Inkscape

On 1/19/07, Olivier Lefevre <lefevrol@...> wrote:
> I've been trying to use Inkscape but its UI seems designed to foil
> attempts. Specifically when I select the rectangle drawing tool and
> create a shape by dragging I get one width a dashed contour that
> vanishes as soon as I click anywhere on the pane. There does not
> seem to be any way to make it stick and thus to actually get a
> rectangle. How dumb is that? If you need assistance just to draw a
> rectangle, never mind more advanced operation, something's really
> wrong with the UI.

You're most likely drawing it fully transparent or white, which is why
it's invisible. Look at the statusbar: on the left it shows you the
style of the selected object. Or, switch to the Selector tool and read
the description of the selected object and see its bounding box
handles. All the hints are there, just look.

If it's transparent, use the Opacity field in the statusbar to fix
that. If it's white or has None for fill, click on any color to
repaint it. What could be easier?

And if you're wondering why it's creating it transparent or white,
then it's because you have assigned that style to some object and
Inkscape has remembered it. By default, all shape tools use the
last-used style for new objects, and it's a great time saver.
(Although you can turn this off if you like.)

> Likewise the need to use a CTRL modifier for the arrow keys to
> work runs counter to th expectations developed in users by every
> other software I can think of and is inconvenient to boot.

Inkscape is not a viewer. Its primary function is editing. Therefore,
plain arrow keys are reserved for the most basic editing action:
moving the selected object(s) around. Using Ctrl+arrows for scrolling
canvas is an added convenience. By the way, consider that many other
vector editors have no keyboard shortcuts for scrolling AT ALL; there,
you can only scroll by mouse.

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

Thanks for the explanations. So if I create the rectangle and 
immediately switch to the select tool yes I get to see its properties 
and change them. It did not occur to me to try the selector because the 
object seemed to have disappeared as soon as I clicked elsewhere. I'll 
be damned if I know why it was white: I have _viewed_ some SVG documents 
in Inkscape before but this is my first stab at creating one.

In the status bar I would suggest not using F and S but spelling out 
Fill and Stroke in full: there is enough space for that and if you are a 
newcomer and both F and S say "N/A" it is not obvious what they refer 
to. Besides it seems weird for the stroke to be N/A: I can understand 
having no fill but how can an object have neither fill nor stroke yet 
still somehow exist? As per your own message, shouldn't the stroke have 
been white or transparent and not N/A? White is definitely a color and 
in most editing tools transparent _is_ a color, too, albeit obviously a 
peculiar one.

> Inkscape is not a viewer. Its primary function is editing. Therefore,
> plain arrow keys are reserved for the most basic editing action:

OK.

-- O.L.

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 23:52:09 +0100
Olivier Lefevre <lefevrol@...> wrote:

> Thanks for the explanations. So if I create the rectangle and 
> immediately switch to the select tool yes I get to see its properties 
> and change them. It did not occur to me to try the selector because the 
> object seemed to have disappeared as soon as I clicked elsewhere. I'll 
> be damned if I know why it was white: I have _viewed_ some SVG documents 
> in Inkscape before but this is my first stab at creating one.

Something else to watch out for is zero width lines. These will be
invisible in Inkscape but when you print the file such lines will show
up as minimum width ones. They can be very difficult to find, especially
in a drawing with lots of work on the same area.

-- 
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk

On 1/28/07, Olivier Lefevre <lefevrol@...> wrote:
> Thanks for the explanations. So if I create the rectangle and
> immediately switch to the select tool yes I get to see its properties
> and change them.

Actually you don't need to go to Selector to change most properties.
Assigning color and changing opacity on selected object(s) works
equally well in any tool.

> It did not occur to me to try the selector because the
> object seemed to have disappeared as soon as I clicked elsewhere.

Clicking elsewhere deselects the object, which means it loses any
artificial selection markers and becomes invisible. You could always
reselect it back using lots of different selection methods (even if it
is invisible).

> In the status bar I would suggest not using F and S but spelling out
> Fill and Stroke in full: there is enough space for that

I thought about that too, although we don't really have that much
space there (we need to make visible as much of the statusbar message
as possible) but perhaps the gain in discoverability that we'll get by
spelling out these labels is worth it.

> to. Besides it seems weird for the stroke to be N/A: I can understand
> having no fill but how can an object have neither fill nor stroke yet
> still somehow exist?

Yes, this is allowed by SVG and we just obey the standard here.

> As per your own message, shouldn't the stroke have
> been white or transparent and not N/A?

Per SVG, white stroke, zero opacity stroke, no stroke, and zero width
stroke are all different specifications although they may look the
same. And I think it's consistent.

Note that you can still make such an object visible and easy
selectable by switching to Outline mode in View menu. In this mode,
each object is shown by its outline, even if in fact it has no stroke
or is fully transparent. You can also select any object by clicking on
its outline (requires 0.45, as in 0.44 this mode was buggy).

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

On Sun, Jan 28, 2007 at 11:52:09PM +0100, Olivier Lefevre wrote:
> Thanks for the explanations. So if I create the rectangle and 
> immediately switch to the select tool yes I get to see its properties 
> and change them. It did not occur to me to try the selector because the 
> object seemed to have disappeared as soon as I clicked elsewhere. I'll 
> be damned if I know why it was white: I have _viewed_ some SVG documents 
> in Inkscape before but this is my first stab at creating one.
> 
> In the status bar I would suggest not using F and S but spelling out 
> Fill and Stroke in full: there is enough space for that and if you are a 
> newcomer and both F and S say "N/A" it is not obvious what they refer 
> to. Besides it seems weird for the stroke to be N/A: I can understand 

Would it perhaps be clearer to get rid of the labels entirely and just
show a rectangle or other shape in the fill color, with a border in the
stroke color (if any)?  Then we could eliminate the need to localize at
all, which could be beneficial in languages where the translation for
'fill' or 'stroke' may end up being a longer word.

Bryce

> having no fill but how can an object have neither fill nor stroke yet 
> still somehow exist? As per your own message, shouldn't the stroke have 
> been white or transparent and not N/A? White is definitely a color and 
> in most editing tools transparent _is_ a color, too, albeit obviously a 
> peculiar one.
> 
> > Inkscape is not a viewer. Its primary function is editing. Therefore,
> > plain arrow keys are reserved for the most basic editing action:
> 
> OK.
> 
> -- O.L.

On 1/29/07, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...> wrote:
> Would it perhaps be clearer to get rid of the labels entirely and just
> show a rectangle or other shape in the fill color, with a border in the
> stroke color (if any)?

I don't think so, because you can't make it large enough for the color
to be visible enough. The current layout presents wide enough swatches
for both colors which can be quickly identified even with a quick
sideways glance. If one of the colors will be applied to a thin frame,
it will be much more frustrating to try to find out what color it
really is. More importantly, now each of the swatches can display a
text label - "None", "Unset", etc. - which you can't fit into such a
"frame swatch". Also each swatch now displays a gradient preview with
an "L" or "R" prefix to indicate linear and radial (elliptic). Not
only you cannot fit these letters into the framed swatch, but without
them, in many cases it's difficult to tell a slight gradient from a
flat color, especially if applied to the stroke.

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

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, Bryce Harrington wrote:

> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:09:29 -0800
> From: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...>
> To: Inkscape User Community <inkscape-user@...>
> Cc: inkscape-devel@...
> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] [Inkscape-user] Baffling UI


Thanks Olivier for providing feedback on this.

> On Sun, Jan 28, 2007 at 11:52:09PM +0100, Olivier Lefevre wrote:
> > Thanks for the explanations. So if I create the rectangle and
> > immediately switch to the select tool yes I get to see its properties
> > and change them. It did not occur to me to try the selector because the
> > object seemed to have disappeared as soon as I clicked elsewhere. I'll
> > be damned if I know why it was white: I have _viewed_ some SVG documents
> > in Inkscape before but this is my first stab at creating one.
> >
> > In the status bar I would suggest not using F and S but spelling out

Always avoid abbreviations (and acronyms, and annoying alliteration also).

> > Fill and Stroke in full: there is enough space for that and if you are a
> > newcomer and both F and S say "N/A" it is not obvious what they refer
> > to. Besides it seems weird for the stroke to be N/A: I can understand

seems weirder to me that the foreground and background colour indicators
are repeated on both the tool options bar and the status bar.  doing the
same thing in two different places is generally discouraged by usability
guidelines (there are exceptions where it may be worthwhile but
that's guidelines for you).

If you really wanted to include the labels there would be enough room to
include the full words Fill and Stroke, in the toolbar but not in the
status bar.

> Would it perhaps be clearer to get rid of the labels entirely and just
> show a rectangle or other shape in the fill color, with a border in the
> stroke color (if any)?  Then we could eliminate the need to localize at
> all, which could be beneficial in languages where the translation for
> 'fill' or 'stroke' may end up being a longer word.

If you don't entirely get rid of it wouldn't "None" be a clearer label
than "N/A"?  I realise that it might not be pedantically accurate to the
underlying implementation but making things clear to the user is more
important right?  Also real words are much easier to translate than
acronyms or abbreviations.

In place of the single letter "O" for opacity it might be better to use a
checkboard icon like GIMP does for the "Lock Alpha Channel" checkbox in
the layers palette.

-- 
Alan

On 1/29/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> seems weirder to me that the foreground and background colour indicators
> are repeated on both the tool options bar and the status bar.

These are fill and stroke, not "foreground and background". More
importantly, the indicator in the controls of some tools is NOT the
same as the one in the statusbar. It does not display the style of the
selected object, but shows the tool style - the style that the new
objects created by this tool will have. That's a totally different
thing. And that's why not all tools have it but only object-creating
tools.

> If you don't entirely get rid of it wouldn't "None" be a clearer label
> than "N/A"?

No, because None is already used. None means no fill/stroke on
selected object, N/A means no object selected.

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

On 1/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 1/29/07, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...> wrote:
> > Would it perhaps be clearer to get rid of the labels entirely and just
> > show a rectangle or other shape in the fill color, with a border in the
> > stroke color (if any)?
>
> I don't think so, because you can't make it large enough for the color
> to be visible enough.

Hi,

 Remove the layer dialog from the bottom toolbar (which is redundant
anyway) and you have enough room for the more important stroke and
fill swathes. You can position them side by side. Cleaner and simpler.

Jmak
-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
>  Remove the layer dialog from the bottom toolbar (which is redundant
> anyway)

It may be redundant for you, but many find it convenient to be able to
do simple layer operations without opening the layers dialog.

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

On 1/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> >  Remove the layer dialog from the bottom toolbar (which is redundant
> > anyway)
>
> It may be redundant for you, but many find it convenient to be able to
> do simple layer operations without opening the layers dialog.
>

I worked for 15 years in professional graphic business using both
illustrator and freehand. If these commercial applications can make do
with one layer palette why cannot Inkscape. Priorities are very
important.

