Hello, It's nice to hear about your interest in helping to improve the usability of Inkscape. With your list of ideas, one of the items is a little tough, and that is the prioritization of usability related bugs. Our bugs have always been approached as follows: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Bug_management#Bug_importance . So, almost all usability bugs get prioritized as low. However, we may be able to figure out a separate system for the usability bugs that your group works with where we have specific tagging to allow bending the normal rules. Obviously evaluation and testing is also greatly welcome. In terms of suggesting specific areas to test, I say there is enough of you to really dig in and explore all over the place. :) As a side question, how long will your project be going on for? Cheers, Josh On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 8:10 AM, Aslak Karsi <aslak.karsi@...400...> wrote:

Hello, Since our last contact we've continued our project, most importantly by carrying out a heuristic evaluation of Inkscape. Unfortunately the heuristic evaluation didn't turn out as solid results as we had hoped. However we did find out that with the resources available for us and with our current plan, Inkscape is indeed too complex software to test without proper focus on specific parts of it. As planned, we are going to proceed with usability testing in January. To make sure that the usability testing would turn out useful results, we would like to have some ideas and feedback from you. To point out what kind of things would help us get more useful results for you, here's a few questions: 1. What kind of users should we find for the testing? 2. What tools and functions should the tests be focused on? 3. What kind of tasks should there be? - Aslak 2010/11/30 Aslak Karsi <aslak.karsi@...400...>

On 1/15/11, Aslak Karsi wrote: Hi Aslak, We discussed this proposal, but for reasons of terrible procrastination never got back to you. Sorry about that. The thing about Inkscape is that we know a lot of our problems, but ultimately lack manpower to fix them. One thing that, IMO, would be good to test is our existing dialogs: if they are clean enough, how placement of widgets could be improved, whether existing widgets are optimal etc. There are at least two areas of interest we can think of as an alternative project: 1. Live Path Effects dockable dialog has a couple of major issues: range of possible values isn't exactly clear, and the effects parameters tend to loom, as they are simply listed one by one in top-bottom direction. There is a recent trend to make better widgets that would fix the range visibility issue, as well as provide better experience to tablet users. And example of a partly implemented (http://vimeo.com/16616760) GIMP proposal is here: http://mmiworks.net/test/small.png IMO, it's worth having a look at that, also for tools options toolbar. 2. We seem to have different views regarding the existing SVG Filters editor. Right now it implements the SVG specification in a very literal manner. Some people like it a lot (like Ivan, who did most filter presets for Inkscape), and some people find it a terrible solution. We have two blueprints that suggest two different solutions: one suggests an even simpler UI, and the other one suggests something like node compositing: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/non-advanced-filters-ui https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/improved-filter-effects-d... That makes three different approaches to editing SVG filters, one of them implemented and currently used. You could test the existing implementation and come up with suggestions how to improve it, or come up with a new design proposal. Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

On 2/8/11, Aslak Karsi wrote: Thank you! Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

Hi! Your blueprint is basically what I want (if you remember, I wrote my wishes here few months ago). Maybe 4 suggestions: - 2 sections for the filter, why not. But having the possiibility to take a basic filter as a base and change it to make a custom filter would be great. - When you make a custom filter, allow to use it as a basic filter inside (not as a base) a new filter (and allow to change the input values). - activate/desactivate basic filters inside custom filters too. - Create handy tools like rotate, resize, mirror,... Great job anyway! Teto. Le 18/04/2011 17:47, Aslak Karsi a écrit :

Interesting project ! In your Added features section by "saving function of custom filters" do you mean saving filters settings ? ivan ________________________________ De : Aslak Karsi <aslak.karsi@...400...> À : Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> Cc : inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net Envoyé le : Lun 18 avril 2011, 17h 47min 11s Objet : Re: [Inkscape-devel] Usability development help for Inkscape available Hi! I'm glad to announce that the final product of our project is now ready. We would have liked to conduct some usability testing on our UI prototypes with real Inkscape users, but unfortunately we are running out of time both in terms of working hours and our project deadline. The blueprint for our suggestion of SVG Filter Editor can be found on Inkscape wiki, at http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/SpecFilterEditorUI We'd appreciate any comments and feedback on the blueprint. Our team is also prepared to answer any questions you might have. - Aslak

