Hi,
I've been looking into replacing the Gimp Spin Slider widget (e.g Blur/Opacity in the Fill and Stroke dialog). The widget is licensed under GPLv3 and is the only reason Inkscape as a whole is licensed under GPLv3 rather GPLv2.. The board sometime ago agree that being a GPLv2 program was desirable (I don't remember the exact reasoning).
A normal Gtk Spin Slider (aka Gtk::SpinButton) has an option to show the "progress" of slider, that is the percentage (defined in some arbitrary way) between a minimum and maximum value. This in Gtk 2 is shown as a solid blue bar with width proportional to the value that covers the widget from top to bottom. In Gtk 3 the solid blue bar is replaced by a thin blue bar at the bottom of the widget.
As far as I can tell, the Gimp version of the slider makes three changes:
1. It allows for a label inside the widget. This is a nice space saving feature. The widget handles changing the label text from black to white as the progress bar moves across the label.
2. It allows for a non-uniform scale by adding a "gamma" factor.
3. It adds the ability to drag the progress bar to change the value. If one drags from the top (down arrow cursor) the change follows the cursor directly. If one drags along the bottom half (double headed cursor) the change is finer and relative to the current value.
I've always found that dragging the progress bar to be a bit awkward. One problem is that one can not start the drag at the far right of the widget as that area is reserved for typing a value directly in. Also, the different functionality of starting the drag in the top of the widget vs. the bottom of the widget is confusing.
Since I am rewriting this widget, I can adjust it to what people want:
* Do you want the progress bar?
* If so, should it be the full height of the widget (quite a bit more complicated)?
* Do you want to be able to drag the bar? With one/two methods?
* Any other changes?
Thanks,
Tav
Hi Tav,
thanks for looking into this!
One question to get on the same page: This is about sliders like "Blur" and "Opacity" (which are re-used in some other places, too), right? However the actual color sliders in the Fill and Stroke dialog are not affected?
Some thoughts from my side:
* The "top part" dragging is very useful, we should have that. The "bottom part" dragging never felt quite right for me and was actually very confusing when I first started using Inkscape, so personally I'd be fine with dropping that. * Having text and the spinner inside the widget is nice as it saves a lot of space and creates a clean UI control that is immediately recognizable as such (in contrast to multiple controls loosely packed into a box with each other). If it's implementable with reasonable effort it's probably good to keep it, especially for locations where there is not much room for an additional label and spinner (e.g. in the toolbar of the various tools that use the widget). * The previous bullet point is only true if it's done right - thanks to gtk3's wasteful use of screen space I'd consider most spinners in the toolbar broken right now (the label is usually hidden behind an ellipsis; due to the two huge buttons which are now placed side-by-side the usable width decreases even more, so we either need a more economic solution or need to rethink the use of spin sliders in the toolbar fundamentally. * One performance consideration that might be worth to have in mind when doing the rewrite: For some reason the custom spinner widget has a much worse redraw performance than other spinner implementations (e.g. the ones in the color selector): If I change opacity of an object the widget only updates a few times per second and is redrawn with a delay (canvas reflects the current value properly though). In contrast if I change the fill opacity of the same object this spinner widget redraws without noticeable delay. (strike that part - it only seems to affect the gtk2 build and I assume you won't backport this to 0.92.x)
TLDR: I kind of like the spin sliders like they are now for "Blur"/"Opacity" (and could do without the bottom part sliding), however they waste too much space to be useful in toolbars right now.
Best Regards, Eduard
Am 04.12.2017 um 13:42 schrieb Tavmjong Bah:
Hi,
I've been looking into replacing the Gimp Spin Slider widget (e.g Blur/Opacity in the Fill and Stroke dialog). The widget is licensed under GPLv3 and is the only reason Inkscape as a whole is licensed under GPLv3 rather GPLv2.. The board sometime ago agree that being a GPLv2 program was desirable (I don't remember the exact reasoning).
A normal Gtk Spin Slider (aka Gtk::SpinButton) has an option to show the "progress" of slider, that is the percentage (defined in some arbitrary way) between a minimum and maximum value. This in Gtk 2 is shown as a solid blue bar with width proportional to the value that covers the widget from top to bottom. In Gtk 3 the solid blue bar is replaced by a thin blue bar at the bottom of the widget.