Jmak

-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> I worked for 15 years in professional graphic business using both
> illustrator and freehand. If these commercial applications can make do
> with one layer palette why cannot Inkscape. Priorities are very
> important.

Oh come on. Illustrator users, for example, can "make do" without a
proper on-canvas gradient editing - a really basic convenience for
users of Xara and Inkscape. Every UI seems best only until someone
invents a better one.

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

On 1/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> > I worked for 15 years in professional graphic business using both
> > illustrator and freehand. If these commercial applications can make do
> > with one layer palette why cannot Inkscape. Priorities are very
> > important.
>
> Oh come on. Illustrator users, for example, can "make do" without a
> proper on-canvas gradient editing - a really basic convenience for
> users of Xara and Inkscape. Every UI seems best only until someone
> invents a better one.
>

Dont forget that a good interface is not the matter of invention but
the result of a gradual improvements based on user experiences. Ones
the product manager of macromedia was asked why are the macromedia
interfaces are so brilliant? He replied "because we listen to our
users". Wise words.

Jmak

-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> Dont forget that a good interface is not the matter of invention but
> the result of a gradual improvements based on user experiences. Ones
> the product manager of macromedia was asked why are the macromedia
> interfaces are so brilliant? He replied "because we listen to our
> users". Wise words.

I agree wholeheartedly. Inkscape has implemented hundreds if not
thousands of users' suggestions, and I'm sure it's one of the reasons
its interface is liked by many. Whenever a user comes with a specific
suggestion backed by a real use case, he can be sure he'll be listened
to and some satisfactory solution to his request will be found. If,
however, all the user can quote in his support is "big guys are doing
it this way and I want Inkscape to copy them," then I think we
(developers) can be excused for being a little less attentive :)

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

On 1/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:

>If,
> however, all the user can quote in his support is "big guys are doing
> it this way and I want Inkscape to copy them," then I think we
> (developers) can be excused for being a little less attentive :)

>
This is one way to look at it. I personally prefer taking advise from
those who have already proven themselves rather than from amateurs or
recreational users. Big difference. But beyond user experience, did
you know that companies put lots of money into interface research.
Some even fund university research projects to help improving the user
experiences of their products. This is the other reason why worth
looking at the ways commercial apps solve interface issues.

Jmak

-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
  <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
It can be a little dangerous to correlate the amount of money put into
interface research or funding of university research with Interface
Usability. Many of the big commercial software developers conduct
research in such a way as to justify their UI and it is well known that
university research is often pulled toward the objectives of the
fundholder. Bottom line with UI Usability is that no one interface will
be all things to all people and the flexibility to provide an
unconstrained user-customisable UI is (as far as I have seen) still an
aspiration.<br>
<br>
jmak wrote:
<blockquote
 cite="mid6d21d8d30701291830v649d6565nde6d8a3a6652108e@..."
 type="cite">
  <pre wrap="">On 1/29/07, bulia byak <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:buliabyak@...> wrote:

  </pre>
  <pre wrap="">This is one way to look at it. I personally prefer taking advise from
those who have already proven themselves rather than from amateurs or
recreational users. Big difference. But beyond user experience, did
you know that companies put lots of money into interface research.
Some even fund university research projects to help improving the user
experiences of their products. This is the other reason why worth
looking at the ways commercial apps solve interface issues.

Jmak

  </pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<pre><font face="Harlow Solid Italic" size="+1"><big><big>Andy Richardson</big></big>

</font></pre>
<img alt="" src="cid:part1.00070900.08060706@..."
 height="128" width="195"><font size="+1"><span
 style="font-size: 16pt; font-family: Verdana; color: rgb(233, 168, 10);"
 lang="EN-GB"><br>
M</span><big><big><span
 style="font-size: 16pt; font-family: Verdana; color: rgb(233, 168, 10);"
 lang="EN-GB">ount Physio</span><span
 style="font-size: 16pt; font-family: Verdana; color: rgb(233, 168, 10);"
 lang="EN-GB">
and Pilates<o:p></o:p></span><br>
<small><small><small>Ph: +64 (0)7 575 4080<br>
Fax: </small></small></small></big></big></font><small><small><small><font
 size="+1"><small>+64 (0)7 575 4018<br>
</small></font></small></small><font face="Verdana"><a
 href="http://www.mountphysio.co.nz">www.mountphysio.co.nz</a></font></small></div>
</body>
</html>

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, bulia byak wrote:

> On 1/29/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> > seems weirder to me that the foreground and background colour indicators
> > are repeated on both the tool options bar and the status bar.
>
> These are fill and stroke, not "foreground and background". More

I corrected myself later, but that slipped through

> importantly, the indicator in the controls of some tools is NOT the
> same as the one in the statusbar. It does not display the style of the
> selected object, but shows the tool style - the style that the new
> objects created by this tool will have. That's a totally different
> thing. And that's why not all tools have it but only object-creating
> tools.

now I remember, there is a setting to make the tool colours independent of
so those two would be different if I had it set that way.

> > If you don't entirely get rid of it wouldn't "None" be a clearer label
> > than "N/A"?
>
> No, because None is already used. None means no fill/stroke on
> selected object, N/A means no object selected.

You are missing the point that N/A is horribly unclear and unhelpfully
pedantic, technically correctly but more an unnecessary distinction.

-- 
Alan

On 1/29/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> You are missing the point that N/A is horribly unclear and unhelpfully
> pedantic, technically correctly but more an unnecessary distinction.

Perhaps, but what would you suggest, specifically? "Nothing selected"
would not fit there.

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

On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> This is one way to look at it. I personally prefer taking advise from
> those who have already proven themselves rather than from amateurs or
> recreational users. Big difference.

As for me, I personally prefer taking advice from those who have spent
some time thinking about their problem. Who have first-hand Inkscape
experience and understand the basic principles of our UI. Who know how
it's done in other apps but have fresh ideas about how it can be done
in Inkscape. Who can reason and use real-world examples. Who
understand that there exist wildly different user habits and use cases
for wildly different tasks.

Rather than from someone who's spent years working with a single
product, grew fond of its quirks and limitations, and wants us to
reproduce them exactly and literally.

Big difference :)

> But beyond user experience, did
> you know that companies put lots of money into interface research.

I've heard references to this "research" multiple times, but allow me
to have my reservations. I do not know what exactly are they trying to
measure, in what way, and what effect it has on their UI -  so I
cannot assess that. What I see and can assess is the final result, the
UI of their products. And needless to say, I can identify many
horrendously  braindead interface choices in most of these
"researched" products.

Interestingly, the level of clunkiness seems to be somehow directly
proportional to the market share that the product holds (just compare
Adobe Illustrator and Xara, or Windows and OSX).

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

On 1/29/07, Andy Richardson <andy@...> wrote:
>
>  It can be a little dangerous to correlate the amount of money put into
> interface research or funding of university research with Interface
> Usability. Many of the big commercial software developers conduct research
> in such a way as to justify their UI and it is well known that university
> research is often pulled toward the objectives of the fundholder. Bottom
> line with UI Usability is that no one interface will be all things to all
> people and the flexibility to provide an unconstrained user-customisable UI
> is (as far as I have seen) still an aspiration.
>
>
>   That companies put money into research projects to justify themselves
and their products rather than improve them is new to me. But heck, you
always learn something. What I know is that in work efficiency is everything
and if a product has a confusing interface that makes people complain that
eventually filters down to the manufacturer. I agree that not one interface
satisfy all users. Kids demands kids interface, amateurs amateur and
professionals professional interface.

Jmak

-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, bulia byak wrote:

> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:29:50 -0500
> From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...>
> Reply-To: Inkscape User Community <inkscape-user@...>
> To: Inkscape User Community <inkscape-user@...>
> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] [Inkscape-devel] Baffling UI
>
> On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> >  Remove the layer dialog from the bottom toolbar (which is redundant
> > anyway)
>
> It may be redundant for you,

Would a beginner be particularly likely to use Layers at all?

Isn't there a risk that beginners will see the layer dropdown in
the status bar and wonder why it doesn't do more?  There no
affordance, nothing leading user from the dropdown to the full dialog, it
may well trap a few unwary users.

Dont take my word for it, ask someone working in HCI they are very
cautious about this kind of redundancy.

> but many find it convenient to be able to

you say many but it is hard for you to say who exactly those many people
are as it is for jmak to conclusively prove he is right

> do simple layer operations without opening the layers dialog.

If you can accept layers are a feature likely to be used by more advanced
users wouldn't they very quickly want more than the dropdown provides and
just use the keyboard shortcut to quickly pop open the dialog and use it
instead?

The dropdown is an artifact of before the Layers dialog existed, if you
keep too many of these inkscape will look even more busy and look
increasingly like an airplane cockpit.  You said yourself the status bar
is short of space so you should seriously consider retiring the layer
dropdown sooner rather than later.

-- 
Alan

On 1/29/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, bulia byak wrote:
>
> > Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:29:50 -0500
> > From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...>
> > Reply-To: Inkscape User Community <inkscape-user@...>
> > To: Inkscape User Community <inkscape-user@...>
> > Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] [Inkscape-devel] Baffling UI
> >
> > On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> > >  Remove the layer dialog from the bottom toolbar (which is redundant
> > > anyway)
> >
> > It may be redundant for you,
>
> Would a beginner be particularly likely to use Layers at all?
>
> Isn't there a risk that beginners will see the layer dropdown in
> the status bar and wonder why it doesn't do more?  There no
> affordance, nothing leading user from the dropdown to the full dialog, it
> may well trap a few unwary users.
>
> Dont take my word for it, ask someone working in HCI they are very
> cautious about this kind of redundancy.
>
> > but many find it convenient to be able to
>
> you say many but it is hard for you to say who exactly those many people
> are as it is for jmak to conclusively prove he is right
>
> > do simple layer operations without opening the layers dialog.
>
> If you can accept layers are a feature likely to be used by more advanced
> users wouldn't they very quickly want more than the dropdown provides and
> just use the keyboard shortcut to quickly pop open the dialog and use it
> instead?
>
> The dropdown is an artifact of before the Layers dialog existed, if you
> keep too many of these inkscape will look even more busy and look
> increasingly like an airplane cockpit.  You said yourself the status bar
> is short of space so you should seriously consider retiring the layer
> dropdown sooner rather than later.
>
> --

Thank you for further elaborating on the issue. Excellent points.

Jmak
-- 

2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On 1/29/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> Isn't there a risk that beginners will see the layer dropdown in
> the status bar and wonder why it doesn't do more?  There no
> affordance, nothing leading user from the dropdown to the full dialog, it
> may well trap a few unwary users.

It's not going to trap you until you have at least two layers. And you
can't get the second layer except by going to the perfectly visible
Layers menu and choosing "Add layer". And once you're in that menu,
you see the "Layers" command opening the full-fledged dialog. So, I
don't think an entrapment is likely to happen here.

