On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Alan Horkan wrote: > > i just finished reading that article, i like Havoc. > > i went on for ages about keybindings but never got around to submitting > all the necessary patches. I know that you can easily set these yourself > but that is no reason not to have sensible defaults (as i have said > previously on this list and was mentioned in the article).
I agree. Most people don't know about the assignable shortcuts, so we should have sensible shortcuts whereever we can. Most of the Ctrl keys are assigned, but I think the single-letter shortcuts should be assigned to things like the standard tools. > if you are trying to do a fully coloured diagram in dia it is very > difficult as you have select each item, choose properties then choose the > color. Ideally there would be a color picker so i could choose simply > "red", "green", etc or use #00000, i dont have time to go into detail, i > will eleaborate later if you like. Try using dia for drawing artwork > instead of using the more sensible option of Sodipodi (which unlike dia > does not run on both windows and linux). Here's a UI question: If multiple objects are selected, should properties changes apply to them all? Currently that only happens when the objects are grouped. A couple improvements for the color picking I've been pondering: Have easy access to the most frequently used colors in the diagram (not sure how -- menu on color widget? Menu somewhere else?) Have (even) more selection types, like select by same color, same line style etc. > MDI is great if you have a decent window manager, but frankly win32 does > not and it would be vastly more convenient if i could pin the tools > windows always on top, or that i could have the main window maximised > with enough room left for the tools window (i could do this manually but > anyone who tells me that is missing the point). This kind of improvement > might be more appropriate to gtk for windows rather than dia, but i have > not talked to anyone further upstream. Essentially organising the > various windows is a pain for some one who (even when using linux) is > still very used to SDI. Somebody (I forget who) mentioned the desire for a tabbed environment, basically being able to have a single 'document' (file) consist of several diagrams, shown as tabs. But that's not your point. Side note: For those with decent window managers, I've found it *very* useful to have the (say) Windows key control all window managing, and then have Windows+Leftbutton be move window anywhere in the window. Reduces the time spent looking for window decorations a lot. But that's not your point either. I believe we can give placement hints that the decent window managers may ignore, but which may make it easier for SDI people to have a decent layout. Point to work on. > It was ages before i realised i had to use the center button to access > certain features. Not many laptops come with a 3 button mouse, using a > trackpad can be far less precise than a mouse so i appriecate when a > program is well designed and accesable (but mostly i wait until i have a > desktop computer i can work at). Sometimes redundancy is bad but i think > it should be possible to do almost anything just using the keyboard > (although this is slightly less practical with a drawing application than > say a word processor). Ugh. Good point. A first step may be to have the object menu be duplicated in the right-hand menu. But we should definitely have a keyboard shortcut for the menus -- seems even when the diagram menu bar is on, the indicated shortcuts don't work. And the diagram menu should probably be on by default, for accessibility? Are the start-up tips (as in Gimp and Gnucash) useful? They may reduce the amount of simple questions (like right-button click). If well organized, they can come instead of (or with) the splash screen. > Labelled toolbar buttons. When you are just getting started having to > use tooltips is slow and cumbersome. Also bigger buttons are easier to > hit. Although i realise this may not be appropriate for Dia, it is > something programs like abiword should make more use of. (Abiword can > actually do this if you edit a config file and it has the UI for it but > no one actually wired the UI to functionality. It is an old bug and one > of my pet peeves but i digress). Is this for the toolbox icons (ie pointer, magnify etc) or are you thinking of load/save/print-toolbars? > I found the default selection behaviour very odd. If i select an obect i > do not expect both the current and previous objects to be selected > (unless i have held down shift or ctrl or something). This may be what > other have become used to but it is inconsistant with my general usage of > other programs, such as selecting files in Nautilus or on the desktop. That's not what's supposed to happen, and I can't reproduce it. Shift does indeed make multiple selections. Can you explain in more detail? > Font sizes are not set using the standard sizes such as 10 point, 12 > point, 24 point etc. It is like forcing an American to use metric. I > can figure it out but i know roughly what size 12 point is when it is > printed and i dont have the same referenece to reality when the units are > changed. Yes, that's probably the biggest UI problem, the fact that the units are hardwired to centimeters. There's half-assed code in there that does unit-based input, but it needs to be tested and used. > Hope that helps. I am one of those Usability critics mentioned in the > article who does not submit much code (yet). I would be happy to give > this more thought and analyse more what things slowed me down when using > dia or did not work as expected. I hope i can help to make dia even > better. That would be wonderful. Every time I use Dia seriously (as opposed to hacking on it) I find things I'd like to improve, but I never write them down. > PPS I strongly suggest comparing and reusing the best ideas from similar > programs like Kivio, Visio, Rational Rose, Sodipodi, Corel Draw etc. Good point. Thanks for all your comments. This was exactly what I was hoping to hear (including the fact that the UI is not hopeless:). -Lars -- Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I |---------------------------- will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket? _______________________________________________ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
