PFJ wrote: > Hi, > > >>What I propose is that we form an informal usability team to talk over >>ideas on making Scribus easy to learn and easy to use. It's good now, >>but it can be better. Please write me either off- or onlist if you are >>interested. > > > Let's hear what you're proposing on here before taking it anywhere else.
Okay. Lots of us have thoughts on how the interface/usability could be improved on. I'd like to see a group talk about this and come up with a Grand Unifified Plan, or a plan of some sort. When I say improved, I mean that buttons and commands should be where you'd expect them to be (which some are and some are not, currently), objects should behave predictably, and configurations should be easy to edit. Here are some examples of things that violate expectations in Scribus... - Line spacing is not tied to font size. - Kerning jumps by an entire point when you click "up" or "down," which is a huge amount. - When I copy a box of right-justified text and paste it, the text is left-justified. - Linking boxes is not intuitive (simple, yes, intutive, no), nor is there any way I know of to manifest the links between boxes. - You can't drag an object across pages. - Columns are terribly confusing. So is creating styles. - Double and triple-click don't work. - There's no "baseline" feature. - Text attributes can only be applied to one paragraph at a time. - And I have more (there's no "snap-to," grab boxes are proportional to magnification, kerning doesn't show up accurately in Measurements, etc...). Also, I've had throughts like reducing modality (i.e., the distinction between text-box-create mode, box-move mode, and text-edit mode) by making the cursor highly context-sensitive: a text-edit cursor when over text, a move cursor over box frames, and a resize cursor over grab boxes (this last is already in place). This would take almost no time to learn, and would save substantial time and confusion. Likewise, modality could be further reduced by eliminating the distinction between text frames and image frames. There would simply be a frame, and the conext menu would have two options: "Get text..." and "Get image...", or better still, simply "Get content..." Anyway, this is an explanation by example. Some folks will agree that these are serious problems, other will not. These are the kinds of issues I'd like to talk about - the problems we see, the solutions we propose, and how to minimize the amount of code that needs to be created/edited. All I propose is to group those of us who want to address these issues, so as not to annoy those who aren't. -- Steve == If elections are just something where you go in, you push a button, and go home, then it doesn't make much difference which button you push. - Noam Chomsky