> > do simple layer operations without opening the layers dialog.
>
> If you can accept layers are a feature likely to be used by more advanced
> users wouldn't they very quickly want more than the dropdown provides and
> just use the keyboard shortcut to quickly pop open the dialog and use it
> instead?

Not at all. It doesn't follow. If a user is "advanced" it does not
mean he will always choose the most "advanced" way to do what he needs
to be done. He would likely prefer the most _convenient_ way instead.
And for a subset of layer operations, the statusbar widget is often
more convenient simply because it's always there in the predictable
place.

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

On 1/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> > This is one way to look at it. I personally prefer taking advise from
> > those who have already proven themselves rather than from amateurs or
> > recreational users. Big difference.
>
> As for me, I personally prefer taking advice from those who have spent
> some time thinking about their problem. Who have first-hand Inkscape
> experience and understand the basic principles of our UI. Who know how
> it's done in other apps but have fresh ideas about how it can be done
> in Inkscape. Who can reason and use real-world examples. Who
> understand that there exist wildly different user habits and use cases
> for wildly different tasks.
>

Nowadays, it is very difficult to come up with really, really new
ideas. At least, I haven't seen any for a long time.

> Rather than from someone who's spent years working with a single
> product, grew fond of its quirks and limitations, and wants us to
> reproduce them exactly and literally.

I didn't say exactly, what I was simply saying, take the best ideas.
By the way, I also work with photoshop, 3d max, blender, not only with
illustrator of macromedia stuff. So this is not the matter of liking
one single product but being able to compare the usability functions
of similar apps.

>
> Big difference :)
>
> > But beyond user experience, did
> > you know that companies put lots of money into interface research.
>
> I've heard references to this "research" multiple times, but allow me
> to have my reservations. I do not know what exactly are they trying to
> measure, in what way, and what effect it has on their UI -  so I
> cannot assess that.

That is efficiency. Because if you spend half of your time say
dragging dialog boxes from side to side to be able to see the piece
you are working on it is not only inefficient way of working but
annoying as well.

>What I see and can assess is the final result, the
> UI of their products. And needless to say, I can identify many
> horrendously  braindead interface choices in most of these
> "researched" products.
>
> Interestingly, the level of clunkiness seems to be somehow directly
> proportional to the market share that the product holds (just compare
> Adobe Illustrator and Xara, or Windows and OSX).

I think you are wrong here.

Jmak
-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On 1/29/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> The dropdown is an artifact of before the Layers dialog existed, if you
> keep too many of these inkscape will look even more busy and look
> increasingly like an airplane cockpit.  You said yourself the status bar
> is short of space so you should seriously consider retiring the layer
> dropdown sooner rather than later.

A much better solution that would satisfy everyone: a small
layer-managing toolbar, with the current layer widget and perhaps some
more buttons for common tasks such as adding/deleting layer and
opening the Layers dialog. This toolbar would be placeable anywhere on
the bars, next to other toolbars (similar to Xara's) or removed
altogether. Sample applies to the selected style indicator. By the
default they would be placed where they are now, but draggable
anywhere.

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

On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> That is efficiency. Because if you spend half of your time say
> dragging dialog boxes from side to side to be able to see the piece
> you are working on it is not only inefficient way of working but
> annoying as well.

Excellent point. And guess what, the layer widget in the statusbar is
one of the ways to achieve exactly this - avoid dragging dialog boxes
around and get better access to your drawing.

> >What I see and can assess is the final result, the
> > UI of their products. And needless to say, I can identify many
> > horrendously  braindead interface choices in most of these
> > "researched" products.
> >
> > Interestingly, the level of clunkiness seems to be somehow directly
> > proportional to the market share that the product holds (just compare
> > Adobe Illustrator and Xara, or Windows and OSX).
>
> I think you are wrong here.

Really? Can you honestly defend Illustrator's way of handling
gradients, as compared to Xara/Inkscape's? And this is just one basic
example, I can give tons more.

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

On 1/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 1/29/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> > Isn't there a risk that beginners will see the layer dropdown in
> > the status bar and wonder why it doesn't do more?  There no
> > affordance, nothing leading user from the dropdown to the full dialog, it
> > may well trap a few unwary users.
>
> It's not going to trap you until you have at least two layers. And you
> can't get the second layer except by going to the perfectly visible
> Layers menu and choosing "Add layer". And once you're in that menu,
> you see the "Layers" command opening the full-fledged dialog. So, I
> don't think an entrapment is likely to happen here.
>
> > > do simple layer operations without opening the layers dialog.
> >
> > If you can accept layers are a feature likely to be used by more advanced
> > users wouldn't they very quickly want more than the dropdown provides and
> > just use the keyboard shortcut to quickly pop open the dialog and use it
> > instead?
>
> Not at all. It doesn't follow. If a user is "advanced" it does not
> mean he will always choose the most "advanced" way to do what he needs
> to be done. He would likely prefer the most _convenient_ way instead.
> And for a subset of layer operations, the statusbar widget is often
> more convenient simply because it's always there in the predictable
> place.

How do you know that this is the way professionals work? Have you ever
worked in a graphic agency or some similar place? Have you ever worked
under pressure when the client is panting behind your back and
constantly complaining and whatever you are doing he  always wants
something different. Because this is how the real work environment
look like. In this environment to survive the product you are using
should be virtually invisible, completely out of the way, I mean it
should be so smooth so natural that you shouldn't even notice it. This
is why the interface is so important in a professional work.
-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> > Not at all. It doesn't follow. If a user is "advanced" it does not
> > mean he will always choose the most "advanced" way to do what he needs
> > to be done. He would likely prefer the most _convenient_ way instead.
> > And for a subset of layer operations, the statusbar widget is often
> > more convenient simply because it's always there in the predictable
> > place.
>
> How do you know that this is the way professionals work? Have you ever
> worked in a graphic agency or some similar place? Have you ever worked
> under pressure when the client is panting behind your back and
> constantly complaining and whatever you are doing he  always wants
> something different. Because this is how the real work environment
> look like. In this environment to survive the product you are using
> should be virtually invisible, completely out of the way, I mean it
> should be so smooth so natural that you shouldn't even notice it. This
> is why the interface is so important in a professional work.

This seems to add very little to the discussion. Sorry but I don't see
how what you say contradicts what I said (and what you quoted). Do you
have any _specific_ counterarguments, apart from a "professionals know
better" rant?

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

On 1/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> > That is efficiency. Because if you spend half of your time say
> > dragging dialog boxes from side to side to be able to see the piece
> > you are working on it is not only inefficient way of working but
> > annoying as well.
>
> Excellent point. And guess what, the layer widget in the statusbar is
> one of the ways to achieve exactly this - avoid dragging dialog boxes
> around and get better access to your drawing.
>
> > >What I see and can assess is the final result, the
> > > UI of their products. And needless to say, I can identify many
> > > horrendously  braindead interface choices in most of these
> > > "researched" products.
> > >
> > > Interestingly, the level of clunkiness seems to be somehow directly
> > > proportional to the market share that the product holds (just compare
> > > Adobe Illustrator and Xara, or Windows and OSX).
> >
> > I think you are wrong here.
>
> Really? Can you honestly defend Illustrator's way of handling
> gradients, as compared to Xara/Inkscape's? And this is just one basic
> example, I can give tons more.

Illustrator didn't put that much emphasis on grads because it has the
mesh tool which is a more sophisticated way of creating complex grad
and 3d effects. I guess.


-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On 1/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> > > Not at all. It doesn't follow. If a user is "advanced" it does not
> > > mean he will always choose the most "advanced" way to do what he needs
> > > to be done. He would likely prefer the most _convenient_ way instead.
> > > And for a subset of layer operations, the statusbar widget is often
> > > more convenient simply because it's always there in the predictable
> > > place.
> >
> > How do you know that this is the way professionals work? Have you ever
> > worked in a graphic agency or some similar place? Have you ever worked
> > under pressure when the client is panting behind your back and
> > constantly complaining and whatever you are doing he  always wants
> > something different. Because this is how the real work environment
> > look like. In this environment to survive the product you are using
> > should be virtually invisible, completely out of the way, I mean it
> > should be so smooth so natural that you shouldn't even notice it. This
> > is why the interface is so important in a professional work.
>
> This seems to add very little to the discussion. Sorry but I don't see
> how what you say contradicts what I said (and what you quoted). Do you
> have any _specific_ counterarguments, apart from a "professionals know
> better" rant?
>
> --

I wrote this because, you tried to justify the presence of the layer
palette on the basis on an imaginary description of the professional
user way of working. By the way, this is not a rant just an honest
attempt to try to help improving inkscape.

-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> I wrote this because, you tried to justify the presence of the layer
> palette on the basis on an imaginary description of the professional
> user way of working.

You must have misread me. It was Alan, not me, who tried to justify
his point by alluding to an imaginary description of an "advanced"
user. I just pointed out in response that it sounds strange to assume
that such a user (or any user, for that matter) would always prefer a
more clunky "advanced" solution (dialog) if a more convenient, albeit
limited solution (widget) is right at hand.

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

On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> Illustrator didn't put that much emphasis on grads because it has the
> mesh tool which is a more sophisticated way of creating complex grad
> and 3d effects. I guess.

Even if we ignore the quite different uses of these two tools, I'd
just like to point out that gradient meshes didn't appear in
Illustrator until version 8 (where they were copied from Corel Draw).
So Adobe had plenty of time to "put emphasis on grads" before that -
yet they didn't.

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

On 1/30/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> > Illustrator didn't put that much emphasis on grads because it has the
> > mesh tool which is a more sophisticated way of creating complex grad
> > and 3d effects. I guess.
>
> Even if we ignore the quite different uses of these two tools, I'd
> just like to point out that gradient meshes didn't appear in
> Illustrator until version 8 (where they were copied from Corel Draw).
> So Adobe had plenty of time to "put emphasis on grads" before that -
> yet they didn't.
>

Regarding the layer issue, I see another problem, that is the
confusion of priorities. The secondary layer palette definitely a low
priority item comparing to the fill-stroke swatches. And that doesn't
seem right that a low priority item interferes with a high priority
item.


-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 12:01:50AM -0500, bulia byak wrote:
> On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> > I wrote this because, you tried to justify the presence of the layer
> > palette on the basis on an imaginary description of the professional
> > user way of working.
> 
> You must have misread me. It was Alan, not me, who tried to justify
> his point by alluding to an imaginary description of an "advanced"
> user. I just pointed out in response that it sounds strange to assume
> that such a user (or any user, for that matter) would always prefer a
> more clunky "advanced" solution (dialog) if a more convenient, albeit
> limited solution (widget) is right at hand.

This thread is getting overly argumentative.  Some good points are being
made, but please come to a concensus.

Bryce

P.S., perhaps these UI questions would be good to work through in person
face to face at the Libre Graphics Meeting coming up?

