- The "Text and Font..." dialog was really difficult for me to find; I assumed it'd be under the Object menu and had to look through all the other menus before I found it under Edit. It was also strange that it was at the bottom of the Edit menu instead of at the top, like the property dialogs in the Object menu.
That's a temporary location. We will have a Text menu later and it will move there. But I agree that Object is a better temporary location for Text and Font.
- Now, of anyone, I probably know best where the marker settings are, however it really seemed hard to get to. I kept thinking, "Hmm, where's the line properties again? Oh yeah, the Fill dialog box..." I'm not sure how this could be improved but it struck me as counter intuitive.
It might make sense to separate a Stroke dialog from a Color dialog, with Color having two tabs for fill and stroke. But I don't want to multiply dialogs unless we have ways to combine/dock/rearrange them easily.
- The right-click context menu needs a *lot* of attention. With the dialog menu being moved to other menus (which is a great improvement), I found that I kept wishing to have various things available from the context menu.
True, this is because this is one of the few UI element that I never touched :) and that is because I never use it. Whoever wants to improve it, go ahead, this should not be difficult.
- I pulled up the keyboard shortcuts page, and it's great that it's so complete, and of course it's beautiful in SVG. However, I found it very difficult to find stuff in it. There's just sooo much text... I wanted to search the document but of course we don't have a ctrl-f Find or ctrl-s Search command
Searching in text is certainly doable. Someone simply needs to code it.
- The Object Properties dialog is very odd to me. It *seems* like for a basic user this would have some very handy and useful things on it for customizing the way my object looks, but when I look at it, it's full of rather esoteric features.
Another dialog I did not touch. Actually I thought to eliminate it at first, but then decided that it should stay, but completely redesigned. For one thing it will present all cascaded CSS properties for the object (pending AST/libcroco rearchitecturing). The redesign has not started yet :)
What does "printable" mean, for instance? Does this mean it will show up on the screen but not the printer?
Probably. I never looked into it. Also the "visible" checkbox is always disabled because it's not yet implemented (I don't want to borrow that code from Sodi because it uses sodipodi:visible attribute which is sure to have problems rendering in other viewers).
Also, on the context menu it's called "Item Properties" but pulls up the Object Properties dialog. Weird!
Yep, the context menu needs to take command names and shortcuts from verbs, just as the regular menu does. Volunteers?
would expect the Object Properties dialog to allow me some sort of way to get to things like text, color, line style, transform, etc.
No, it's not an all-in-one dialog. Rather it's supposed to present a bit more low-level access to an object, although higher level than XML editor.
- Shouldn't New Window really be called Duplicate Window or Clone Window or something? I assumed this command would do the same as New.
Duplicate Window maybe. Anyone else has an opinion?
- I notice the performance isn't quite as "snappy" as I seem to remember.
Perhaps a consequence of fixing bugs? It's not horrible, but noticeable.
It's a consequence of Fred's new renderer.
- For the life of me, I've never been able to figure out how to get the
inset, outset, and offset commands to work. I'm sure if I studied the tutorial I'd figure it out, or if I've used something like them before in other apps. It "feels" like I should be able to apply it to a path but that doesn't seem to work right.
What exactly does not work?
- The star tool is set to remember its settings, which seems like a great
idea, but it's really weird to start up a fresh Inkscape and click on it and instead of getting a five pointed star, to get whatever shape it was you made the last time you used it. This seems highly inconsistent with the way the rect and circle tools work - they always give you what you see on the icon bar.
No. They remember their settings too. Try to round a rect's corners and make an arc out of a circle, and you'll get the same next time. So it's all consistent, and I think it's much better that way. The ability to always get "five pointed star" is only good for demos, not for real work. Besides, all these tools have a button on the top panel which resets you to the defaults by a single click.
- I think we need to rethinkify the calligraphic tool. I played with it
for half an hour to see if I could get something worth putting in the article but didn't like anything I made. Does anyone use this? What is it useful for?
I wrote about that here. It's a tool created by a person who's not with us, and its code is dense and hard to figure out. More importantly, the tool is fundamentally flawed since it creates filled paths and not paths with shape that would be editable as any other paths. A completely new approach to calligraphic/shaped strokes is in long-term plans, but until then, this tool will have to stay.
- The undo system can be kind of quirky. For example, click on the line
drawing tool. Draw one line. Start drawing another one but before you end it, hit Ctrl-Z. Instead of the current line going away, the first one you drew disappears. And no amount of undoing/redoing seems to be able to bring it back.
Because the second line is not created yet. It's just a plan for a line, not a real object. The last real line you created was the first one. If you want to cancel your non-finished line, press Esc, not Ctrl-Z.
- First, as mentioned above, it's really hard to get to the marker settings. I keep expecting to right click on my line and hit, "Marker Properties" or "Arrowheads" or something.
Those who wish to work on right-click menu, take note :)
- Strangely, when I was doing the article, all the marker previews were of the club symbol. But now for some reason they all work right. Has anyone else noticed this behavior?
Carl says he fixed this yesterday. I never got this bug so I cannot attest.
- If you select to turn off Stroke Paint, the marker dropdowns on the Stroke style page become inactive, yet the line still shows its arrowheads.
Does not happen to me. Clicking on the X button in Stroke Paint makes both the path and its markers disappear. Can you submit a test case where this happens?
of stroke color, so this is super counter-intuitive. I'd suggest this: Move the marker dropdowns to their own tab, separate from Stroke style, and make them not become invalid when the stroke paint is turned off.
No, they really belong together with the rest of stroke settings. Separating them only for the purpose of non-graying is wrong.
It'd be wonderful if you could choose the marker colors for each marker type on that tab page.
Yes we have a bug on that. It's not straightforward (SVG does not do that automatically) but I think we can work around that, e.g. by duplicating a marker def and repainting it to match the stroke color.
- For the 'None' setting in the marker dropdown, perhaps show a stub line with no marker on it.
I think that would distract. "None" needs to really stand out, i.e. be unlike all other items.
- The ordering of the markers in the dropdown seems strange. Partially they're alphabetized, but it feels like they really ought to be organized by category.
They are categorized, more or less. First arrows, then geometric marks, then miscellanea. Within each type, three sizes are arranged from largerst to smallest (hmmm, maybe reverse that?) Also the markers in the current document come first; we need a separator between them and the stock markers.
- The symbols for DistanceRight and DistanceLeft don't really illustrate the effect. Also, perhaps these could be called DimensionLeft and DimensionRight?
They're too big to fit into the preview. As for the rename, OK with me.
- The arrow style markers work wrong. The tip of the arrow should be located at the end node of the line. Instead, the end node is at the middle of the arrowhead. This means that if you draw a line to a box, and then put an arrowhead on it, the arrowhead will be partially *inside* the box.
We discussed this with Carl recently. The problem is that if you move the marker so its tip coincides with the tip of the line, you can't get a sharp tip for your arrow because the line will show through at the tip. There's no easy workaround for this, and the sharper is your arrow, the farther back you need to move the line end from the tip of that arrow.
- I half expected to be able to hit the "Convert Object to Path" button and be able to have the marker converted into node path for manual editing. No idea if that'd actually be of real value, though.
It's in the bug tracker.
- Since there's a None setting for markers, it feels like there should similarly be a None setting for Stroke pattern, that'd make the line go away. I wanted to create an object that consisted only of mid-markers with no actual line.
Yes, I wanted to make such a dasharray, but there is currently a bug in rendering zero-length dashes. When that bug is fixed I will add it to the list.
- Instead of making the dropdowns fit the page width, could they be sized to match the contents? Also, I notice some of the larger marker previews are cropped - could the dropdown be sized based on the size of the largest marker?
Then you'll have really huge menus because the distance markers are huge. Obviously all marker previews must be in the same scale, but since some of them are very small and some are large, we need a compromise. The size can be tweaked, but cropping the too large ones is inevitable I think.
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Maybe the Keys and Mouse should be broken into two items
* Keyboard Shortcuts
* Mouse Shortcuts
Currently, zooming around that doc is slow even on my 1ghz laptop (which I realize isn't that fast anymore).
Bryce, great on these comments...several of these should prolly get dropped into the RFE and bug trackers, right?
Jon
On Fri, 2004-05-14 at 21:03, bulia byak wrote:
- The "Text and Font..." dialog was really difficult for me to find; I assumed it'd be under the Object menu and had to look through all the other menus before I found it under Edit. It was also strange that it was at the bottom of the Edit menu instead of at the top, like the property dialogs in the Object menu.