As far as I can tell, the Gimp version of the slider makes three changes:
- It allows for a label inside the widget. This is a nice space saving
feature. The widget handles changing the label text from black to white as the progress bar moves across the label.
It allows for a non-uniform scale by adding a "gamma" factor.
It adds the ability to drag the progress bar to change the value. If
one drags from the top (down arrow cursor) the change follows the cursor directly. If one drags along the bottom half (double headed cursor) the change is finer and relative to the current value.
I've always found that dragging the progress bar to be a bit awkward. One problem is that one can not start the drag at the far right of the widget as that area is reserved for typing a value directly in. Also, the different functionality of starting the drag in the top of the widget vs. the bottom of the widget is confusing.
Since I am rewriting this widget, I can adjust it to what people want:
Do you want the progress bar?
If so, should it be the full height of the widget (quite a bit more
complicated)?
Do you want to be able to drag the bar? With one/two methods?
Any other changes?
Thanks,
Tav
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On Mon, 2017-12-04 at 14:43 +0100, Eduard Braun wrote:
Hi Tav, thanks for looking into this! One question to get on the same page: This is about sliders like "Blur" and "Opacity" (which are re-used in some other places, too), right? However the actual color sliders in the Fill and Stroke dialog are not affected?
Yes...
Some thoughts from my side: The "top part" dragging is very useful, we should have that. The "bottom part" dragging never felt quite right for me andwas actually very confusing when I first started using Inkscape, so personally I'd be fine with dropping that.
OK. That should be easy to do.
Having text and the spinner inside the widget is nice as it saves a lot of space and creates a clean UI control that is immediately recognizable as such (in contrast to multiple controls loosely packed into a box with each other). If it's implementable with reasonable effort it's probablygood to keep it, especially for locations where there is not much room for an additional label and spinner (e.g. in the toolbar of the various tools that use the widget).
It's not too hard (already done in my toy implementation).
The previous bullet point is only true if it's done right - thanks to gtk3's wasteful use of screen space I'd considermost spinners in the toolbar broken right now (the label is usually hidden behind an ellipsis; due to the two huge buttons which are now placed side-by-side the usable width decreases even more, so we either need a more economic solution or need to rethink the use of spin sliders in the toolbar fundamentally.
One can narrow the +/- buttons via CSS ( ,up, .down { padding:0; } ). I'll probably check this in (actually I'll probably set it to 2px, default is 8px).
One performance consideration that might be worth to have in mind when doing the rewrite: For some reason the custom spinner widget has a much worse redraw performance than other spinner implementations (e.g. the ones in the color selector): If I change opacity of an object the widget only updates a few times per second and is redrawn with a delay (canvas reflects the current value properly though).In contrast if I change the fill opacity of the same object this spinner widget redraws without noticeable delay.
(strike that part - it only seems to affect the gtk2 buildand I assume you won't backport this to 0.92.x)
No, I won't be touching 0.92.x with this.
TLDR: I kind of like the spin sliders like they are now for "Blur"/"Opacity" (and could do without the bottom partsliding), however they waste too much space to be useful in toolbars right now.
Best Regards, Eduard Am 04.12.2017 um 13:42 schrieb Tavmjong Bah:Hi,I've been looking into replacing the Gimp Spin Slider widget (e.g Blur/Opacity in the Fill and Stroke dialog). The widget is licensed under GPLv3 and is the only reason Inkscape as a whole is licensed under GPLv3 rather GPLv2.. The board sometime ago agree that being a GPLv2 program was desirable (I don't remember the exact reasoning).
A normal Gtk Spin Slider (aka Gtk::SpinButton) has an option to show the "progress" of slider, that is the percentage (defined in some arbitrary way) between a minimum and maximum value. This in Gtk 2 is shown as a solid blue bar with width proportional to the value that covers the widget from top to bottom. In Gtk 3 the solid blue bar is replaced by a thin blue bar at the bottom of the widget.
As far as I can tell, the Gimp version of the slider makes three changes:
- It allows for a label inside the widget. This is a nice space
saving feature. The widget handles changing the label text from black to white as the progress bar moves across the label.
It allows for a non-uniform scale by adding a "gamma" factor.
