Hi all
The following are some usability comments from my use of the LyX
Graphics dialog. It's not user-support stuff, so I'm hoping it's
appropriate to send it here. If these have been reported already, or
have even been fixed (I am using 1.4.3 in Ubuntu 6.10) please disregard.
I realise that this is open source software and that sometimes these
sorts of things can be slow moving, so no offence here; I just want to
pass on these thoughts on usability in the hope that some relatively
small GUI changes might make a big difference for some end users.
Firstly, when I click on a figure in my LyX document, the "LyX:
Graphics" dialog comes up with the keyboard focus on the "File" box.
This is fairly useless, in my view: the vast majority of the time I will
be wanting to change the size or layout, not the file itself, and if I
do I will probably want to use the "browse button.
Next, I discover by repeatedly opening and closing this dialog that I
get a flashing cursor in EVERY text box that I have recently clicked
into. There is no way to tell where the keyboard focus is! I presume
this is a Qt thing. I discover that the keyboard focus is actually in
the File box ("). But it's not possible to tell that by looking at the
screen: you have to type something first.
Next, the "LyX: Graphics" dialog comes up whether I right-click or
left-click on the image. Why the right click? That is very non-standard
GUI behaviour (Blender, anyone?). If the right-click is going to do
something, surely it should bring up a contextual menu.
Next, if I open the dialog and then click the "Width" box, then type 100
and then ENTER, I get the file selection dialog. Definitely a bug.
What's worse, when I then press ESC, the "File" box in the graphics
dialog has been *blanked*. So I must completely exit the graphics dialog
to get my stuff back.
Next, the file search location for adding new graphics always defaults
to the location of the LyX document. It should default to the last-used
location. I keep my figures in a subdirectory, and the current behaviour
is rather annoying.
Finally, it would be great if there could be some 'smarts' in the
"Width" box such that oversized images (wider than a column) could be
preselected to be scaled to 100% of column width rather than the
default, which appears to be 100% of original size. With photos and PDFs
and so on, this would normally make more sense, and cut out a lot of
unnecessary clicks. And if that were not possible, at least make the
"col%" entry in the "Scale%" drop-down somehow quickly keyboard
accessible. The ordering of the entries in that dropdown makes no sense
from the usability point of view -- it's probably just random or
as-coded order.
Cheers
JP
