Quoting Jozsef Mak <j_mak3@...9...>:
Hi, I apologize if I sounded too critical; the criticism intended to be constructive. All the more because I do see lots of potential in Inkscape and would like to see it to emerge as a strong competitor to commercial products. And thank you for pointing me out a few of the things I overlooked when testing the program. But despite all the above I still stick to what I said in my previous remarks. What hard to understand is why open source developers dont seem to recognize the importance of user-friendly interfaces. (There are a few notable exceptions to this like Firefox or Thunderbird, which are world class).
Well, though it may be the general case, I do know that most of the developers on Inkscape do care about user interface. One issue with engineers in general, however, is that most engineers do not know UI, and should stay away from it. :-)
However, I have quite a bit of experience in UI Design, and in using various products over the years including being a beta tester of MacroMind 3D. One thing that sometimes comes in to play is that a particular company will do things a certain way not because it's necesarily the best UI, but because it's either the way that other of their apps work or in order to maintain compatibility with prior versions (Adobe is one company guilty of both of these).
Illustrator compatibility and ease migration for Illustrator users is a strong consideration that is covered often by the developers. However... in general there tends to be a stronger priority to trying to hit the "best" UI as opposed to just doing the "most compatible" UI. That is, the general rule I've seen followed here is that we try to act similar to other illustrations packages (and more than just Illustrator, like Xara), but if there's something that makes workflow better, we'll choose that over mere compatibility.
The 'Similar Applications' section of the Other Projects page in the wiki is one resouces the developers use to keep an eye on UI issues. http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OtherProjects
From the point of view of the designer the dialog boxes, panels, popup windows are always nuisances. They interrupt the workflow and disrupt concentration. Therefore, it makes sense to design then as inconspicuous as possible.
Actually, those are not always an annoyance, depending on the person using them. There are often a few different ways to achieve things, and different people can gain maximum usability from different approaches and implementations.
However... your main point about not interrupting workflow is a good one. That's actually the bottom line tends to rule. If something gets in the way of using the program, we want to clean it up.
I can cover a few more of your points in detail later. But I think I can summarize best by saying that we are very much interested in workflow issues of Inkscape, and are only part of the way there in cleaning up things from back when we first branced from SodiPodi. The more feedback and interractions we can get with different types of users like yourself, the better we can tune the interface and maximize the program's usability.