It adds the ability to drag the progress bar to change the
value. If one drags from the top (down arrow cursor) the change follows the cursor directly. If one drags along the bottom half (double headed cursor) the change is finer and relative to the current value.
I've always found that dragging the progress bar to be a bit awkward. One problem is that one can not start the drag at the far right of the widget as that area is reserved for typing a value directly in. Also, the different functionality of starting the drag in the top of the widget vs. the bottom of the widget is confusing.
Since I am rewriting this widget, I can adjust it to what people want:
Do you want the progress bar?
If so, should it be the full height of the widget (quite a bit
more complicated)?
Do you want to be able to drag the bar? With one/two methods?
Any other changes?
Thanks,
Tav
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Hi Tav,
my opinion is that such a widget is a design error. The only option I'd consider is splitting it into two usable widgets. I think that the two functions into the same space don't coexist well: it's too hard and error prone to use it for numeric input (especially in the blur case) and, as you already noted, difficult to use as a slider in the right side.
To me, the space saving argument is ridiculous: it's not more than the size of a little integer number and it could be reduced even more writing a non editable number in the middle of the bar and a small button with ellipses on the right side to activate edit (not very comfortable but at least you'd know where to click). There are tons of simple solutions to this problem and I can't understand why the probably worst one has to be chosen (ok, please, don't look for a worse one just to show me that I'm wrong... ;) ). If you really want a single widget, you may pack the text field and the progress bar side by side while giving them each separate regions. Is that space of a little integer number so badly needed by the progress bar? Saving space putting controls one over the other doesn't look a wise UI design to me.
All this has already been said, not only by me. That's why I don't think realistic seeing this point of view seriously taken into consideration, as it has not been so far. I just thought to voice it in this thread for completeness.
Luca
-- Sent from: http://inkscape.13.x6.nabble.com/Inkscape-Dev-f2781808.html
So glad you're working on this Tav! Thank you!
I too find the slider/bar awkward to use. Most often I choose the wrong thing, but eventually I figured out that it's not really a slider - just an indicator that you can't really drag. I think it should just be an type-in number box. Maybe with ^ v down arrows to the side of it? Or maybe a drop down that only shows a real slider (one you can drag) when you click it? though just a # would be fine with me.
________________________________ From: LucaDC <dicappello@...2144...> Sent: Monday, December 4, 2017 8:31 AM To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Spin slider widget: Opinions needed!
Hi Tav,
my opinion is that such a widget is a design error. The only option I'd consider is splitting it into two usable widgets. I think that the two functions into the same space don't coexist well: it's too hard and error prone to use it for numeric input (especially in the blur case) and, as you already noted, difficult to use as a slider in the right side.
To me, the space saving argument is ridiculous: it's not more than the size of a little integer number and it could be reduced even more writing a non editable number in the middle of the bar and a small button with ellipses on the right side to activate edit (not very comfortable but at least you'd know where to click). There are tons of simple solutions to this problem and I can't understand why the probably worst one has to be chosen (ok, please, don't look for a worse one just to show me that I'm wrong... ;) ). If you really want a single widget, you may pack the text field and the progress bar side by side while giving them each separate regions. Is that space of a little integer number so badly needed by the progress bar? Saving space putting controls one over the other doesn't look a wise UI design to me.
All this has already been said, not only by me. That's why I don't think realistic seeing this point of view seriously taken into consideration, as it has not been so far. I just thought to voice it in this thread for completeness.
Luca
-- Sent from: http://inkscape.13.x6.nabble.com/Inkscape-Dev-f2781808.html
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On Mon, 2017-12-04 at 08:31 -0700, LucaDC wrote:
Hi Tav,
my opinion is that such a widget is a design error. The only option I'd consider is splitting it into two usable widgets. I think that the two functions into the same space don't coexist well: it's too hard and error prone to use it for numeric input (especially in the blur case) and, as you already noted, difficult to use as a slider in the right side.
I believe there is an example of what you suggest already in Inkscape in the Objects dialog (see attachments). I toyed with that idea when I started, it's actually trivial to implement, but it leads to a slider widget that can be very narrow.
What I am working on effectively will act as two separate widgets by getting rid of the overlap between the bar and the numerical entry parts.
