Re: Dia's user interface

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

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?