That's a temporary location. We will have a Text menu later and it will move there. But I agree that Object is a better temporary location for Text and Font.
- Now, of anyone, I probably know best where the marker settings are, however it really seemed hard to get to. I kept thinking, "Hmm, where's the line properties again? Oh yeah, the Fill dialog box..." I'm not sure how this could be improved but it struck me as counter intuitive.
It might make sense to separate a Stroke dialog from a Color dialog, with Color having two tabs for fill and stroke. But I don't want to multiply dialogs unless we have ways to combine/dock/rearrange them easily.
- The right-click context menu needs a *lot* of attention. With the dialog menu being moved to other menus (which is a great improvement), I found that I kept wishing to have various things available from the context menu.
True, this is because this is one of the few UI element that I never touched :) and that is because I never use it. Whoever wants to improve it, go ahead, this should not be difficult.
- I pulled up the keyboard shortcuts page, and it's great that it's so complete, and of course it's beautiful in SVG. However, I found it very difficult to find stuff in it. There's just sooo much text... I wanted to search the document but of course we don't have a ctrl-f Find or ctrl-s Search command
Searching in text is certainly doable. Someone simply needs to code it.
- The Object Properties dialog is very odd to me. It *seems* like for a basic user this would have some very handy and useful things on it for customizing the way my object looks, but when I look at it, it's full of rather esoteric features.
Another dialog I did not touch. Actually I thought to eliminate it at first, but then decided that it should stay, but completely redesigned. For one thing it will present all cascaded CSS properties for the object (pending AST/libcroco rearchitecturing). The redesign has not started yet :)
What does "printable" mean, for instance? Does this mean it will show up on the screen but not the printer?
Probably. I never looked into it. Also the "visible" checkbox is always disabled because it's not yet implemented (I don't want to borrow that code from Sodi because it uses sodipodi:visible attribute which is sure to have problems rendering in other viewers).
Also, on the context menu it's called "Item Properties" but pulls up the Object Properties dialog. Weird!
Yep, the context menu needs to take command names and shortcuts from verbs, just as the regular menu does. Volunteers?
would expect the Object Properties dialog to allow me some sort of way to get to things like text, color, line style, transform, etc.
No, it's not an all-in-one dialog. Rather it's supposed to present a bit more low-level access to an object, although higher level than XML editor.
- Shouldn't New Window really be called Duplicate Window or Clone Window or something? I assumed this command would do the same as New.
Duplicate Window maybe. Anyone else has an opinion?
- I notice the performance isn't quite as "snappy" as I seem to remember.
Perhaps a consequence of fixing bugs? It's not horrible, but noticeable.
It's a consequence of Fred's new renderer.
- For the life of me, I've never been able to figure out how to get the
inset, outset, and offset commands to work. I'm sure if I studied the tutorial I'd figure it out, or if I've used something like them before in other apps. It "feels" like I should be able to apply it to a path but that doesn't seem to work right.
What exactly does not work?
- The star tool is set to remember its settings, which seems like a great
idea, but it's really weird to start up a fresh Inkscape and click on it and instead of getting a five pointed star, to get whatever shape it was you made the last time you used it. This seems highly inconsistent with the way the rect and circle tools work - they always give you what you see on the icon bar.
No. They remember their settings too. Try to round a rect's corners and make an arc out of a circle, and you'll get the same next time. So it's all consistent, and I think it's much better that way. The ability to always get "five pointed star" is only good for demos, not for real work. Besides, all these tools have a button on the top panel which resets you to the defaults by a single click.
- I think we need to rethinkify the calligraphic tool. I played with it
for half an hour to see if I could get something worth putting in the article but didn't like anything I made. Does anyone use this? What is it useful for?
I wrote about that here. It's a tool created by a person who's not with us, and its code is dense and hard to figure out. More importantly, the tool is fundamentally flawed since it creates filled paths and not paths with shape that would be editable as any other paths. A completely new approach to calligraphic/shaped strokes is in long-term plans, but until then, this tool will have to stay.
- The undo system can be kind of quirky. For example, click on the line
drawing tool. Draw one line. Start drawing another one but before you end it, hit Ctrl-Z. Instead of the current line going away, the first one you drew disappears. And no amount of undoing/redoing seems to be able to bring it back.
Because the second line is not created yet. It's just a plan for a line, not a real object. The last real line you created was the first one. If you want to cancel your non-finished line, press Esc, not Ctrl-Z.
