Hi Joe,
please let me assure you that the reason to remove these feature are not
the user interface space
in tools options. The question here was, do you like hardware
accelerated anti aliased rendering
of shapes in a mind blowing quality next year or in two years?
Having outlines sounds reasonable so we may introduce that later again.
But as you pointed out
yourself, OpenOffice.org Impress is targeted to business presentations
and will never be a
replacement for +500$ presentation packages for whatever. And
OpenOffice.org Draw is
targeted to simple office drawing, not for space shuttle construction.
If you are a die hard
drawing artists, there are many very good and very specialized
applications in the open source
scene. Why waste resources on something that is there already?
Sure there are always useful features we can add, so discussion on this
is very welcome.
I personally want to keep Draw&Impress simple but effective, no more, no
less
Regards,
Christian
Joe Smith wrote:
Christian Lippka - Sun Microsystems GmbH - Hamburg wrote:
...
But even for features that most people find useless nowadays, there
are people using them for uknown
purposes. If these are valid use cases where many users benefit from,
then please submit an issue
and if it gets votes than we will surely try to re introduce that
feature.
...
Hi Christian,
Thanks for your reply--very helpful.
Yes, I understand that not all requested features can be provided, but
this as a case where working features are being removed. If it is a
matter that the features are impeding more important work, then yes,
that make a strong case for removing them.
However, if the primary reason for removing them is to reduce UI
complexity, then that is achievable without removing the features.
> Question is, are they really still that important to clutter
> very costly user interface space?
Yes, the Tools > Options dialog could benefit from the pruning ;-) but
it's hard for me to understand how buttons on an optional toolbar
qualify as "costly" space.
The application-level options UI is not needed at all. Take that off,
but leave the feature and the toolbar buttons.
> Do we still need all of them? Do we maybe need other new features
> to solve the use cases that where previously solved with the
> removed features?
I don't use Draw for projects complex enough to depend on these
features, but I do know that professional drawing applications still
include an "outline" mode[1-4], and I know that graphic artists use
the outline mode as a drawing help[1-5].
The ideal solution would be to simplify all the current modes to a
single outline mode that was optimized as a drawing aid, but even as
it exists now, the feature is useful.
Is it not reasonable to leave the feature as it is, remove the Tools >
Options UI but leave the toolbar UI? That would serve to reduce the UI
clutter without losing a still-useful feature.
Perhaps the target for Draw is not professional graphics so it does
not need professional features, but the feature is useful and should
not be dropped simply because it has outlived the performance impact.
Thanks again for giving your insights.
<Joe
[1] Adobe Illustrator:
http://www.khulsey.com/yukio_miyamoto_frenchhorn.html
[2] Inkscape:
http://www.inkscape.org/screenshots/index.php?lang=en&version=0.44
Scroll down the page to the description that begins "When working on
complex projects with thousands of objects, it can be quite a chore..."
[3] Xara: http://www.xaraxone.com/html/tip_of_the_week_8.html "If all
else fails revert to the old Illustrator way and change to _outline_
_mode_ and click directly on the object's outline. You can still use
Ctrl to select object inside groups."
[4] Corel Draw:
http://www.webdesign.org/web/vector-graphics/coreldraw/draw-a-parchment-in-coreldraw-exclusive-tutorial.3830.html
[5] A request to add this feature to Inkscape (yes, it was added):
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/FeatureNotePadArchive
> wwwwolf writeth:
>
> WIREFRAME MODE
>
> "Outline" mode. "Draft" mode. "X-Ray" mode. You know what I'm talking
> about. The mode where only the edges of the paths are drawn, stroked
> at constant width. Turn it off, and you have everything visible
> normally again.
>
> I've seen this in Adobe Illustrator (Ctrl+Y), Sketch, Corel Draw!,
> even the good ole 1991 vintage Arts & Letters.
>
> I think this is pretty important because I love to work with lots of
> overlapping, same-or-nearly-same-color objects that don't have strike
> at all. Would make drawing easier...
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