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, bulia byak wrote:

> On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> > That is efficiency. Because if you spend half of your time say
> > dragging dialog boxes from side to side to be able to see the piece
> > you are working on it is not only inefficient way of working but
> > annoying as well.
>
> Excellent point. And guess what, the layer widget in the statusbar is
> one of the ways to achieve exactly this - avoid dragging dialog boxes
> around and get better access to your drawing.

That can be taken as an argument for allowing dialogs/palettes to be
docked or stuck on to the main window.

> > > What I see and can assess is the final result, the
> > > UI of their products. And needless to say, I can identify many
> > > horrendously  braindead interface choices in most of these
> > > "researched" products.

Great, if things are braindead it should be easy for you to point out why
exactly they are braindead and you shouldn't have a problem copying the
other bits.  Even so there are still advantages to giving users what they
have come to expect and doing things just different enough to be better
without being so different to create whole new problems.  Microsoft
particularly have a talent for plucking features from other applications
and refining them for their own use (see the recent debacle about Visual
Studio features copied from BlueJ or the draw table widget in Microsoft
word that WordPerfect had before they did).

As for innovation you are not immune to hyperbole, all to happy to claim
node sclupting as "innovative" (sic) rather than an evolutionary
improvement on the warp nodes feature Adobe Illustrator offers, which
isn't to say it isn't a significant improvement it just isn't innovative.

> > > Interestingly, the level of clunkiness seems to be somehow directly
> > > proportional to the market share that the product holds (just compare
> > > Adobe Illustrator and Xara, or Windows and OSX).
> >
> > I think you are wrong here.
>
> Really?

He was talking about the layer drop down.

If you want to talk about clunkiness Inkscape is fairly clunkey, Xara
isn't all that pretty either, there is something that feels old about it.

The double scrollbars used to provide the colour palette aren't pretty.
A two line status bar is also particularly unusual and makes the interface
look very busy and cramped.  The mix of markup in the status bar messages
is overkill and adds to the visual noise.  The menu item labels are overly
verbose ("Layer, <Action> (more words) Layer", rather than simply "Layer,
<Action>")  adding to the clunky feeling and the menus themselves are
still a little disorganised.  There are things like Input Devices which
would be better served by a section in preferences than a menu item
because I certainly hope it isn't something users need to change very
often.

> Can you honestly defend Illustrator's way of handling
> gradients, as compared to Xara/Inkscape's? And this is just one basic
> example, I can give tons more.

Total straw man argument.  Fireworks has live on canvas gradients, it just
doesn't happen to do them through a completely seperate tool.  More
relevant is the fact that you brought gradients into the discussion that
was about the redundant layers dropdown and you also admitted the status
bar was cramped you are only disagreeing on how best to improve the
situation.  I'd be interested to hear what MentalGuy has to say on the
subject given that he implemented the Layers dialog and if he really
intended for the Layer dropdown to live on after.


-- 
Alan

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, bulia byak wrote:

> > look like. In this environment to survive the product you are using
> > should be virtually invisible, completely out of the way, I mean it
> > should be so smooth so natural that you shouldn't even notice it. This
> > is why the interface is so important in a professional work.
>
> This seems to add very little to the discussion. Sorry but I don't see
> how what you say contradicts what I said (and what you quoted). Do you
> have any _specific_ counterarguments, apart from a "professionals know
> better" rant?

This overly defensive attitude is suprisingly out of character for
Inkscape.  You are putting all the burden of proof on jmak but not
providing much to back up your position.

Why not give it a try for a release, or for a while during the unstable
time between releases?  With more information fairer judgements without
accusing people of ranting when all they have done is calmly and
reasonably put forward their opinions.

-- 
Alan

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, bulia byak wrote:

> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:03:07 -0500
> From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...>
> Reply-To: Inkscape User Community <inkscape-user@...>
> To: Inkscape User Community <inkscape-user@...>
> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] [Inkscape-devel] Baffling UI
>
> On 1/29/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> > You are missing the point that N/A is horribly unclear and unhelpfully
> > pedantic, technically correctly but more an unnecessary distinction.
>
> Perhaps, but what would you suggest, specifically? "Nothing selected"
> would not fit there.

"None" as previously stated (a non selection isn't filled either) or leave
it blank.

-- 
Alan.

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 12:43:00PM +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:

Note the best point to step in, but I deleted most of this 
thread to not get angry ;)

 
> Why not give it a try for a release, or for a while during the unstable
> time between releases? 


With trying you mean removing the layer dropdown? 

I use it all the time. I often have a number of layers, but work 
in one layer for a while and don't switch layers that often. 
If is elect something on another layer, I look down there to 
see 'where' I am. The layer palette is only allowd to eat 
space if I need to reorder layers.
I wouldn't be surprised about other doing the same, as this 
just seems best practices to me.


Regarding clutter: as much as I like simplicity and clean looks 
and having tried to streamline interfaces before ... I have 
this feeling people sometimes stare at GUIs too long instead 
of actuall using them.


> With more information fairer judgements without
> accusing people of ranting when all they have done is calmly and
> reasonably put forward their opinions.

Reasonably? To over-emphasize how it sounds to me:
"I'm so pro and all thos pro applications are just like they have 
to be and doing things differently is automically inferior"

Lets try to stick to arguments, not pointing elsewhere trying 
to sound important (not that I didn't try that myself at times ;)


So:
- Layer dropdown takes space that could be used for something 
else.
  - for what?
- Dropdow could mislead new users to think its all there is.
  - it's in the menus and the documentation. Users are new 
    to an app only once ...

- My claim of different scenarios for drodown and palette
(see above)


--
Thorsten Wilms

Thorwil's Creature Illustrations:
http://www.printfection.com/thorwil

I think this thread is building to be a wonderful example of how not to
communicate with a community. I see that Bryce beat me to a cool down
post. But I'm going to make my own attempt anyway. Here are some tips
for efectively communicating with the Inkscape community.

1) Make your argument first and foremost without comparison. Really
great features can stand on their own and are obviously great from the
use cases users give. Most often comparisons won't strengthen your case.
In fact they can often weaken your case because there is a built up
resistance to this bandwagon sort of reasoning. Many people use Inkscape
 to excape from the software you want to compare it with. :-)

2) Don't assume that developers, users and industry professionals are
mutually exclusive groups. Itch driven development means quite the
opposite. Developers are users developing the software for their own
uses. Some developers are industry professionals using Inkscape for
their livelyhood daily. This also means that arguments that start with
generalizations about user wants and expectations have to struggle
against the fact that the users are developing the software the way they
want it.

3) Don't assume that resistance to your idea indicates rampant
disreguard for non-developer-users needs and wants. Many of the
developers spend large amounts of time conversing with users in person,
on IRC and on the mailing list. We know when issues are important
because we can hear the consensus. As anecdotal evidence most of the
features I have coded have been in direct responce to the needs and
requests of users who came with polite and persistant concerns.

4) Street cred is earned, not demanded. :-) This is just a hard fact
about community life. The project needs contributors to live and thrive.
The more you involve yourself; the more you give of your own blood,
sweat and tears, the more the community will respond to you. The great
part is that simple contributions really do matter.

Aaron Spike

On 1/30/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> "None" as previously stated (a non selection isn't filled either) or leave
> it blank.

None of these (sorry for the pun) would work. The difference between
nothing-selected and no-fill is not an insignificant technicality at
all. It's crucial for the user, not only developer. And blank would
just look broken.

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

On 1/30/07, jmak <jozmak@...> wrote:
> Regarding the layer issue, I see another problem, that is the
> confusion of priorities. The secondary layer palette definitely a low
> priority item comparing to the fill-stroke swatches. And that doesn't
> seem right that a low priority item interferes with a high priority
> item.

I never said it "interferes". I just said that the room in the
statusbar is scarce, not because of this widget in particular but
because of everything that's there. Sure, different things there have
different priorities, no one argues about that. But I don't think it
so bad that we should already start removing some things to make room
for others. Although perhaps we can discuss some space redistribution
(e.g. make the style selector wider, expanding its labels, at the
expense of the statusbar tips area).

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

Alan:

I think you're becoming (as Bryce said) overly argumentative. I don't
like to start another heated discussion with you, knowing from past
experience it's unlikely to bring fruit, so let's both stop now.

I'd just like to point out, for the sake of others who might get a
wrong idea from you, that Illustrator has no "warping nodes". It has a
"warp effect" which, like most things in Illustrator, is done through
a clunky dialog and affects an object as a whole. From the viewpoint
of a user, there's almost nothing in common between this effect and
Inkscape's node sculpting which is fully interactive, on-canvas, and
works on node selection. It's a different process altogether. You seem
to be judging (as you too often do) only from screenshots, like this
one which indeed shows lots of "warping":

http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.44-nodesculpting.png

I think it would benefit everyone if you'd try to actually _use_ the
features that you're going to talk about.

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

I just wanted to chime in with my .02 (as I didn't see it mentioned).

If you work with lots of groups, the layer selector widget is the best 
thing since sliced bread.

Example: Create a couple Objects and group them. Double click the group 
to enter it. You'll notice that the layer name (in the selector, not 
dialog) changed to the group name. If you are entering and exiting a lot 
of groups this enhances usability like you wouldn't believe. Grouping

-Josh

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, bulia byak wrote:

> On 1/29/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> > The dropdown is an artifact of before the Layers dialog existed, if you
> > keep too many of these inkscape will look even more busy and look
> > increasingly like an airplane cockpit.  You said yourself the status bar
> > is short of space so you should seriously consider retiring the layer
> > dropdown sooner rather than later.
>
> A much better solution that would satisfy everyone:
> a small layer-managing toolbar, with the current layer widget and
> perhaps some more buttons for common tasks such as adding/deleting layer
> and opening the Layers dialog.

We were asking that the layer widget be removed from the status bar for a
while, but by all means add the proposed alyer toolbar if there is enough
demand for it after the layer dropdown has been removed.  (Or if there is
a lot of call to have the widget back the change could be reverted.)

> This toolbar would be placeable anywhere on the bars, next to other
> toolbars (similar to Xara's) or removed altogether.

unfortunately the toolbars in Gtk do not make it easy to put toolbars side
by side as other programs are able to, which makes what you suggestion not
impossible but substnatially more trouble to implement.

-- 
Alan

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On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Thorsten Wilms wrote:

> Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:13:34 +0100
> From: Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@...>
> To: inkscape-user@...
> Subject: [Inkscape-user] Layers dropdown, was: Baffling UI
>
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 12:43:00PM +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:
>
> Not the best point to step in, but I deleted most of this
> thread to not get angry ;)

Hopefully we can come to some conclusion without anyone getting too
heated.  Everyone is keepings polite but persistant and it isn't what
you'd call a flamewar.

> > Why not give it a try for a release, or for a while during the unstable
> > time between releases?

> With trying you mean removing the layer dropdown?

