GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 124025
Hidden features in path tool should be made visible to the user
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
As discussed in bug #51108, some features of the path tool are currently not visible to the user, especially the usage of modifier keys (Ctrl, Shift, Alt) and what happens depending on where the user clicks (on a point or outside the path, etc.). The latter may be partially solved by the messages in the status bar added recently in CVS, but this may bring a problem of consistency with other tools. The options available through the modifier keys should be visible in the tool options dialog and should be activated/deactivated when the user presses the corresponding modifier key, in order to provide visual feedback about what is happening.
I wonder what others think about "display only" widgets, that show the available modifier combinations and their associated behaviour. This way it would be impossible to confuse the state of the tool by clicks in the tool options and the available options would be visible. Comments?
I suspect that the real problem that you are trying to solve with these "display-only" widgets is the fact that some users are confused when the options for a tool differ from the defaults (because these modified options were saved after the user modified them, on purpose or not). I would prefer to solve the problem in a different way and disable the automatic saving of options, which seems to be the root cause of the problem. This should always require an action from the user (i.e., click on the save button), otherwise the options would always be reset to the defaults. If some users really want this to happen automatically (I don't) then we could do something similar to what was done for the assignment of shortcut keys: add an option controlling whether this should be done automatically or not, and have this option off by default.
Bumping to 2.2 in line with my comment on bug #51108. Dave.
Moving back to 2.0, as indicated in bug #51108.
Simon, I did a kind of informal usuability poll among my colleagues: I showed them the status bar messages displayed by the path tool and I asked them if they liked them or if they preferred to have the options (and the corresponding modifiers) displayed in the tool options dialogs. Well, the response was almost unanimous: they want both. ;-) The messages in the status bar give nice hints but the available space is too short to display all options. In addition, for some tools it makes sense to be able to change the defaults (e.g., invert the behavior of a modifier). This can be done in the tool options window, but obviously not in the status bar. The immediate feedback given by the radio buttons or checkboxes changing states when a modifier is pressed helps the users to learn which modifier does what. On the other hand, the messages in the status bar are nice because they can give some useful hints even when the tool options are not visible. So they would like to get both for all tools. Since this bug report is about the path tool only, I think that what is missing is some radio buttons or checkboxes in the tool options dialog. By the way, I also had a look at several other drawing/design programs that are using messages in the status bar. One feature that I found rather useful is to add a short message giving hints about other modifier keys that can be used. So instead of having a message like: "click here to do blah blah" you could add something like this: "click here to do blah blah (try also: Ctrl, Shift)" The additional message "try also" is rather short so it could still fit in the status bar if the image is not too small. It can give some useful hints to the user. When the corresponding modifier is pressed, the message is updated (as you are already doing) so that the user knows what action will be performed when the modifier is used.
Fixed in CVS. Radio toggles for the modes of the vector tool are there for some time now. Please note, that I won't add a description for the SHIFT modifier in the Tool options, since these texts would have to change quite frequently and cause visual distraction. 2003-12-31 Simon Budig <simon@gimp.org> * app/tools/gimpvectortool.[ch]: Fixed missing undo step when moving (components of) the path. Don't add an undo step when nothing changes. Also rephrased the help strings in the statusbar to be shorter and encourage the user to try shift. Fixes bug #124025.