Re: [Xournal-devel] user interface redesign proposal for xournal

[Timo K. <tk...@gm...>]

Dear Denis and Xournal-developers,

I have implemented the UI modifications I suggested earlier, with some
things changed according to Denis' insights that I'm quoting below.
Here's the patch description:

---
This patch is a work-in-progress for some changes to the Xournal menu
structure. The main point is to introduce more dialogs, which allow
for more room for explanation of the configuration options. Other
(minor) changes include using the stock icon for full-screen, and
using up and down arrows for previous/next page (as in Evince). The
patch adds a configuration flag in ~/.xournal/config,
use_classic_interface, controlling the use of the new interface.

The code is not exactly messy, but probably not tidy enough and
certainly not sufficiently documented yet for immediate inclusion. The
patch applies against Xournal 0.4.5.
---

Something is going wrong with my sourceforge uploads, so I hope you
don't mind that I've attached the patch.

I am very eager to hear your reviews, comments, criticism and suggestions.

Best regards,

Timo Kluck

2010/11/1 Denis Auroux <au...@ma...>:
> Dear Timo,
>
> Thanks for your UI suggestions! By and large, I like them. Some comments
> below.
>
>> I am still very much interested in the development of Xournal. I have
>> some suggestions for ways of possibly improving the user interface. I
>> think I can make the changes I suggest into code, but I would first
>> like to have your opinion.
>>
>>  * I think that a dedicated preferences dialog would be better than a
>> preferences menu. In a dialog, it is possible to give the user more
>> information about how the different options are related by using
>> lay-out and tooltips.
>
> I agree entirely. The layout with tabs to logically group together related
> options makes a lot of sense.
>
> I'm wondering whether the contents of the current "Button 2 mapping" and
> "Button 3 mapping" submenus should really be collapsed this far into the
> dialog box -- these are things that one wants to be able to change quickly
> (typically, I often change my button 3 setting between select rectangle,
> eraser, and highlighter, to best suit what I'm doing at a given time). So
> I'd suggest instead keeping "Button 2 mapping" and "Button 3 mapping"
> entries, possibly at the bottom of the Tools menu, and having these pop up a
> dialog box. (Not part of the main Preferences dialog box). This is quite
> different from the other "Input devices" options, which one would typically
> set once and for all, and therefore do belong in the Preferences dialog box.
>
> The dialog box would then give the choice of tools and, for drawing tools
> (pen/eraser/highlighter), the choice of linking all the tool options to the
> settings for button 1 (what's currently called "link to primary brush"),
> copying the current settings but not updating them if they change later
> (what's currently called "copy of current brush"), or maybe even setting all
> the options here directly (if you're courageous).
>
>>  * Overall, I think that the menu could be shorter by grouping into
>> submenus. For example, tool selection can be in a submenu because most
>> users will either use the keyboard shortcut or the toolbar button.
>
> This seems reasonable to me.
>
>>  * I suggest following the gnome "human interface guidelines" and
>> rename the first menu entry from "file" to "journal". For example,
>> Totem media player also has a first menu entry called "movie".
>
> Overall I'm very skeptical of the Gnome human interface guidelines --
> sometimes they're useful, but I find many of them to be confusing to users
> who come from non-Gnome backgrounds. In particular, I think having
> standardized menus makes the user interface more intuitive, and really
> prefer "File" to "Journal" for a menu that contains standard file
> operations.
>
>>  * It would be great if there were a way to add pages in full-screen
>> mode by only using the pen. My suggestion is to have a button between
>> consecutive pages. When clicked (or perhaps when hovered), buttons
>> appear to select the page background.
>
> It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure if this is worth the trouble, because
> most users will only add pages at the end of the document, and that can
> already be done just by clicking on the "next page" button while on the last
> page.
>
>> I have made a small mockup of my suggestions and attached it. I hope
>> you have time to take a look. I will wait for your comments before
>> working on a patch.
>
> This looks pretty good. A couple more comments:
>
> - I didn't check carefully, but I feel that various menu items might be
> missing from your interface mock-up. Please try to keep everything somewhere
> (and feel free to ask if you'd like my opinion about what to do with some of
> the less obvious commands/options). Also keep in mind that these might be
> candidates for hiding when the "Shorten menus" option is on (perhaps that
> one should be renamed to "Simplified interface"? Or split into "Shorten
> menus" and "Shorten toolbars" ?)
>
> - Last year there was some discussion on the xournal-devel mailing list
> about user interface choices, and several valuable suggestions were made by
> Bob McElrath among others. I feel what you are suggesting is largely
> orthogonal to what he was advocating, but you may still want to get some
> feedback from him about your proposal. I'm cc-ing this reply to the
> mailing-list (and re-attaching the interface mock-up) in case someone there
> has further comments.
>
> Best regards,
> Denis
>
> --
> Denis Auroux                    au...@ma...
> MIT Department of Mathematics   ON LEAVE AT UC BERKELEY
> 77 Massachusetts Ave. 2-236
> Cambridge MA 02139
>



-- 
Timo Kluck
tel. 06-1061 8886
tk...@gm...