Vector map editor and feedback
Hello,
After a long time, I've come back to have a look at Inkscape again.
Some feedback:
- Clone is Alt-D on Windows which (in Germany) opens the file (_D_atei) menu. Cloning without the keyboard shortcut is ... clumsy :-) Can you please add a tool to put any menu action into the toolbar?
- After working for an hour on my drawing *without saving*, Inkscape crashed (0.45.1). The auto-safe was perfectly usable (after I found it). Well done!!
- Is there an extension to draw maps for role playing games? What I would like to see is a palette to select symbols from, a tool to create a legend box (with all symbols and short explanations next to them) and a "stamp" tool to spread clones of the symbols on the "map" and a "fill area" tool for things like forests.
The same palette would come in handy when working with clip art libraries.
Regards,
Facundo Casco schrieb:
On 7/17/07, Aaron Digulla <digulla@...310...> wrote:
a "stamp" tool to spread clones of the symbols on the "map" and a "fill area" tool for things like forests.
You can use the space bar while draggin to stamp a new copy of the object. Very usefull.
That's what I like about Inkscape: All the important stuff is very easy to reach. :-)
Does this make a copy or a clone? I prefer clones because they use less memory and I can still edit the original (which helps when you design maps from scratch; "that tree sure looked good when you had it full screen but in a forest ...")
Regards,
mmm, it makes a copy Maybe you can try the option create tiled clones from edit menu, play around a little, it's very powerfull and fun.
On 7/17/07, Aaron Digulla <digulla@...310...> wrote:
Facundo Casco schrieb:
On 7/17/07, Aaron Digulla <digulla@...310...> wrote:
a "stamp" tool to spread clones of the symbols on the "map" and a "fill area" tool for things like forests.
You can use the space bar while draggin to stamp a new copy of the object. Very usefull.
That's what I like about Inkscape: All the important stuff is very easy to reach. :-)
Does this make a copy or a clone? I prefer clones because they use less memory and I can still edit the original (which helps when you design maps from scratch; "that tree sure looked good when you had it full screen but in a forest ...")
Regards,
-- Aaron "Optimizer" Digulla a.k.a. Philmann Dark "It's not the universe that's limited, it's our imagination. Follow me and I'll show you something beyond the limits." http://www.pdark.de/
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On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 01:30:30AM +0200, Colin Marquardt wrote:
Aaron Digulla <digulla@...310...> writes:
- Clone is Alt-D on Windows which (in Germany) opens the file (_D_atei)
menu.
Yeah, there is even an old bugreport about it, but no real solution. :/
Cheers Colin
Maybe someone could propose a patch?
Bryce
On 7/18/07, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...983...> wrote:
Maybe someone could propose a patch?
A patch doing what exactly? I'd like to discuss the proposed solution first.
Funny, two almost the same discussions right after eachother: the missing wingdings-font and the need to duplicate map symbols.
This might have been a discussion before, but that's one of the only things that makes DIA worth using: the ability to drag and drop from a huge liberary of symbols! And to be able to add libraries and symbols yourself. Illustrator has the same kind of functionality, although slightly more clumsy compared to DIA.
Well, this is a kind of feature-request in disguise... :)
Maarten
-----Original Message----- From: inkscape-user-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:inkscape-user-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of bulia byak Sent: 18. juli 2007 05:33 To: Inkscape User Community Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] Vector map editor and feedback
On 7/18/07, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...983...> wrote:
Maybe someone could propose a patch?
A patch doing what exactly? I'd like to discuss the proposed solution first.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
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Maarten van der Velde wrote:
Funny, two almost the same discussions right after eachother: the missing wingdings-font and the need to duplicate map symbols.
This might have been a discussion before, but that's one of the only things that makes DIA worth using: the ability to drag and drop from a huge liberary of symbols! And to be able to add libraries and symbols yourself. Illustrator has the same kind of functionality, although slightly more clumsy compared to DIA.