Yes.

> I use it all the time. I often have a number of layers, but work
> in one layer for a while and don't switch layers that often.
> If is elect something on another layer, I look down there to
> see 'where' I am. The layer palette is only allowd to eat

Good to know even if it backs up bulias point ;P

FYI Adobe Photoshop includes this information in the titlebar of the form

Filename @ Layername - Adobe Photoshop
(roughly, I just saying from memory)

If you are only using it for status and not making much use of the hiding
or locking buttons do you think an indication in the title bar would be
helpful?

> So:
> - Layer dropdown takes space that could be used for something
> else.
>   - for what?

this started because the status bar messages were unclear and abbreviated.

one idea I've seen elsewhere is that clicking on the status bar pops a
message dialog so that even if you have a small status bar you do have a
way to see the full status bar message.

I'll file a request if asked but I should nearly file one against GTK ...

> - Dropdow could mislead new users to think its all there is.
>   - it's in the menus and the documentation. Users are new
>     to an app only once ...

You'd think people are only beginners once but unfortunately many people
stay there, I for example dont use Blender often enough to retain what
little I have learnt and I'm effectively a beginner everytime.  If you
have worked in technical support you find many more users are like this
when it comes to their computer.  without really trying inkscape has been
successful in attracting artistic users who want inkscape for their
various kidns of crafts work it will help if things can be kept simple
with one right way to do things and not too many assumptions made about
inkscape users being experts at technical drawing and wanting many
different possibilities to achieve the same end results, as it is the
results that matter.

> - My claim of different scenarios for drodown and palette
> (see above)

Hope you will consider my counter suggestion and perhaps further describe
how and why you use the dropdown.  Might be interesting to know if anyone
actually uses the menus for switching layers.

-- 
Alan

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, bulia byak wrote:

> Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:30:23 -0500
> From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...>
> Reply-To: Inkscape User Community <inkscape-user@...>
> To: Inkscape User Community <inkscape-user@...>
> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] [Inkscape-devel] Baffling UI
>
> Alan:
>
> I think you're becoming (as Bryce said) overly argumentative. I don't
> like to start another heated discussion with you, knowing from past
> experience it's unlikely to bring fruit, so let's both stop now.

I will try to be more restrained.  Some of the mails were sent hastily
when I should have paused and reviewed them further.

> I'd just like to point out, for the sake of others who might get a
> wrong idea from you, that Illustrator has no "warping nodes".

Unfortunately your are not correct.

The best I can manage at the moment is to show you this screenshot and try
to direct your attention to the very hard to find feature (see the hand
with a finger pointing down and beside it a box with a twirl coming out
the corner)
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/illustrator/Adobe-Illustrator-CS/Adobe-Illustrator-CS_inkscape-about_error.png

(found a better link)
>From the middle to the left, see warp tool, and twirl
http://www.coe.fau.edu/abinder/handouts/Itools.htm

These are taken from Adobe Illustrator CS verison 1

> "warp effect" which, like most things in Illustrator, is done through
> a clunky dialog and affects an object as a whole. From the viewpoint

both of which are interative not dialog driven, and admittedly not as good
as the tool in inkscape which I have played around with.

I didn't expect you to know of such an obscure feature in quite a recent
verions of Adobe Illustrator but the audience reading I was very
disappointed when you reverted the Release Notes and insisted this feature
was innovative.  The audience reading those notes might very know of the
feature and disagree, and reviewers of non-linux magazines are quite
likely to make more direct comparisions to Illustrator and even wonder why
inkscape developers haven't take a closer look at the competition (despite
it being expensive and impractical).  Say it is useful, say it is
powerful, as they are much harder to disagree with but "innovative" can be
contentious and is a word to avoid.

-- 
Alan

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 04:24:00PM +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:
> 
> If you are only using it for status and not making much use of the hiding
> or locking buttons do you think an indication in the title bar would be
> helpful?

No no no, I do use it for switching, locking and hiding, too.
It give status infomation, and sits in the status bar.
It offers means to change all it informs about with only 
taking a tiny bit more space for that.

> this started because the status bar messages were unclear and abbreviated.

Hmm. They have tooltips. The only one that made me wonder was the O for 
Opacity (I'm looking at a not too recent 0.44+devel version).

Fills, Stroke and Zoom could use icons.

The N/A ... I would just write nothing. no word, empty space.
Note even F: and S: needs to stay there.

The foo "in layer bar" message is really redundant.

The palette bar could hide the scrollbar if it fits in.


> You'd think people are only beginners once but unfortunately many people
> stay there, I for example dont use Blender often enough to retain what
> little I have learnt and I'm effectively a beginner everytime.  If you
> have worked in technical support you find many more users are like this
> when it comes to their computer.  without really trying inkscape has been
> successful in attracting artistic users who want inkscape for their
> various kidns of crafts work it will help if things can be kept simple
> with one right way to do things and not too many assumptions made about
> inkscape users being experts at technical drawing and wanting many
> different possibilities to achieve the same end results, as it is the
> results that matter.

I still think most users make it to some intermediate level. 
If you look at hours spent with a software, users that only 
touch it once in a while don't count.


--
Thorsten Wilms

Alan Horkan wrote:
>> I'd just like to point out, for the sake of others who might get a
>> wrong idea from you, that Illustrator has no "warping nodes".
> 
> Unfortunately your are not correct.
> 
> The best I can manage at the moment is to show you this screenshot and try
> to direct your attention to the very hard to find feature (see the hand
> with a finger pointing down and beside it a box with a twirl coming out
> the corner)
> http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/illustrator/Adobe-Illustrator-CS/Adobe-Illustrator-CS_inkscape-about_error.png
> 
> (found a better link)
>>From the middle to the left, see warp tool, and twirl
> http://www.coe.fau.edu/abinder/handouts/Itools.htm
> 
> These are taken from Adobe Illustrator CS verison 1

I just went out and fired up a copy of CS2 here at work. Alan, thank you
for pointing this out! Finally something neat from illustrator. :-)

This is a bit different than node sculpting. It doesn't require a node
selection. There is a cursor with a center mark and an area delimited by
a larger circle. As the user clicks and drags the paths are updated in
real time. only the area within the larger circle is updated. And the
amount of update seems to taper off toward the edge. There are various
effects which can be applied to the current path. My take: we could do
something like this by partially applying our non existent live effects
to a path within an adjustable sphere of influence.

Aaron Spike

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 07:58:49AM -0600, Aaron Spike wrote:
> I think this thread is building to be a wonderful example of how not to
> communicate with a community. I see that Bryce beat me to a cool down
> post. But I'm going to make my own attempt anyway. Here are some tips
> for efectively communicating with the Inkscape community.

Very well said!  Thanks, I've added this post to our FAQ, I think it has
a lot of good advice:

http://wiki.inkscape.org:8080/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_can_I_avoid_causing_a_flamewar_on_the_mailing_list.3F

The only other point I'd add is that it's important to keep in mind that
despite where we might differ in opinion, we all share some common
goals - if nothing else, we all share the ambition to make Inkscape
really good.  So when things seem to get heated, take a breath and try
to focus on any areas where there is _agreement_.

Many times the great ideas that all the participants have get lost in
the heat of the argument, focusing instead on areas where there is
disagreement.  Focusing on the areas of agreement are more likely to
produce productive, positive enhancements to the software and help us
all achieve the common goals.

> 1) Make your argument first and foremost without comparison. Really
> great features can stand on their own and are obviously great from the
> use cases users give. Most often comparisons won't strengthen your case.
> In fact they can often weaken your case because there is a built up
> resistance to this bandwagon sort of reasoning. Many people use Inkscape
>  to excape from the software you want to compare it with. :-)
> 
> 2) Don't assume that developers, users and industry professionals are
> mutually exclusive groups. Itch driven development means quite the
> opposite. Developers are users developing the software for their own
> uses. Some developers are industry professionals using Inkscape for
> their livelyhood daily. This also means that arguments that start with
> generalizations about user wants and expectations have to struggle
> against the fact that the users are developing the software the way they
> want it.
> 
> 3) Don't assume that resistance to your idea indicates rampant
> disreguard for non-developer-users needs and wants. Many of the
> developers spend large amounts of time conversing with users in person,
> on IRC and on the mailing list. We know when issues are important
> because we can hear the consensus. As anecdotal evidence most of the
> features I have coded have been in direct responce to the needs and
> requests of users who came with polite and persistant concerns.
> 
> 4) Street cred is earned, not demanded. :-) This is just a hard fact
> about community life. The project needs contributors to live and thrive.
> The more you involve yourself; the more you give of your own blood,
> sweat and tears, the more the community will respond to you. The great
> part is that simple contributions really do matter.
> 
> Aaron Spike

Bryce

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 06:06:49PM +0100, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> > this started because the status bar messages were unclear and abbreviated.
> 
> > You'd think people are only beginners once but unfortunately many people
> > stay there, I for example dont use Blender often enough to retain what
> > little I have learnt and I'm effectively a beginner everytime.  If you
> > have worked in technical support you find many more users are like this
> > when it comes to their computer.  without really trying inkscape has been
> > successful in attracting artistic users who want inkscape for their
> > various kidns of crafts work it will help if things can be kept simple
> > with one right way to do things and not too many assumptions made about
> > inkscape users being experts at technical drawing and wanting many
> > different possibilities to achieve the same end results, as it is the
> > results that matter.

You know, it occurs to me that the status messages and the layer
dropdown may cater to different crowds.  Being able to read the status
messages clearly is something novice users need the most.  The layer
dropdown is something experienced users are after.  Of course, there is
some overlap (novice users needing layers will spot the layer dropdown
first, and even experienced users will find info in the status bar of
use from time to time).

But this makes me wonder if the status bar could benefit from some sort
of adaptive ui behavior or perhaps just a configuration setting?  For
new users, the layer dropdown (among other things) could initially just
be scary clutter, so clearing off the status bar in favor of status
messages could make the application >look< a lot more approachable.
Then, later once they've gotten more comfortable, they could graduate
into expert mode and have these extra accessories turned on.

This may also fit in with a more mode-oriented usage model that we've
discussed previously in the context of technical drawing vs. artistic
drawing needs, which shows up in areas like snapping and so forth.  The
layer dropdown is not a good example here since both technical and
artistic drawers need that, but a better example might be a symbol
pallete (very important for tech drawing, but not so much for artists),
vs. the color pallete (important for art, less so for tech).  A
framework that allowed the UI to adapt to different user modes could
prove handy for a lot of different purposes.  Another example would be a
"child-oriented mode" where the UI is simplified to basic drawing options.

Ideally, we would be able to come up with a single design that suits all
needs (e.g. moving it into the canvas), and it is very wise to always
make that the top goal, since the fewer configuration options, the
easier the software will be to test and maintain.  In practice, though,
as Inkscape's usage grows and fills in more and more niches, the need
for usage-mode-specific UI layouts is going to grow.