- First, as mentioned above, it's really hard to get to the marker settings. I keep expecting to right click on my line and hit, "Marker Properties" or "Arrowheads" or something.
Those who wish to work on right-click menu, take note :)
- Strangely, when I was doing the article, all the marker previews were of the club symbol. But now for some reason they all work right. Has anyone else noticed this behavior?
Carl says he fixed this yesterday. I never got this bug so I cannot attest.
- If you select to turn off Stroke Paint, the marker dropdowns on the Stroke style page become inactive, yet the line still shows its arrowheads.
Does not happen to me. Clicking on the X button in Stroke Paint makes both the path and its markers disappear. Can you submit a test case where this happens?
of stroke color, so this is super counter-intuitive. I'd suggest this: Move the marker dropdowns to their own tab, separate from Stroke style, and make them not become invalid when the stroke paint is turned off.
No, they really belong together with the rest of stroke settings. Separating them only for the purpose of non-graying is wrong.
It'd be wonderful if you could choose the marker colors for each marker type on that tab page.
Yes we have a bug on that. It's not straightforward (SVG does not do that automatically) but I think we can work around that, e.g. by duplicating a marker def and repainting it to match the stroke color.
- For the 'None' setting in the marker dropdown, perhaps show a stub line with no marker on it.
I think that would distract. "None" needs to really stand out, i.e. be unlike all other items.
- The ordering of the markers in the dropdown seems strange. Partially they're alphabetized, but it feels like they really ought to be organized by category.
They are categorized, more or less. First arrows, then geometric marks, then miscellanea. Within each type, three sizes are arranged from largerst to smallest (hmmm, maybe reverse that?) Also the markers in the current document come first; we need a separator between them and the stock markers.
- The symbols for DistanceRight and DistanceLeft don't really illustrate the effect. Also, perhaps these could be called DimensionLeft and DimensionRight?
They're too big to fit into the preview. As for the rename, OK with me.
- The arrow style markers work wrong. The tip of the arrow should be located at the end node of the line. Instead, the end node is at the middle of the arrowhead. This means that if you draw a line to a box, and then put an arrowhead on it, the arrowhead will be partially *inside* the box.
We discussed this with Carl recently. The problem is that if you move the marker so its tip coincides with the tip of the line, you can't get a sharp tip for your arrow because the line will show through at the tip. There's no easy workaround for this, and the sharper is your arrow, the farther back you need to move the line end from the tip of that arrow.
- I half expected to be able to hit the "Convert Object to Path" button and be able to have the marker converted into node path for manual editing. No idea if that'd actually be of real value, though.
It's in the bug tracker.
- Since there's a None setting for markers, it feels like there should similarly be a None setting for Stroke pattern, that'd make the line go away. I wanted to create an object that consisted only of mid-markers with no actual line.
Yes, I wanted to make such a dasharray, but there is currently a bug in rendering zero-length dashes. When that bug is fixed I will add it to the list.
- Instead of making the dropdowns fit the page width, could they be sized to match the contents? Also, I notice some of the larger marker previews are cropped - could the dropdown be sized based on the size of the largest marker?
Then you'll have really huge menus because the distance markers are huge. Obviously all marker previews must be in the same scale, but since some of them are very small and some are large, we need a compromise. The size can be tweaked, but cropping the too large ones is inevitable I think.
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On Sat, May 15, 2004 at 04:03:35AM +0000, bulia byak wrote:
- The right-click context menu needs a *lot* of attention. With the dialog menu being moved to other menus (which is a great improvement), I found that I kept wishing to have various things available from the context menu.
True, this is because this is one of the few UI element that I never touched :) and that is because I never use it. Whoever wants to improve it, go ahead, this should not be difficult.
Is there a simple command that will tell me what "sort" of object the mouse is on? For the right-click to be useful, it should sense at least 2 things:
- what "mode" the mouse is in (selector, rectangle, text, etc) - what object is under the mouse. (and notice "multiple selections")
Is there an enum of object types anywhere? At least the sense of object vs stroke?
Also, should the menu be long or deep? For example, if multiple items are selected, the set of boolean operations should be included, but that would make the top-level menu very long. A different way would be to make a separate "boolean" submenu... thoughts?
participants (3)
-
bulia byak
-
Jon Phillips
-
Kees Cook