Well, this is a kind of feature-request in disguise... :)
Do you know a clipart browser was developed a couple of years ago as a Google Summer of Code project? http://code.google.com/p/clipartbrowser/ http://openclipart.org/wiki/Clip_Art_Browser
I have no idea how active or usable it is now, but it used to be an interesting start: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2005/08/clipart-browser.html
Maarten van der Velde schrieb:
Funny, two almost the same discussions right after eachother: the missing wingdings-font and the need to duplicate map symbols.
This might have been a discussion before, but that's one of the only things that makes DIA worth using: the ability to drag and drop from a huge liberary of symbols! And to be able to add libraries and symbols yourself. Illustrator has the same kind of functionality, although slightly more clumsy compared to DIA.
Well, this is a kind of feature-request in disguise... :)
I think a library browser would be a nice feature. Is it possible to create dialogs from Python? I don't really want to dive into C++ development just to whip up a prototype. What I need:
- Create a dialog - Create a thumbnail of a document from Python - Create a list of images - Allow to select an image - Add some XML to the current document
I think the last one is possible (that's what all the existing tools do). How about the rest? Is there any documentation about the script API?
Regards,
bulia byak schrieb:
A patch doing what exactly? I'd like to discuss the proposed solution first.
Two things need to be done:
1. All shortcuts that break must be found and replaced with new shortcuts 2. Inkscape should listen for keypresses when a menu is active and use that key as a shortcut from now on (just like GIMP).
Regards,
On 7/18/07, Aaron Digulla <digulla@...310...> wrote:
- All shortcuts that break must be found and replaced with new shortcuts
That's easily said. We don't have that much free shortcuts, you know. Those that still remain free by now are rather convoluted (ctrl+alt, numpad, etc). So you need to free some other key first, perhaps also by moving its action elsewhere. And besides, what will work for German keyboard will fail for French or Spanish, and vice versa.
In this specific case, I don't see much sense trying to free the single Alt+letter, because with our 40+ translations, some of them will _surely_ have a menu with that letter. Just consider Alt+letter combinations as an extra convenience that's not guaranteed to work. Or, if you want, create your own German-only keyboard map (but then you will also need to translate and update all documentation, and warn German users that English keyboard charts won't work for them - I think it's way more trouble than it's worth).
- Inkscape should listen for keypresses when a menu is active and use
that key as a shortcut from now on (just like GIMP).
We have a different keyboard setup system. Maybe it can be somehow coupled with this GTK feature, but I don't know how. And personally, I always considered this "keyboard configuration via menus" very inconvenient and counterintuitive: when in a menu, I want to invoke actions, not reconfigure them.
On 7/19/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...155...> wrote:
- Inkscape should listen for keypresses when a menu is active and use
that key as a shortcut from now on (just like GIMP).
We have a different keyboard setup system. Maybe it can be somehow coupled with this GTK feature, but I don't know how. And personally, I always considered this "keyboard configuration via menus" very inconvenient and counterintuitive: when in a menu, I want to invoke actions, not reconfigure them.
Amen. I thought they got rid of that "feature" a while back. I just tried it in gimp 2.2 on Win32 and it doesn't seem to work. The main problem with it is that there's no way to find out if the key you're setting to menu item X is already assigned to feature Y. It just re-assigns it without warning. This was a cheap hack for configuring keys that somehow managed to stick around far longer than it should have. What they really needed was to make some sort of configuration dialog that could give proper feedback, check for conflicts, allow for canceling if you decide it's a bad idea or if it was really just your cat stepping on the keyboard, etc.
--bb
Bill Baxter schrieb:
Amen. I thought they got rid of that "feature" a while back. I just tried it in gimp 2.2 on Win32 and it doesn't seem to work.
Then your install is broken. I have 2.2.13 on Linux and it still works as it should.
What they really needed was to make some sort of configuration dialog that could give proper feedback, check for conflicts, allow for canceling if you decide it's a bad idea or if it was really just your cat stepping on the keyboard, etc.
I have seen those dialogs. They are so huge, you can't use them, changing the mapping for a single key takes minutes! Most of the time, the items are sorted (so you can't search them by your knowledge of the menu order) or not sorted (so you can't find anything). Usually, you can't change the sort order, etc.
As I see it, this feature of Gimp is a milestone in usability. It's easy to use, simple and works. All the rest I've seen to far (jEdit, Word, Eclipse, some games) is crap, doesn't work and only frustrates me.
And you could still show a dialog after you notice a conflict but what for? It's useless. If you need the old mapping, just press a key and you're done. It can't be more easy. Well, as long as undo works for anything you can do with the menus. But there is no software where you can't undo anything anymore, right?
Regards,
"bulia byak" <buliabyak@...155...> writes:
Or, if you want, create your own German-only keyboard map (but then you will also need to translate and update all documentation, and warn German users that English keyboard charts won't work for them - I think it's way more trouble than it's worth).
Yeah, that's why I didn't really do anything in that regard. Come to think of it, IIRC we decided to not mention the Alt-Letter shortcuts prominently in the tutorials, but the alternate ones. I'll put that into http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TutorialUpdates-0.46.
Cheers Colin
bulia byak schrieb:
- All shortcuts that break must be found and replaced with new shortcuts
That's easily said. We don't have that much free shortcuts, you know. Those that still remain free by now are rather convoluted (ctrl+alt, numpad, etc). So you need to free some other key first, perhaps also by moving its action elsewhere. And besides, what will work for German keyboard will fail for French or Spanish, and vice versa.
In this specific case, I don't see much sense trying to free the single Alt+letter, because with our 40+ translations, some of them will _surely_ have a menu with that letter. Just consider Alt+letter combinations as an extra convenience that's not guaranteed to work. Or, if you want, create your own German-only keyboard map (but then you will also need to translate and update all documentation, and warn German users that English keyboard charts won't work for them - I think it's way more trouble than it's worth).
Just ask the Eclipse guys; they have the same problem. There simply isn't a good solution. Either the mappings will be different per system or per language or per user.
We could get rid of
- Inkscape should listen for keypresses when a menu is active and use
that key as a shortcut from now on (just like GIMP).
We have a different keyboard setup system. Maybe it can be somehow coupled with this GTK feature, but I don't know how. And personally, I always considered this "keyboard configuration via menus" very inconvenient and counterintuitive: when in a menu, I want to invoke actions, not reconfigure them.
Well, you have lots of hidden features in Inkscape as well which no one expects (like being able to drop copies by pressing space while dragging).
The advantage of the feature is: It's simple to use and to understand. It's very convenient since you are at the place where you want to be when you need it (so no need to click through large trees of commands to find the one you want to map). In fact, I felt it the best feature Gimp had. Just gets the job done, unlike all those keyboard mapping dialogs you can find anywhere else.
As for the "it didn't warn when you remapped a key that was used elsewhere" critique:
a) It would be simple to show a dialog in this case warning you b) so what? You can't really break much. If you find you need the old shortcut, it's just a keypress to restore it. And if you don't, well, you don't.
Regards,
On 7/19/07, Aaron Digulla <digulla@...310...> wrote:
Well, you have lots of hidden features in Inkscape as well which no one expects (like being able to drop copies by pressing space while dragging).
If it's not in the menu does not mean it's hidden. EVERYTHING is documented in http://inkscape.org/doc/keys.html, just print it and learn it by heart :)
And by they way, like many other actions that only make sense in specific contexts, this we wouldn't be able to put in a menu anyway.
participants (8)
-
Aaron Digulla -
Bill Baxter -
Bryce Harrington -
bulia byak -
Colin Marquardt -
Facundo Casco -
Maarten van der Velde -
Nicu Buculei (OCAL)