Tav
Am 04.12.2017 um 17:43 schrieb Tavmjong Bah:
On Mon, 2017-12-04 at 08:31 -0700, LucaDC wrote:
Hi Tav,
my opinion is that such a widget is a design error. The only option I'd consider is splitting it into two usable widgets. I think that the two functions into the same space don't coexist well: it's too hard and error prone to use it for numeric input (especially in the blur case) and, as you already noted, difficult to use as a slider in the right side.
I believe there is an example of what you suggest already in Inkscape in the Objects dialog (see attachments). I toyed with that idea when I started, it's actually trivial to implement, but it leads to a slider widget that can be very narrow.
What I am working on effectively will act as two separate widgets by getting rid of the overlap between the bar and the numerical entry parts.
Tav
How hard would it be to develop something like the mock-up I attached? It's based on the current Widget but with a separate input to the right and the buttons stacked vertically allowing the whole widget to become moderately narrow but without the input interfering with the slider (I think this is also more or less what you have in mind Tav?)
Regards, Eduard
On Mon, 2017-12-04 at 18:06 +0100, Eduard Braun wrote:
Am 04.12.2017 um 17:43 schrieb Tavmjong Bah:On Mon, 2017-12-04 at 08:31 -0700, LucaDC wrote:Hi Tav,my opinion is that such a widget is a design error. The only option I'd consider is splitting it into two usable widgets. I think that the two functions into the same space don't coexist well: it's too hard and error prone to use it for numeric input (especially in the blur case) and, as you already noted, difficult to use as a slider in the right side.
I believe there is an example of what you suggest already inInkscape in the Objects dialog (see attachments). I toyed with that idea when I started, it's actually trivial to implement, but it leads to a slider widget that can be very narrow.
What I am working on effectively will act as two separate widgets by getting rid of the overlap between the bar and the numerical entry parts.
Tav
How hard would it be to develop something like the mock-up I attached? It's based on the current Widget but with a separateinput to the right and the buttons stacked vertically allowing the whole widget to become moderately narrow but without the input interfering with the slider (I think this is also more or less what you have in mind Tav?)
Yes, that is close to what I had in mind. Stacking the buttons, however would be hard, how hard, I don't know.
Regards, Eduard
Tav, I'm glad to hear that you're sensible on this aspect. Thank you Eduard for visualizing the idea I had in mind with your mock-up. I'm heartened in seeing good and effective efforts toward fixing this issue and sorry if my tone sounded offensive: it was not my intent and my reply was not personally directed to anyone in particular.
Luca
-- Sent from: http://inkscape.13.x6.nabble.com/Inkscape-Dev-f2781808.html
Hi Tav,
On Monday 4 December 2017 6:12:36 PM IST Tavmjong Bah wrote:
Since I am rewriting this widget, I can adjust it to what people want:
- Do you want the progress bar?
Yes
- If so, should it be the full height of the widget (quite a bit more
complicated)?
Yes, it helps visually and also while sliding the bar. I think the height is bigger due to dual sliers.
- Do you want to be able to drag the bar? With one/two methods?
Yes
This method is new and is really nice. It may not be something that users are used to but once you know what it is it is really helpful. The current problem is that the two sliders are not that differentiated and users who don't know about it get confused. The gimp guys have recently (in git version of gimp) put a hover effect on top and bottom part of the slider. So when you hover ab ove the top part the entire top part turns darker along with the arrow switch and vice versa. I think we can have the hover effect thus making clear the differentiation between top and bottom part.
- Any other changes?
The current text input is clunky to use . It can be simplified if we make it activate on right click on the bars. Krita has this type of sliders.
In blender it is single slick for text edit and press and hold for sliding. I would personally prefer right click to activate text input like krita.
Thank you
Am Montag, 4. Dezember 2017, 13:42:36 CET schrieb Tavmjong Bah:
Hi,
Hi.
I've been looking into replacing the Gimp Spin Slider widget (e.g Blur/Opacity in the Fill and Stroke dialog). The widget is licensed under GPLv3 and is the only reason Inkscape as a whole is licensed under GPLv3 rather GPLv2.. The board sometime ago agree that being a GPLv2 program was desirable (I don't remember the exact reasoning).
Did anyone approach the GIMP folks and ask them if they could re-license the sliders as GPLv2+? That way you could improve the current design instead of starting from scratch – and maybe GIMP could benefit, too.