> I still think most users make it to some intermediate level. 
> If you look at hours spent with a software, users that only 
> touch it once in a while don't count.

Well, it depends on how you look at the project's goals.  Certainly, our
most important audience is users who contribute back to the project, and
as such it's true that these users will be spending enough time with the
project to get over small usability issues such as UI clutter.
(Remember, every Inkscape user was a novice at one time.)  However,
Inkscape also has the goal of being a member of the larger open source
community, and I think this involves embracing some of the more
occasional style usages, such as if someone just needs to knock out a
quick flyer for their club, or make a gift card for a relative.  It
would be a great sign of success if Inkscape were the only 2D drawing
program required to be on the open source desktop.

Bryce

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 11:59:36AM -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:

> But this makes me wonder if the status bar could benefit from some sort
> of adaptive ui behavior or perhaps just a configuration setting?  For
> new users, the layer dropdown (among other things) could initially just
> be scary clutter, so clearing off the status bar in favor of status
> messages could make the application >look< a lot more approachable.
> Then, later once they've gotten more comfortable, they could graduate
> into expert mode and have these extra accessories turned on.

All texts I ever read regarding usability that touch this topic
advice against such modes.

- Implementation effort
- Options need to go somewhere
- Need to be documented
- Related to the 2 above: discoverability. It's not likely 
that you find what you didn't look for. Forming expectations 
and searching for features is extra work.
- how is a user supposed to know when he's ready for any kind of 
advanced mode?
- if the app tries to judge the user, it can only fail and 
will appear unpredictable.
- if you change any behaviour, user has to learn again.


/me rereads ...
Well, so much on modes and adaptive behaviour :)
Just having show/hide for some more stuff should be ok. 
Always opens the question what to show per default.
I don't care about pointer coordinates ... but they don't 
bother me so that I didn't even check if I can hide them 
already.

--
Thorsten Wilms

On 1/30/07, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...> wrote:
> You know, it occurs to me that the status messages and the layer
> dropdown may cater to different crowds.  Being able to read the status
> messages clearly is something novice users need the most.  The layer
> dropdown is something experienced users are after.

Not at all. Education is only one of the functions of the statusbar
tips. Much more important is the informational function: how many
objects/nodes selected, of what kinds etc. I for one would feel
suddenly blind and disabled without this information, even more than I
would without the layers widget.

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

--- bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:

> On 1/30/07, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...> wrote:
> > You know, it occurs to me that the status messages and the layer
> > dropdown may cater to different crowds.  Being able to read the
> status
> > messages clearly is something novice users need the most.  The
> layer
> > dropdown is something experienced users are after.
> 
> Not at all. Education is only one of the functions of the statusbar
> tips. Much more important is the informational function: how many
> objects/nodes selected, of what kinds etc. I for one would feel
> suddenly blind and disabled without this information, even more than
> I
> would without the layers widget.
> 

completely agree. The message bar is easily on a par with the layers
dropdown in terms of importance to me and my workflow.



 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Need Mail bonding?
Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396546091

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 05:11:33PM -0400, bulia byak wrote:
> On 1/30/07, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...> wrote:
> > You know, it occurs to me that the status messages and the layer
> > dropdown may cater to different crowds.  Being able to read the status
> > messages clearly is something novice users need the most.  The layer
> > dropdown is something experienced users are after.
> 
> Not at all. Education is only one of the functions of the statusbar
> tips. Much more important is the informational function: how many
> objects/nodes selected, of what kinds etc. I for one would feel
> suddenly blind and disabled without this information, even more than I
> would without the layers widget.

Evidently you've misread what I wrote.  No where did I suggest removing
the statusbar tips.  What I said was that for novice users the status
message is doubly important, so giving additional room for it would be
even more important.  For more advanced users, the current layout where
the statusbar makes room for additional widgets like the layer dropdown
would be preferred.

Bryce

Hi all,

On 2007-January-30  , at 20:59 , Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 06:06:49PM +0100, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
>>> this started because the status bar messages were unclear and  
>>> abbreviated.
>>
>>> You'd think people are only beginners once but unfortunately many  
>>> people
>>> stay there, I for example dont use Blender often enough to retain  
>>> what
>>> little I have learnt and I'm effectively a beginner everytime.   
>>> If you
>>> have worked in technical support you find many more users are  
>>> like this
>>> when it comes to their computer.  without really trying inkscape  
>>> has been
>>> successful in attracting artistic users who want inkscape for their
>>> various kidns of crafts work it will help if things can be kept  
>>> simple
>>> with one right way to do things and not too many assumptions made  
>>> about
>>> inkscape users being experts at technical drawing and wanting many
>>> different possibilities to achieve the same end results, as it is  
>>> the
>>> results that matter.
>
> [...]
> But this makes me wonder if the status bar could benefit from some  
> sort
> of adaptive ui behavior or perhaps just a configuration setting?  For
> new users, the layer dropdown (among other things) could initially  
> just
> be scary clutter, so clearing off the status bar in favor of status
> messages could make the application >look< a lot more approachable.
> Then, later once they've gotten more comfortable, they could graduate
> into expert mode and have these extra accessories turned on.
>
> This may also fit in with a more mode-oriented usage model that we've
> discussed previously in the context of technical drawing vs. artistic
> drawing needs, which shows up in areas like snapping and so forth.   
> The
> layer dropdown is not a good example here since both technical and
> artistic drawers need that, but a better example might be a symbol
> pallete (very important for tech drawing, but not so much for  
> artists),
> vs. the color pallete (important for art, less so for tech).  A
> framework that allowed the UI to adapt to different user modes could
> prove handy for a lot of different purposes.  Another example would  
> be a
> "child-oriented mode" where the UI is simplified to basic drawing  
> options.

I have been thinking about exactly this for a while but did not know  
how to suggest it. I think that application profiles/modes could be a  
good answer to some usability issues. They already exists in other  
(quite different for sure) software: in text editors for example you  
don't want your editor to behave the same depending on which language  
you work in (C, Java, TeX...). I don't know if many users here know  
TextMate, a text editor on Mac OS X, but everything in this editor is  
about switching profiles when you switch to a different file: in  
addition to a basic invariable set (copy, paste, tab management etc)  
there is a specific set of commands associated with each language,  
with its specific set of keyboard shortcuts. And this editor is very  
popular in part because of this flexibility. I think Emacs behaves  
this way too.
Inkscape could benefit from a similar approach, but it surely needs a  
lot of thinking first. My humble opinion is that beginner vs.  
advanced profiles won't work because one can be quite advanced in  
some areas (eg node editing) and beginning in others (eg. color  
management). Furthermore, a beginner and an advanced users  
essentially have the same goals, it's just that the beginner does not  
know how to achieve them and restraining them in a limited or a less  
accessible functionality mode won't help them. In addition, as  
someone already mentioned: how can one know when he is ready to  
switch to advanced mode?
On the contrary, CAD/technical, diagramming, GIS, artistic, child  
modes could be very efficient in exposing only the "right" features  
to the user or exposing the same features differently. Indeed,  
depending on which kind of work you do, your _goal_ is different and  
the application can help you achieve it.
For example, in CAD you probably want a grid in cm, which always  
snaps, you probably want your tools to retain a specific style (eg.  
black outline, no fill), you may find a "placement" tool handy (eg. a  
window in which you can specify coordinates and size of a new object  
and then add it), you may want to position your guides numerically  
too and so on.
In diagramming mode you want the connector tool to be central, you  
want objects to have magnets on their border too, you want some  
automatic layout feature. It is likely you do not need the  
calligraphy tool but may want some additional shapes or a symbol  
palette as Bryce mentioned.
In artistic mode you may not need the rulers, a symbol palette, the  
connector tool or the coordinate inspector on the bottom right. You  
want the colors to be easily accessible and conspicuous (larger  
status bar?).
And so on and so forth. As you may have noticed, there are not many  
things I mention here which do not already exist in Inkscape.  
Application profiles is just about exposing them or not, or exposing  
them differently, not having to crawl down to the preferences each  
time you change your use of Inskcape. On a longer term, if Inkscape  
acquires some bitmap editing functionality, a "bitmap" mode will be  
necessary (eg. Xara has kind of this: bitmap editing is done in a  
different window with different tools) and it would just fit within  
the pre-existing modes.

> Ideally, we would be able to come up with a single design that  
> suits all
> needs (e.g. moving it into the canvas), and it is very wise to always
> make that the top goal, since the fewer configuration options, the
> easier the software will be to test and maintain.  In practice,  
> though,
> as Inkscape's usage grows and fills in more and more niches, the need
> for usage-mode-specific UI layouts is going to grow.

And I think this is true for many applications, not only for Inkscape  
(I whish Thunderbird could hide my mail when I read news and hide my  
news when I read mail, I wish there was a video encoding tool in  
which options change depending on wether you encode from DVD or a  
live stream, wether you want high or low quality, I wish there was  
only one music handling application in Gnome which plays mp3s, cds  
and encodes/converts music but in which the UI adapts to these needs  
etc.)

I hope this will help. What about starting a wiki page for ideas  
collection and UI mockups?

JiHO
---
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/

JiHO said:

> On the contrary, CAD/technical, diagramming, GIS, artistic, child
> modes could be very efficient in exposing only the "right" features
> to the user or exposing the same features differently. Indeed,
> depending on which kind of work you do, your _goal_ is different and
> the application can help you achieve it.

  Well written post!  I agree whole-heartedly.  I am one of the users who
come this application for its CAD-like abilities.   While I have tried
freehand drawing, I am poor at this and I know it, and consequently
never look for these sorts of features.

  However I also really enjoy OmniGraffle for doing UML, context diagrams=
,
trees, etc.  Having that sort of graphic-centric mode really is very
conceptually different but would be great to have in Inkscape.

  I can certainly believe that done correctly this is a non-trivial codin=
g
problem, but nonetheless worthwhile looking at from my perspective.  And
as the father of a 4 year old, a child mode would be amazing!

-Andrew

On 1/31/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...> wrote:
> Inkscape could benefit from a similar approach, but it surely needs a
> lot of thinking first. My humble opinion is that beginner vs.
> advanced profiles won't work because one can be quite advanced in
> some areas (eg node editing) and beginning in others (eg. color
> management). Furthermore, a beginner and an advanced users
> essentially have the same goals, it's just that the beginner does not
> know how to achieve them and restraining them in a limited or a less
> accessible functionality mode won't help them. In addition, as
> someone already mentioned: how can one know when he is ready to
> switch to advanced mode?

Exactly my thoughts.

> On the contrary, CAD/technical, diagramming, GIS, artistic, child
> modes could be very efficient in exposing only the "right" features
> to the user or exposing the same features differently. Indeed,
> depending on which kind of work you do, your _goal_ is different and
> the application can help you achieve it.

