On Sun, 2005-11-06 at 03:02 -0400, bulia byak wrote:

On 11/6/05, Michael Moore <stuporglue@...155...> wrote:

...

When I move objects in my drawing, the gradient stays behind. I don't think it used to do this. Is there a way to make the gradeint move with the rest of the drawing?

It's a toggle button in the Selector controls. You have probably unpressed it accidentally.

I'm wondering whether we have a usability problem here, since I have been asked this very same question by a number of other people (though, sometimes it's stroke scaling or pattern transformation rather than gradients).

-mental

On Nov 6, 2005, at 11:34 AM, bulia byak wrote:

The only thing to do would be to remove them to some faraway location, but I'd strongly object to that because they are used quite frequently.

That's not the only thing to do. Perhaps the most straightforward thing, but not the only thing.

Another solution would be to have Inky, the interactive Inkscape assistant, pop up and ask the end user if he *really* wanted to turn that option on/off.

:-)

... I think Vigor is BSD'd, is that a compatible license??? http://vigor.sourceforge.net/screenshots/

Or there are in-between things that can be done. From they little reminder icons in Eclipse's editor to log-in dialogs that note that you have the caps lock down, there are all sorts of different solutions.

Getting the right balance for good workflow is they key.

On 11/6/05, MenTaLguY <mental@...32...> wrote:

Evidently a significant proportion of users do not hover over the widget long enough to see/read the tooltip.

I'd guess other programs, that often fail to provide tooltips or they are undescriptive, are more to blame for this than Inkscape.

-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

I think that a possible improvement to these toggle buttons which apparently do nothing, would be to show a message in the bottom bar (what's the name of it?). This would offer more information to users who don't know the use of the button (even if they can get the information reading the tooltip, this would be a small improvement for them) and it wouldn't get in the middle of users who already know what the button does. Plus, it looks to me like something easy to implement.

miz.

On 11/7/05, Jon A. Cruz <jon@...204...> wrote:

On Nov 6, 2005, at 7:50 PM, MenTaLguY wrote:

...

On Sun, 2005-11-06 at 15:34 -0400, bulia byak wrote:

...

failing to read the tooltip

Evidently a significant proportion of users do not hover over the widget long enough to see/read the tooltip.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's a problem because the consequences of toggling the control are not otherwise immediately apparent.

Well, what I've seen in a lot of programs depends on if we can determine this is a cause for confusion. If we can detect the state at runtime, popping up a warning dialog with a "don't show me this again" checkbox is one good solution. For this case, we could detect things either when the button was toggled, or after a drag with the situation that may be confusing. It would, of course, be a balance between how many users would be saved from themselves versus how many other users would be unnecessarily annoyed by it.

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On Sun, 6 Nov 2005, MenTaLguY wrote:

Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 22:50:25 -0500 From: MenTaLguY <mental@...32...> Reply-To: inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net To: inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] Move gradient with

On Sun, 2005-11-06 at 15:34 -0400, bulia byak wrote:

...

failing to read the tooltip

Evidently a significant proportion of users do not hover over the widget long enough to see/read the tooltip.

It is best to assume users will pick up Inkscape and go with it and not necessarily read *anything* (or ever join the lists or provide us feedback any kind of feedback). I'm always pleasantly surprised if users read the tooltips or any kind of documentation at all. I only reluctantly read the manual for my video recorder as a last resort to track down an obscure feature and I wouldn't expect software users to be any more enthusiastic about reading techincal documentation than they would for any other tool.

It isn't specific to Inkscape, I've seen plenty of users just hit OK because they want warnings or error messages to just go away which is why it is so important for things to always be undoable.

It is important to never blame the user. Software is supposed to make it easier for them to create art, not be a puzzle game proving how clever they are at navigating computer interfaces.

On Sun, 6 Nov 2005, Jon A. Cruz wrote:

On Nov 6, 2005, at 7:50 PM, MenTaLguY wrote:

...

I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's a problem because the consequences of toggling the control are not otherwise immediately apparent.

Well, what I've seen in a lot of programs depends on if we can determine this is a cause for confusion. If we can detect the state at runtime, popping up a warning dialog with a "don't show me this again" checkbox is one good solution.

That kind of warning with a checkbox to disable it would be a violation of the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines. If a dialog is too annoying to leave on permanently then it is annoying enough you should want to find some other way to do it if at all possible. It worries me how you consider this a good solution as opposed to what I consider in very rare cases to be a necessary evil.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's a problem because the consequences of toggling the control are not otherwise immediately apparent.

I'm not sure either (and I dont want to be berated for making a half baked suggestion) but I hope someone can spare some time to see what other software does and perhaps find a solution which looks at the bigger picture rather than tweaking the controls which already exist.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

...

...

When I move objects in my drawing, the gradient stays behind. I don't think it used to do this. Is there a way to make the gradeint move with the rest of the drawing?

It's a toggle button in the Selector controls. You have probably unpressed it accidentally.

My 2 year old nephew did get at the keyboard when I wasn't looking. :-) I kind of figured that there was a setting somewhere, I just can't find it. Do you mean in Inkscape Preferences-->Tools-->Selector? I tried toggeling the "Enable gradient editing" option, but that seems to just mean that the gradient adjuster tool shows up when the object is selected. The situation persists either way.

I'm wondering whether we have a usability problem here, since I have been asked this very same question by a number of other people (though, sometimes it's stroke scaling or pattern transformation rather than gradients).

I've always found Inkscape to be very usable. Any settings I've changed have made sense to me both in location, icon, and description. For this one, I wasn't the one who changed it initially, so I had to just treat the symptoms. The symptom in my view was "gradient doesn't move with drawing", so I figgured it was a gradient issue or a selection issue. I'm probably just not understanding why the gradient isn't comming with.

-- Michael Moore ------------------------------- www.stuporglue.com -- Articles, software and computer tutorials. www.stuporglue.org -- Donate your used computer to a student that needs it.

• in the controls bar above the canvas, in Selector tool, the toggle

button with gradient on it

• in Preferences dialog, Transforms tab, "Transform gradients"

Aaaah. Maybe I blamed my nephew too early. I was trying to figgure out what those buttons did. :-)

Thank you!

-- Michael Moore ------------------------------- www.stuporglue.com -- Articles, software and computer tutorials. www.stuporglue.org -- Donate your used computer to a student that needs it.