Just a thought ...
[...]
As far as I can tell, the Gimp version of the slider makes three changes:
- It allows for a label inside the widget. This is a nice space saving
feature. The widget handles changing the label text from black to white as the progress bar moves across the label.
- It allows for a non-uniform scale by adding a "gamma" factor.
Those two are great features that I would like to see being kept.
- It adds the ability to drag the progress bar to change the value. If
one drags from the top (down arrow cursor) the change follows the cursor directly. If one drags along the bottom half (double headed cursor) the change is finer and relative to the current value.
I've always found that dragging the progress bar to be a bit awkward. One problem is that one can not start the drag at the far right of the widget as that area is reserved for typing a value directly in. Also, the different functionality of starting the drag in the top of the widget vs. the bottom of the widget is confusing.
I never used the lower part of the sliders. IIRC it was meant as a help when using them with touch devices or pen/tablet. No idea if it really helps with that.
Since I am rewriting this widget, I can adjust it to what people want:
- Do you want the progress bar?
Absolutely. Maybe even more prominent than the current thin line in the bottom as Inkscape shows them. Actually GIMP itself is a lot better in that regard, showing a full height progress bar and the mouse-over highlights mentioned by others.
- If so, should it be the full height of the widget (quite a bit more
complicated)?
Full height please. The current design in Inkscape makes it really hard to quickly see what's going on.
- Do you want to be able to drag the bar? With one/two methods?
As I wrote, setting the value by clicking/dragging in the top half is essential. I never used the lower half. Without dragging it wouldn't be a slider anyway, would it? ;-)
- Any other changes?
Please keep the numeric value and label inside the slider. Screen space is scarce, and the longer a slider is the more fine grained I can control it with the mouse. Another benefit of the label being inside the slider is the cleaner look when several sliders are shown above each other. With labels outside of the slider you either have to sacrifice a lot of slider space to align the left edges to fit the longest label, or you have ragged left slider edges which looks terrible.
Thanks,
Tav
Tobias
On Tuesday 5 December 2017 3:24:57 PM IST Tobias Ellinghaus wrote:
I never used the lower part of the sliders. IIRC it was meant as a help when using them with touch devices or pen/tablet. No idea if it really helps with that.
From what I understand the top part is for quickly changing values and lower
half is meant for finer adjustments as mentioned here [1]
I quiet like this and is unique and really good once you know what it is, as i said in earlier mail the recent versions in gimp has been improved to show the top and bottom part more clearly.
[1] https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tools.html#gimp-tool-options-dialog
On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 10:54:57AM +0100, Tobias Ellinghaus wrote:
Am Montag, 4. Dezember 2017, 13:42:36 CET schrieb Tavmjong Bah:
Hi,
Hi.
I've been looking into replacing the Gimp Spin Slider widget (e.g Blur/Opacity in the Fill and Stroke dialog). The widget is licensed under GPLv3 and is the only reason Inkscape as a whole is licensed under GPLv3 rather GPLv2.. The board sometime ago agree that being a GPLv2 program was desirable (I don't remember the exact reasoning).
Did anyone approach the GIMP folks and ask them if they could re-license the sliders as GPLv2+? That way you could improve the current design instead of starting from scratch – and maybe GIMP could benefit, too.
Yes, Krzysztof Kosiński did so last year. I don't have cc's of the email discussions but Krzysztof said one of the authors of this particular widget did not accept the GPLv2+ relicense request.
Glad you asked, that's certainly a pertinent question.
Bryce
Just a thought ...
[...]
As far as I can tell, the Gimp version of the slider makes three changes:
- It allows for a label inside the widget. This is a nice space saving
feature. The widget handles changing the label text from black to white as the progress bar moves across the label.
- It allows for a non-uniform scale by adding a "gamma" factor.
Those two are great features that I would like to see being kept.
- It adds the ability to drag the progress bar to change the value. If
one drags from the top (down arrow cursor) the change follows the cursor directly. If one drags along the bottom half (double headed cursor) the change is finer and relative to the current value.
I've always found that dragging the progress bar to be a bit awkward. One problem is that one can not start the drag at the far right of the widget as that area is reserved for typing a value directly in. Also, the different functionality of starting the drag in the top of the widget vs. the bottom of the widget is confusing.
I never used the lower part of the sliders. IIRC it was meant as a help when using them with touch devices or pen/tablet. No idea if it really helps with that.
Since I am rewriting this widget, I can adjust it to what people want:
- Do you want the progress bar?
Absolutely. Maybe even more prominent than the current thin line in the bottom as Inkscape shows them. Actually GIMP itself is a lot better in that regard, showing a full height progress bar and the mouse-over highlights mentioned by others.
- If so, should it be the full height of the widget (quite a bit more
complicated)?
Full height please. The current design in Inkscape makes it really hard to quickly see what's going on.
- Do you want to be able to drag the bar? With one/two methods?
As I wrote, setting the value by clicking/dragging in the top half is essential. I never used the lower half. Without dragging it wouldn't be a slider anyway, would it? ;-)
- Any other changes?
Please keep the numeric value and label inside the slider. Screen space is scarce, and the longer a slider is the more fine grained I can control it with the mouse. Another benefit of the label being inside the slider is the cleaner look when several sliders are shown above each other. With labels outside of the slider you either have to sacrifice a lot of slider space to align the left edges to fit the longest label, or you have ragged left slider edges which looks terrible.
Thanks,
Tav
Tobias
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Also, for reference here's the transcript of the board meeting where kk presented his findings from approaching the GIMP folks about relicensing:
https://inkscape.org/en/gallery/item/9766/
Bryce
On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 10:54:57AM +0100, Tobias Ellinghaus wrote:
Am Montag, 4. Dezember 2017, 13:42:36 CET schrieb Tavmjong Bah:
Hi,
Hi.
I've been looking into replacing the Gimp Spin Slider widget (e.g Blur/Opacity in the Fill and Stroke dialog). The widget is licensed under GPLv3 and is the only reason Inkscape as a whole is licensed under GPLv3 rather GPLv2.. The board sometime ago agree that being a GPLv2 program was desirable (I don't remember the exact reasoning).
Did anyone approach the GIMP folks and ask them if they could re-license the sliders as GPLv2+? That way you could improve the current design instead of starting from scratch – and maybe GIMP could benefit, too.
Just a thought ...
[...]
As far as I can tell, the Gimp version of the slider makes three changes:
- It allows for a label inside the widget. This is a nice space saving
feature. The widget handles changing the label text from black to white as the progress bar moves across the label.
- It allows for a non-uniform scale by adding a "gamma" factor.
Those two are great features that I would like to see being kept.
- It adds the ability to drag the progress bar to change the value. If
one drags from the top (down arrow cursor) the change follows the cursor directly. If one drags along the bottom half (double headed cursor) the change is finer and relative to the current value.
I've always found that dragging the progress bar to be a bit awkward. One problem is that one can not start the drag at the far right of the widget as that area is reserved for typing a value directly in. Also, the different functionality of starting the drag in the top of the widget vs. the bottom of the widget is confusing.
I never used the lower part of the sliders. IIRC it was meant as a help when using them with touch devices or pen/tablet. No idea if it really helps with that.
Since I am rewriting this widget, I can adjust it to what people want:
- Do you want the progress bar?
Absolutely. Maybe even more prominent than the current thin line in the bottom as Inkscape shows them. Actually GIMP itself is a lot better in that regard, showing a full height progress bar and the mouse-over highlights mentioned by others.
- If so, should it be the full height of the widget (quite a bit more
complicated)?
Full height please. The current design in Inkscape makes it really hard to quickly see what's going on.
- Do you want to be able to drag the bar? With one/two methods?
As I wrote, setting the value by clicking/dragging in the top half is essential. I never used the lower half. Without dragging it wouldn't be a slider anyway, would it? ;-)
- Any other changes?
Please keep the numeric value and label inside the slider. Screen space is scarce, and the longer a slider is the more fine grained I can control it with the mouse. Another benefit of the label being inside the slider is the cleaner look when several sliders are shown above each other. With labels outside of the slider you either have to sacrifice a lot of slider space to align the left edges to fit the longest label, or you have ragged left slider edges which looks terrible.
Thanks,
Tav
Tobias
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participants (7)
-
Bryce Harrington -
Eduard Braun -
James Fritzler -
LucaDC -
Raghavendra Kamath -
Tavmjong Bah -
Tobias Ellinghaus