Agreed. And as a first step towards this, let's make it easier for the
user to make such "profiles" for himself. We really need a "Save as
template" command which should be very easy to program based on the
"Save a copy". All it has to do is just go to the templates directory
in the save dialog, to save the user from wading there on his own
(which is confusing and different on different platforms). Any takers?

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

On 1/30/07, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...> wrote:
> > Not at all. Education is only one of the functions of the statusbar
> > tips. Much more important is the informational function: how many
> > objects/nodes selected, of what kinds etc. I for one would feel
> > suddenly blind and disabled without this information, even more than I
> > would without the layers widget.
>
> Evidently you've misread what I wrote.

I don't think so. You said that these two elements "appeal to
different crowds" and I simply argued that it's not the case.

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

On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 11:06:46AM -0500, bulia byak wrote:
> On 1/30/07, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...> wrote:
> > > Not at all. Education is only one of the functions of the statusbar
> > > tips. Much more important is the informational function: how many
> > > objects/nodes selected, of what kinds etc. I for one would feel
> > > suddenly blind and disabled without this information, even more than I
> > > would without the layers widget.
> >
> > Evidently you've misread what I wrote.
> 
> I don't think so. You said that these two elements "appeal to
> different crowds" and I simply argued that it's not the case.

And then immediately following, I also said:

 "Of course, there is some overlap (novice users needing layers will
 spot the layer dropdown first, and even experienced users will find
 info in the status bar of use from time to time)."

Nowhere did I say, "Experienced users don't need the status messages, so
let's remove that," which seems to be the case you're arguing against.

Bryce

I have some thoughts to input re the UI

> >  Remove the layer dialog from the bottom toolbar (which is redundant
> > anyway)

> It may be redundant for you, but many find it convenient to be able to
> do simple layer operations without opening the layers dialog.

this will always happen. IMHO it'll always be a good idea when creating
tools
indended for actual use, to offer users a choice. Don't give 'em something
they can't get rid of, and by all means, allow for redundancy and let the
user remove what isn't important. I'm just speaking from experience with
UI's that have struck me as either more or less friendly. I could be wrong.


> > > You are missing the point that N/A is horribly unclear and unhelpfully
> > > pedantic, technically correctly but more an unnecessary distinction.

> > Perhaps, but what would you suggest, specifically? "Nothing selected"
> > would not fit there.

> "None" as previously stated (a non selection isn't filled either) or leave
> it blank.

I noticed that when you bring up the dialog from the swatches, you
can't set anything anyways (and rightly so), so why not use the standard
disabled style (grayed out)?

> If you want to talk about clunkiness Inkscape is fairly clunkey, Xara
> isn't all that pretty either, there is something that feels old about it.

I second this, and not just because I've gotten used to illustrator's UI.
It's
refreshing not to have dialogs obscuring the canvas, which i found was the
most efficient way to use AI, but something about the Inkscape still needs
work. I won't know just how hard it'd be until i start coding, but I'd
recommend
that the inkscape community be more willing to alter the UI without
demanding overwhelming ... well ... demand, instead opting to try it and see
if a certain change seems to make the design process more natural than it
was before, or not.

As for the layers dialog. It seemed to me an incomplete version of something
like illustrator's layers dialog, and I spoke to MentalGuy about working on
it
(with the aim of making it _better_, NOT like illustrator).
It strikis me that the intended function of the layers widget is a subset of
that of the dialog, the former intended for quick access, the latter for
more
powerful editing option. Isn't this the usual distinction between
toolbar/dialog
tools?

-- 

-- Meshach Mitchell

On 1/31/07, rain <meshach.mitchell@...> wrote:
> > "None" as previously stated (a non selection isn't filled either) or leave
> > it blank.
>
> I noticed that when you bring up the dialog from the swatches, you
> can't set anything anyways (and rightly so), so why not use the standard
> disabled style (grayed out)?

Because you need something to gray it out. Each kind of fill/stroke
has its own display. Which of them to gray out? And if you gray out
just empty widget, it won't look any different.

> It's
> refreshing not to have dialogs obscuring the canvas, which i found was the
> most efficient way to use AI, but something about the Inkscape still needs
> work. I won't know just how hard it'd be until i start coding, but I'd
> recommend
> that the inkscape community be more willing to alter the UI without
> demanding overwhelming ... well ... demand, instead opting to try it and see
> if a certain change seems to make the design process more natural than it
> was before, or not.

And this is exactly what we do. I do, at least.

> As for the layers dialog. It seemed to me an incomplete version of something
> like illustrator's layers dialog, and I spoke to MentalGuy about working on
> it
> (with the aim of making it _better_, NOT like illustrator).

Very good, it indeed has a lot of room for improvement.

> It strikis me that the intended function of the layers widget is a subset of
> that of the dialog, the former intended for quick access, the latter for
> more
> powerful editing option. Isn't this the usual distinction between
> toolbar/dialog
> tools?

Ideally we try to make a function fully workable without a dialog. But
it's not always possible. Layers is a good example of that - you can't
implement a complete and convenient layers interface, with dragging
etc., in a toolbar/statusbar. So yes, only a subset of layer
functionality is available from the statusbar widget, containing
hopefully the most often used functions.

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

On 1/30/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/illustrator/Adobe-Illustrator-CS/Adobe-Illustrator-CS_inkscape-about_error.png
>
> (found a better link)
> >From the middle to the left, see warp tool, and twirl
> http://www.coe.fau.edu/abinder/handouts/Itools.htm
>
> These are taken from Adobe Illustrator CS verison 1

OK, I admit I wasn't aware of this - it wasn't available in my older
version which I used until recently. It's indeed a good feature.
Different from ours but having its own strengths (and limitations). We
need to catch up, not by copying but by thinking how we can do the
same better and more flexible.

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

bulia byak wrote:
> On 1/30/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...> wrote:
> http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/illustrator/Adobe-Illustrator-CS/Adobe-Illustrator-CS_inkscape-about_error.png
>> (found a better link)
>> >From the middle to the left, see warp tool, and twirl
>> http://www.coe.fau.edu/abinder/handouts/Itools.htm
>>
>> These are taken from Adobe Illustrator CS verison 1
> 
> OK, I admit I wasn't aware of this - it wasn't available in my older
> version which I used until recently. It's indeed a good feature.
> Different from ours but having its own strengths (and limitations). We
> need to catch up, not by copying but by thinking how we can do the
> same better and more flexible.
> 


I fired up my copy of AI10 and played with them. Here are some thoughts:

They have separate tools for warp, twirl, pucker, bloat, scallop, 
crystallize, and wrinkle... none of which you can configure (at least 
not that I could find in my version). I don't have my tablet at the 
office so I don't know if pressure makes a difference either. It seems 
like overkill (in typical AI fashion) to have SEVEN tools to accomplish 
these various (but somewhat similar) tasks.

My first question is, do we add this functionality to an existing tool 
or create a new "distortion" tool? Either way, I propose a bunch of 
modifiable parameters (including size of affected area, as it seems AI 
can't do that... at least not with the mouse). Oh and can't forget that 
if we could enable pressure and tilt interaction for tablets that would 
totally rock.

Anyway, if we go the parameter route, it also seems like a good time to 
perhaps look experimenting with a "preset" system. So people can save 
and load presets. If we make it very flexible we could ship with a bunch 
of presets and also have community contributed presets on the website 
that people could download.

I guess I look at this distortion/modification stuff in the way I'd love 
to see our brush capabilities go (when we can directly paint with 
objects/patterns/etc). I believe (easily) loadable sets of options, 
presets, and brushes will really help foster more community 
contribution. Some people may not know how to contribute, but, they may 
be very artistic and willing to give back. This seems to be the case for 
every other program with loadable brushes and such.

I'm not married to any of the above ideas or even believe that this is 
the best way to go, for the most part I'm just throwing a bunch of ideas 
out there to stimulate more conversation about this. :) Also, is it my 
imagination or does this seem like a prime candidate for the live path 
effects?

I will add items from the discussion to a wiki page once the 
conversation has built up a little more (and other thoughts/ideas are 
out there).

-Josh

On 1/30/07, Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@...> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 04:24:00PM +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:
> >
> > If you are only using it for status and not making much use of the
> hiding
> > or locking buttons do you think an indication in the title bar would be
> > helpful?
>
> No no no, I do use it for switching, locking and hiding, too.
> It give status infomation, and sits in the status bar.
> It offers means to change all it informs about with only
> taking a tiny bit more space for that.
>
> > this started because the status bar messages were unclear and
> abbreviated.
>
> Hmm. They have tooltips. The only one that made me wonder was the O for
> Opacity (I'm looking at a not too recent 0.44+devel version).
>
> Fills, Stroke and Zoom could use icons.
>
> The N/A ... I would just write nothing. no word, empty space.
> Note even F: and S: needs to stay there.
>
> The foo "in layer bar" message is really redundant.
>
> The palette bar could hide the scrollbar if it fits in.
>
>
> > You'd think people are only beginners once but unfortunately many people
> > stay there, I for example dont use Blender often enough to retain what
> > little I have learnt and I'm effectively a beginner everytime.  If you
> > have worked in technical support you find many more users are like this
> > when it comes to their computer.  without really trying inkscape has
> been
> > successful in attracting artistic users who want inkscape for their
> > various kidns of crafts work it will help if things can be kept simple
> > with one right way to do things and not too many assumptions made about
> > inkscape users being experts at technical drawing and wanting many
> > different possibilities to achieve the same end results, as it is the
> > results that matter.



Unfortunately, no matter how many people come to a consensus, the "one right
thing" will not appeal to everyone, and assuming that there is any one way
to
go about a task makes the inkscape UI seem a little authoritarian. The
effect is
an arrogant sort of "This way is better, and you need to adjust the way you
do
things from however you did it before, because THIS is how it is in
inkscape."
This does not strike me as typical FLOSS behaviour, and even if the motive
behind the above quoted notion isn't arrogance, it comes off as such.

IMHO, idea that "having many ways of doing the same tasks" is for experts
is flawed. An expert would have worked out the most efficient way to carry
out
a task and then stuck to that. The point of having many ways to do something
would be to cater to users at every level. Of course the inkscape community
would want to push users to develop instead of staying at the beginner
level,
but it seems to me that it would be better to try to encourage the user away
from the inefficient way they have been doing things in AI/Freehand/whatever
instead of insisting that they quit cold turkey and "Do it the right way!".

my 2c

I still think most users make it to some intermediate level.
> If you look at hours spent with a software, users that only
> touch it once in a while don't count.
>
>
> --
> Thorsten Wilms
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
> Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share
> your
> opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash
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> _______________________________________________
> Inkscape-user mailing list
> Inkscape-user@...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user
>



-- 

-- Meshach Mitchell

On Jan 29, 2007, at 8:27 PM, jmak wrote:

> How do you know that this is the way professionals work? Have you ever
> worked in a graphic agency or some similar place? Have you ever worked
> under pressure when the client is panting behind your back and
> constantly complaining and whatever you are doing he  always wants
> something different. Because this is how the real work environment
> look like. In this environment to survive the product you are using
> should be virtually invisible, completely out of the way, I mean it
> should be so smooth so natural that you shouldn't even notice it. This
> is why the interface is so important in a professional work.

Why, yes I have.

I've worked in actual print shops, multimedia houses, game creators  
and publishers, and others. Although I'm mainly a software engineer  
now, I do have ability, experience, and formal training in the  
artistic side of things. I personally have a lot less professional  
graphic arts experience than many of the contributors to Inkscape,  
but this line of discussion tends to wander off into less productive  
areas. I believe that is one reasons many here do not fall back to  
arguments on 'qualifications'.

However, if we try to focus on hard reasoning for UI work, we can  
gain a lot more. You've raised several good points, and brought in  
some good things to look at.

However, there are more things to look at as far as UI design for  
"professional" apps goes. Usually commercial application development  
is driven by marketing and business far more than from the  
engineering side. For example, marketing might come in with  
requirements like "competitor X has n number of tools, so we need to  
have n plus one". Or they might need to add things to see people on  
upgrades. (In those cases they'll be looking more to the executives  
and IT heads making purchasing decisions than to the end users).

Another factor, and this definitely applies for Adobe, is that a  
company may make many sub-optimal UI choices in order to maintain  
consistency with other applications the company sells. They might  
even add or remove features from one product to be able to sell  
another product. Or they might do things to leverage their "suite"  
and block users from using competitor's products.

And yet another large factor is that different professionals have  
different needs. There is no single "professional" way to do  
something. And although people in different industries (animation,  
training videos, 2d games, 3d games, magazine ads, etc.) might have  
different sets of workflows, even people in the same shop working on  
the same type of art might take wildly different approaches.

One thing I've seen often with Inkscape is that people have problems  
with it's UI usually because it is different than they are used to.  
Not "worse", just "different". Then after a bit of using it, people  
have tended to like it even more than other tools.


However, we are very interested in things to actually improve  
workflow. "Do it because application X does it" is a reason that we  
generally don't like to follow. On the other hand, we don't want to  
be doing things differently just for the sake of being different.  
"Application X does this in this manner, and it helps me when I do  
step Y and then Z to get to end result A" is more of how we like to  
approach things"

On 2/10/07, Jon A. Cruz <jon@...> wrote:
>
>
> On Jan 29, 2007, at 8:27 PM, jmak wrote:
>
>
> How do you know that this is the way professionals work? Have you ever
>
> worked in a graphic agency or some similar place? Have you ever worked
>
> under pressure when the client is panting behind your back and
>
> constantly complaining and whatever you are doing he  always wants
>
> something different. Because this is how the real work environment
>
> look like. In this environment to survive the product you are using
>
> should be virtually invisible, completely out of the way, I mean it
>
> should be so smooth so natural that you shouldn't even notice it. This
>
> is why the interface is so important in a professional work.
> Why, yes I have.
>
> I've worked in actual print shops, multimedia houses, game creators and
> publishers, and others. Although I'm mainly a software engineer now, I do
> have ability, experience, and formal training in the artistic side of
> things. I personally have a lot less professional graphic arts experience
> than many of the contributors to Inkscape, but this line of discussion tends
> to wander off into less productive areas. I believe that is one reasons many
> here do not fall back to arguments on 'qualifications'.
>
> However, if we try to focus on hard reasoning for UI work, we can gain a lot
> more. You've raised several good points, and brought in some good things to
> look at.
>
> However, there are more things to look at as far as UI design for
> "professional" apps goes. Usually commercial application development is
> driven by marketing and business far more than from the engineering side.
> For example, marketing might come in with requirements like "competitor X
> has n number of tools, so we need to have n plus one". Or they might need to
> add things to see people on upgrades. (In those cases they'll be looking
> more to the executives and IT heads making purchasing decisions than to the
> end users).
>
> Another factor, and this definitely applies for Adobe, is that a company may
> make many sub-optimal UI choices in order to maintain consistency with other
> applications the company sells. They might even add or remove features from
> one product to be able to sell another product. Or they might do things to
> leverage their "suite" and block users from using competitor's products.
>
> And yet another large factor is that different professionals have different
> needs. There is no single "professional" way to do something. And although
> people in different industries (animation, training videos, 2d games, 3d
> games, magazine ads, etc.) might have different sets of workflows, even
> people in the same shop working on the same type of art might take wildly
> different approaches.
>
> One thing I've seen often with Inkscape is that people have problems with
> it's UI usually because it is different than they are used to. Not "worse",
> just "different". Then after a bit of using it, people have tended to like
> it even more than other tools.
>
>
> However, we are very interested in things to actually improve workflow. "Do
> it because application X does it" is a reason that we generally don't like
> to follow. On the other hand, we don't want to be doing things differently
> just for the sake of being different. "Application X does this in this
> manner, and it helps me when I do step Y and then Z to get to end result A"
> is more of how we like to approach things"

Good to hear that other, experience based opinions are start surfacing
up. I completely agree with you that many features in professional
software are motivated by marketing, the desire to overcome
competition and consistency. I would like to add to this that most of
the special features of professional applications are hardly used in a
production environment. For instance, I've never used the effects
filters or the mesh tool on the job (because the outcome is hard on
the image setter). Vector-drawing apps are used mainly for logos and
text effects or package design companies for drawing packages (also
for illustrations but much less extent). A well designed, simple
vector-drawing program can do these tasks without much ado. I even
would say that give me a program with a good drawing tool, a good text
tool, a good color management tool, a non-destructive editing feature,
a good user-interface and perhaps a symbol feature tool, and I can
happily function in any professional environment.
On the other hand, I have some reservations about your suggestions
regarding professional needs. For instance, I've never met anybody who
didn't like clean interfaces, that is to say who was happy with a
palette heavy desktop, when you have to spend half of your time
dragging the over-sized palettes from side to side to be able to see
the image you are working on.
This also underlines the importance of priorities. Whatever we say
about the professional apps, there is one thing they do well. Beyond
all the fancy features the basic tools are well thought out and they
are polished. And I think this is the area that Inkscape needs to be
improved. It make no sense to keep churning out feature after feature
until a the basic tools are not polished.
In this context, I would say, Inkscape has good drawing tools, shape
tools, but bad text tool, color management tool, and interface and it
doesn't have any non-destructive editing feature at all. Until these
basics are not brought up to professional level it makes no sense to
keep adding additional features, especially if they are low on the
priority list. It is not the sheer amount of features that make a
program professional.
It would make much sense to make a couple of Inkscape releases just
improving on the basics without adding any new features. This is just
my idea.

jmak

-- 
2007 Calendar
http://www.lulu.com/content/512622
http://jozmak.googlepages.com/

On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 02:17:08PM -0500, jmak wrote:
> This also underlines the importance of priorities. Whatever we say
> about the professional apps, there is one thing they do well. Beyond
> all the fancy features the basic tools are well thought out and they
> are polished. And I think this is the area that Inkscape needs to be
> improved. It make no sense to keep churning out feature after feature
> until a the basic tools are not polished.
>
> In this context, I would say, Inkscape has good drawing tools, shape
> tools, but bad text tool, color management tool, and interface and it
> doesn't have any non-destructive editing feature at all. Until these
> basics are not brought up to professional level it makes no sense to
> keep adding additional features, especially if they are low on the
> priority list. It is not the sheer amount of features that make a
> program professional.
>
> It would make much sense to make a couple of Inkscape releases just
> improving on the basics without adding any new features. This is just
> my idea.

Prioritization of work in Inkscape is achieved not through a top-down
mechanism, as it is in proprietary projects, but rather is more driven
by the interests of the developers themselves.

This is due to the nature of how our all-volunteer project works.
Consider that whereas in commercial software, value derives from the
user, who pays some money that allows hiring engineers to make changes
the users (in theory) need.  In contrast, with projects like Inkscape
value derives from the people who contribute to the software directly.

In order to maximize the value gained to Inkscape, we seek to encourage
as many contributions as possible.  Since many people have a desire to
work on features, that is why feature growth tends to get highly
prioritized.

I guess the thing to realize is that in open source projects like
Inkscape, things are less of a "centrally-planned economy", and more
"market driven".  So while we do things like the Roadmap to help provide
guidance and synchronize things overall, we find it's better to have a
strong (if a bit chaotic) market rather than following a plan to the
letter.

Thus, the best way to influence priorities of Inkscape is to just get
involved and contribute work that nudges us in the direction you think
we should go.  :-)


In terms of making Inkscape more suitable for the professional user, 
we are fortunate in already having a huge database of ideas on
improvements needed, in our bug and RFE tracker.  So right now the
biggest thing we need in order to make Inkscape more suitable for
professionals is bug fixes.

If you can code (even just a little!) I would strongly urge you to
consider helping with bug fixing, especially if you are on OSX or
Windows.

If you don't code, you can still help a great deal by reviewing bugs in
the bug tracker, try to reproduce them, and gather as much additional
information as you can.

Bryce

Quoting jmak <jozmak@...>:
>
> Good to hear that other, experience based opinions are start surfacing
> up. I completely agree with you that many features in professional
> software are motivated by marketing, the desire to overcome
> competition and consistency. I would like to add to this that most of
> the special features of professional applications are hardly used in a
> production environment.
...

Well, I'm sorry but I have to disagree with most of your conclusions here.
Starting with the assertion that experience based opinion are just now starting
to surface. They have been around this project for years. I know people tend to
not blow their own horns, but there has been a lot of good experience you've
missed by glossing over them.

You mentioned multiple windows, but I have seen many people who prefer to have
them around (there was a huge outcry when we dropped the legacy tool palette
window) and those who don't. You also had a misleading dichotomy of needing to
drag them around. Good OS's allow for simple control of such things, and even
on Windows good apps allow for a single key toggle for those. Inkscape is among
those apps.

Additionally, a large portion of work can be done with no extra dialogs called
up. So saying that Inkscape requires that is very misleading.


And on one extreme, I've even worked with someone who preferred to have
literally hundreds of text editor windows open and tiled all at once. Just
because you've not experienced as much does not mean that other people don't
have different preferences.

And I very much disagree about profesional apps being well thought out and
polished. Just as a minor example, Photoshop for the longest time mangled
indexed color images. And instead of fixing things, they just flipped the
palettes when loading and saving. Things looked pretty for sales presentations,
but completely broke down once someone needed accuracy.


You might want to drop in on the Jabber channel so you can discuss some of your
opinions on things. Also, there's a huge difference between what people see on
the outside of a program and what is actually going on inside. Very often new
features just appear out of work on fixing existing problems. Assumptions on
what is hard and what is easy are often wrong when it comes to software
development. So what seems to you to be the incorrect way to develop software
just might not be.