the menus are created. Can they be updated on the fly?
Why not greying out the menu option "View->Guides" when there are no guides. Should not be too difficult and should not be costly at all ...
On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology <bryan@...2310...> wrote:
Please no. Reading the bug report, the entire issue seems to be based on the assumption that toggling guide visibility when there are no guides is confusing to the poor, easily befuddled users. This, of course, is a false assumption ;)
I can certainly understand this assumption. I get confused by features that appear to do nothing when I enable them. "Does that actually work, or is this a bug? [...]
Ah - but toggling guides when there are none *does* do something. It shows you that there are actually _no guides_ ;) I would consider any other behavior a bug.
Please no. Reading the bug report, the entire issue seems to be based on the assumption that toggling guide visibility when there are no guides is confusing to the poor, easily befuddled users. This, of course, is a false assumption ;)
I can certainly understand this assumption. I get confused by features
that
appear to do nothing when I enable them. "Does that actually work, or is this a bug? [...]
Ah - but toggling guides when there are none *does* do something. It shows you that there are actually _no guides_ ;) I would consider any other behavior a bug.
Agreed, I guess, in this case. Which means greying out the menu option might not be the best idea, either. But, thinking a bit more generally, isn't that kindof like saying "clicking Undo when there's nothing to undo *does* do something -- it shows you that there's actually nothing to undo". Yet we disable the Undo option in such a case. Obviously in the Undo case, it's very much standard behaviour across a range of programs, so we'd be foolish to do anything different. I'm just pointing out a possible counter-case.
That said, I'm certainly opposed to any solution which actually modifies the document itself (or the guides that are in the document).
Either way, it would seem to me make sense to have some user feedback other than "nothing happens, because there's nothing to do", hence my status bar suggestion.
- Bryan
On 27-5-2012 5:50, John Smith wrote:
Is there a reason for the differences between the UI for Grid and Guides ?
Currently: a) Guides are visually "on" by default - but there are no actual guides. Menu "View->Guides" initially does nothing - since there is no guide to show/hide. b) Grids are visually "off" by default. Menu "View->Grid" creates and shows a grid if there is no grid. c) Guides are created/deleted via the Edit menu d) Grids are created/deleted via the Document Properties dialog.
Comments in the code refer to some sort of backwards compatibility
// show guides if not specified, for backwards compatibility // hide guides if not specified, for backwards compatibility
Propose to change the Guide UI to match the Grid UI as below.
- Guides would be "off" by default (if not specified in the doc)
(Note it will very likely not change behavior of documents that are already created and have guides: Inkscape will not use default settings for those documents because the visibility setting is stored in SVG after turning guides on/off or dragging a guide from the ruler, which I suppose means it is set explicitly in SVG for every document with guides)
Changing the default will not make any difference in behavior. :-)
Visibility is turned on upon creating a guide by dragging from the ruler. (!!!) This is good. However, creating guides from an object bbox or from page edges does not turn on visibility. This should be fixed I think. It is confusing/annoying to not have guides show up when you click the "create guides from object/page" menu entries.
For the people who use guides a lot: do you indeed like guides to become visible whenever you create them? (I would think so, but one never knows)
If so, the default setting only makes sense for documents that have guides, but have not visibility setting define; a very rare event.
- Toggling "View->Guides" would create guides (same as "Edit->Create
Guides Around the page") if there is no existing guide. 3. Add a button : "Document Properties->Guides->Remove Guides" 4. Remove menu item : "Edit->Create Guides Around the page" 5. Remove menu item : "Edit->Delete All Guides"
Point 2. I really don't like. The other points I cannot judge too well.
Recently, a GSoC project started working on guides, including adding a much improved Document Properties tab. Please hold off with big changes to guides and evaluate the UI after GSoC has finished.
Cheers, Johan
On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 4:25 PM, Johan Engelen <jbc.engelen@...2592...> wrote:
For the people who use guides a lot: do you indeed like guides to become visible whenever you create them? (I would think so, but one never knows)
Yes - that's a nice touch. I rarely want to drag a guide out and have it vanish ;)
Recently, a GSoC project started working on guides, including adding a much improved Document Properties tab. Please hold off with big changes to guides and evaluate the UI after GSoC has finished.
I'm eagerly awaiting the results :)
FWIW, I have three main uses for guides:
1. Temporary. When designing a shape/object/layout/whatever I'll sometimes need temporary guides. Inkscape serves me quite well here. My only wish is an easier/quicker method to delete a single guide. I generally drag them back to the ruler.
2. Margins. Sometimes I'll want a bleed and/or safety or some other guide that is persistent. Wish list here is locking guides and/or assigning guides to layers. I try to keep the handles just outside of the work area and that works OK.
3. Shapes. Scenario: item with circular or complex imprint area (think sticker, balloon, door hanger, etc.). I want a non-printing guide for those. Illustrator has a 'Make Guide/Release Guide' set of functions that converts from paths to guides and vice-versa. I work around this with masks, or paths that I delete before sending to print.
But these are all trivial wishes that I assume would be non-trivial to implement ;) For the most part, I'm quite happy with the guides as they are.
Chris
participants (8)
-
Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology -
Chris Mohler -
Johan Engelen -
John Smith -
Josh Andler -
Kris De Gussem -
LucaDC -
~suv