Hi I've collected all the questions and comments so far and here are the replys to them from our team. This post turned out to be quite a wall of text, but I hope it remains at least somewhat readable. 2 sections for the filter, why not. But having the possiibility to take a basic filter as a base and change it to make a custom filter would be great. The idea was that the user could use these basic filters as a base to custom filter. Think as if these built-in filters are just premade custom filters that are fully customizable even further. When you make a custom filter, allow to use it as a basic filter inside (not as a base) a new filter (and allow to change the input values). That is why we applied the save and load function. User can load these saved/previously used filters and modify/add something new to them. activate/deactivate basic filters inside custom filters too. Do you mean these eye icons? They are also in custom filter editor. Create handy tools like rotate, resize, mirror,... This is why we need user feedback :) these kind of functions didnt pop into our minds. How do I disconnect nodes in node editor? Just drag the arrowhead and drop on free space? Arrows are selectable like the effect icons. Just click the connection line and press delete. You mention input reordering for nodes. Will this be in a separate dialog, or directly somehow embedded in the node editor? In case of dialog, how do I distinguish for example two different inputs of the same type? (I guess those will be labeled with original input numbers and keeping the node editor still visible?) By this we ment switching the inputs for a selected effect. We found out that eg. composite gets two (2) input connections. If we swap the connections we get a different output from the effect. This is why we thought it should be easy to switch input order easily. This is shown in the last picture in custom filter workflow. Inputs are numbered and showed in connection view. This can also be seen in the same picture. What about a possibility to add textual notes in the node editor canvas or for used filters (i.e. tab "Notes" in the bottom)? I think this can improve editing experience when creating complex filters and/or editing after some time has passed. That would be a good idea. In your Added features section by "saving function of custom filters" do you mean saving filters settings ? We thought it would be great to save the whole filter including its settings. For example.... user creates a filter which is created from built-in vertical blur (the blur that can be accessed now from top panel: Filters -> Blurs -> Motion blur vertical) and a self-made custom filter. We could say the filter consists of these two parts. User can then save this as a one filter which could be then used later in other drawings by just loading it. I assume the screenshots are mockups, but do you plan on also doing an actual implementation? (At least of some of your ideas.) In either case, have you thought about ways to overcome some of the technical hurdles? In particular, you suggest to allow applying multiple filters to one image. Do you have any thoughts on how to implement that in terms of SVG representation? (If you also have ideas about how to reuse custom filters in much the same way as filter primitives then I'd love to hear it as well of course.) Yes the screenshots are just mockups. We feel that we don't have enough programming experience to actually implement these changes. We thought about the technical difficulties while developing this idea. We're not claiming to be SVG experts, but understood by reading http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/ that it could be possible to include multiple filters in a single svg file (see http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/filters.html#AccessingBackgroundImage example). This should allow separating the filters by filter ids. After all... separating filter can be thought as applying them one after another, right? IDs could simply be shown as filter name in the UI. The problem is how to generate the connections from this svg file. By this I mean how the effects are distributed at the canvas. The current view is easier for this as they are shown as a waterfall type view. Reusing these custom filter could be done by simply saving this filter list as a single svg file. This file could then later on be loaded if needed. It should open up the same way it was saved (filter are separated and editable, parts can be deleted etc.) As for the proposed interface, I'm not entirely sure I like the idea of splitting it into a basic and complex interface. If the "complex" interface is easy to use, why not make it the only interface? If it is not easy to use, then that might be a problem. I do understand that you don't always want open this huge window just to change a few things, but I can also see different ways of solving that particular problem (for example, instead of having two relatively unrelated dialogs you could make a dialog that can "slide out"). By splitting the interface into two halves we thought it could be easier for new users to familiarize themselves with filters and of course easier using of these premade filters. At one point we had a mockup in which these two halves are together. They were linked as the loading is now in the basic editor. The active filter list is the same in both views so it could be merged in this approach. The problem in this vision was how to show filter parameters. And also this kind of UI would fill the screen, which is what we wanted to avoid. What I DO like is showing sample images, making filter "presets" more accessible and of course a nicer filter editor. I also very much like that you have taken the effort to do this kind of work, I might sound a little critical above, but that's only because there is now something to be critical about :) (Which is way, way better than having nothing.) Constructive criticism is also welcome. Feel free to ask for more information if needed :) And please correct me if I understood this SVG standard completely wrong.

The way to apply multiple filters to a single object is grouping. But what is lacking to manage groups is a true object manager. ivan ________________________________ De : Jasper van de Gronde <th.v.d.gronde@...528...> À : inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net Envoyé le : Mar 19 avril 2011, 16h 50min 30s Objet : Re: [Inkscape-devel] Usability development help for Inkscape available On 19-04-11 15:00, Aslak Karsi wrote: Well, yes and no. SVG has filters and filter primitives. (It is not uncommon to hear the term filter being used for both, but technically there is a big difference.) A filter is what is applied to an object and it consists of a number of filter primitives. As you can only apply one filter to each object, and filters cannot be used as filter primitives, there is no standard way to apply multiple filters to a single object (very, very unfortunately). That is why I wondered whether you had any solution for that (as it looks like this is possible in your mockup). But I guess eventually we'll either figure out some way to "fake" it, or wait until SVG does support it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Benefiting from Server Virtualization: Beyond Initial Workload Consolidation -- Increasing the use of server virtualization is a top priority.Virtualization can reduce costs, simplify management, and improve application availability and disaster protection. Learn more about boosting the value of server virtualization. http://p.sf.net/sfu/vmware-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel