...

Looks good to me - and again, the scarcity of controls on the Text tool is not because we want it to be so, but simply because no one got a round tuit so far.

Oh don't worry, I'm not blaming anyone. But I Would like to see a status update on the LPE proposal (even if low-priority), to show that the UI proposal at least is more or less finished? :P

http://scislac.com/inkscape/texty.png (I'm sure glad gtk isn't still that ugly)

The letter spacing! How could I have forgotten those! I'd be glad to try to incorporate Josh's proposals into it all as well. :) The text bar is getting crowded though, some of these aspects may have to go into a drop-down. I'll try to come up with something.

Say... what's the extra drop-down to the left for?

Valerie, if you would like to add letter/line spacing, kerning, and rotation fields to your mockup (not necessarilly the same as in my old toolbar, if you have better thoughts/ideas I won't be offended at all) it would be an excellent step forward.

Alright, I'll give it a shot! It will take me some time, so in the meantime, good luck with your work!

If you mean the pen/pencil toolbar mockup, then yes, I think it's good at least until someone proposes )or implements) something still better :) Let's put it prominently onto the wiki, so that those who like you are interested in this won't have to start from scratch.

I've already put in onto Blueprint and wiki:

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/vector-brush http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Vector-brushes

I don't know if I have to edit wiki permissions somewhere... if I do can you point me to where?

I've titled it vector brushes for now, but now that I think about it, it's a complete Freehand (and bezier?) toolbar redesign...

As for the text toolbar, I've got a few ideas, but the kern commands would have to be grouped in a drop-down. However, as compensation: - the super-script and sub-script options are added to the toolbar - upon mouseover of the kern value changes, it also lists the shortcuts to do the kerning manually

Line spacing and letter spacing may either be grouped or separate, I'll have to see.

Say, I'd also like to know something as well: is it or is it not possible to have separate horizontal and vertical offset values? If not, this is actually not a problem, since many people will be "aligning to center/middle" so the vertical edges would not be reached. Basically that'd save me the space of a number field. :P

I understand that we need to fit a lot of stuff there, but I'm not very excited about having the kern and spacing controls in a drop-down.

Oh? I agree about the spacing, but I admit I rarely use kerning. Also, kerning is easier via keyboard shortcuts. I could be missing categories of users though (sorry!)

I think they are quite fundamental and quite often used - more often than text in shape IMHO

Text in shape is for charts, because 60% of the time, when I bring up the Align panel, it's to align a few lines of text into one chart shape (and I have to redo the process if I make any modifications to the text).

Now, I'm pretty sure that people do charts a lot more frequently than kerning letters. ;)

Apart from two clicks, drop-downs like those you have drawn have other problems: 1) they are not exactly a stock gtk widget and may be hard to implement;

Darn.

2. they obscure part of the

canvas which, after they are closed, needs to redraw itself, which may be annoyingly slow in complex documents.

Slower than bringing up the align panel all the time, as is what I have to do right now?

Alright, in this case, how about the following: - I put all the text style elements onto the text toolbar - I design a Separate tool whose purpose is to take a shape, take a text, and flow the text into it (with automatic padding, alignment, etc.) to make it a proper chart item that updates itself (for alignment and padding)?

Text on path can be either either another tool, included in this tool, or like right now only available from drop-downs and shortcuts?

Sure, it adds another tool or two, but that's why I proposed toolbox management. :P

(as for why I don't add the functionality directly to Rectangle, Ellipse and Polygon, that's because people may want to make custom shapes...)

You're underestimating the number of people that work with design and typography. ;)

Perhaps, but don't forget the number of people who do charts ;) - all technical workers - many students of various fields - many office workers (I use Inkscape all the time when doing reports) - people who do website button designs - comic artists (not charts, but still auto flow-in-shape)

If I were making a few big letter designs, I'd probably convert to path, select the letter and do transformations manually rather than enter numerical values (that or do manual kerning).

Of course, most of those people don't use Inkscape to do charts Now (not with some trouble at least) because of the following: - markers don't take the colour of line yet (isn't that one of the most highly rated Inkscape bugs?) - no dedicated chart tools (you have to do align manually)

But Inkscape could potentially become a major tool for creating charts.