Basic Tutorial: needs update

[Hachmann]

Hi,

after I had a look at your new translation-status page, Nicolas, I thought I could complete at least the basic tutorial for German (trunk).
And guess what... the tutorial seems to need an update...

The most surprising things I found are:

1.) "Probably the simplest way to paint an object some color is to open the Swatches dialog from the View menu (or press <keycap>Shift+Ctrl+W</keycap>), select an object, and click a swatch to paint it (change its fill color)." (line 282 in the xml file)

If this is supposed to be simple, wow....
Maybe we should better introduce the palette at the bottom instead?

2.) "(only objects that overlap the selection count; if nothing overlaps the selection, Raise and Lower move it all the way to the top or bottom correspondingly)." (line 400 in xml)

It doesn't work like this (any longer?), at least not for me. The whole part in parentheses should probably be removed. Or maybe I didn't understand the meaning...?

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Another one:

"To create a new empty document, use <command>File &gt; New &gt; Default</command> or press <keycap>Ctrl+N</keycap>. To create a new document from one of Inkscape's many templates, use <command>File &gt; New &gt; Templates...</command> or press <keycap>Ctrl+Alt+N</keycap>"

The step with 'Default' is no longer necessary.

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

And Templates are a menu item of their own, not nested.

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

1. Suggestion:
"<para>Many of Inkscape's functions are available via <firstterm>dialogs</firstterm>. Probably the
simplest way to paint an object some color is to use the color palette at the bottom of the Inkscape
window, but you can also open the Swatches dialog from the View menu (or press <keycap>Shift+Ctrl+W</keycap>).
In both cases, select an object, and click a swatch to paint it (change its fill color).</para>"

2. Confirmed. If nothing overlaps the selection, Raise and Lower have no effect at all (but Raise to Top and Lower to Bottom work as expected). Regression? To be tested on older Inkscape versions to be sure.

3 and 4. Suggestion (just removed the obsolete parts):
"<para>To create a new empty document, use <command>File &gt; New</command>
or press <keycap>Ctrl+N</keycap>. To create a new document from one of Inkscape's many
templates, use <command>File &gt; New from Template...</command> or press
<keycap>Ctrl+Alt+N</keycap></para>"

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Ad 1.) I'd rather see the Fill&Stroke dialog introduced in the basic tutorial than the swatches.
This is because swatches appear (to me) a more advanced feature than the color sliders in the ever-present and heavily used F&S dialog. Also because it's not mentioned anywhere else in that tutorial, which I find a little sad.

Swatches can be a little confusing to newbies, as they can be applied to several objects at once - so they change one object's color, and miraculously, other objects change, too... I just hate when this happens automagically with linked gradients...

(oops - what's this? Can't change a 'swatched' object's fill with the gradient tool?... Instead I get rendering glitches... or the swatch of the nearby object if I click on it with the gradient tool - meh... Seems loosely related to https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1085403)

So my suggestion would be:

<para>Many of Inkscape's functions are available via <firstterm>dialogs</firstterm>. Probably the
simplest way to paint an object some color is to use the <firstterm>color palette</firstterm> at the bottom of the Inkscape
window, but you can also open the <firstterm>Fill and Stroke dialog</firstterm> from the Object menu (or press <keycap>Shift+Ctrl+F</keycap>).
Select an object, and click on one of the color fields in the palette, or move a color slider in the Fill and Stroke dialog to paint it (change its fill color).</para>

Ad 2.) Oh-oh... To be honest, I never expected the behaviour that is mentioned in the tutorial (never really read it before translating...), knowing everything is in a specific order. What would it do with invisible objects?

Ad 3. and 4.) Thank you!

[su_v (suv-lp)]

On 2015-12-16 17:09 (+0100), Hachmann wrote:
> Ad 1.) I'd rather see the Fill&Stroke dialog introduced in the basic tutorial than the swatches.
> This is because swatches appear (to me) a more advanced feature than the color sliders in the ever-present and heavily used F&S dialog. Also because it's not mentioned anywhere else in that tutorial, which I find a little sad.
>
> Swatches can be a little confusing to newbies, as they can be applied to
> several objects at once - so they change one object's color, and
> miraculously, other objects change, too... I just hate when this happens
> automagically with linked gradients...

ISTM that you reduce 'swatches' to mean 'custom swatches' only (which IMvHO is not true).

Here's an interesting take on the scope of the color sliders in 'Fill & Stroke' and choosing colors from the swatches of a (predefined) palette (there are likely better mails from bbyak about this topic if you spend more time on searching and reading ;-):
«Another thing to consider is the subtle difference between color _selection_ tools and color _adjustment_ tools. The Fill&stroke dialog, with its color sliders, is more suitable for slight adjustment of colors. With it, you start with some color and you make changes to it, watching the result _on canvas_ immediately - that is, applied to the selected object where the new color is much easier to evaluate than in a tiny swatch. A color/style palette, on the other hand, is much better for initial selection of the base color, by choosing it from a well-organized logical palette, but is not suitable for adjusting colors at all. (…)»
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.devel/13424/focus=13550

The 'Swatches' dialog can be used to display a second palette with predefined colors (in addition to the one below the canvas), not only to work with (unfinished, and partially buggy) custom swatches feature (which ideally gets rewritten based on SVG2 features to not depend on the single-gradient stop "hack" to imitate "named colors" [1]).

The original tutorial text was probably written before the introduction of the 'Auto'-palette in Inkscape 0.48:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.48#Custom_Swatches
AFAICT the 'Auto' palette is currently the default one if the 'Swatches' dialog is opened for the first time, because its name sorts as the top one in the list. If the user chooses a different palette, this is remembered across sessions.

--
[1] https://svgwg.org/svg2-draft/pservers.html#Solidcolors

[su_v (suv-lp)]

On 2015-12-16 18:01 (+0100), ~suv wrote:
> AFAICT the 'Auto' palette is currently the default one if the
> 'Swatches' dialog is opened for the first time, because its name
> sorts as the top one in the list. If the user chooses a different
> palette, this is remembered across sessions.

I was wrong about one detail (because I last tested with 0.47). In 0.48 and later versions, the initial default to 'Auto' seems to have been implemented intentionally - it overrides the sort order ('Auto' is always at the top of the list of user and system palettes, and is used as long as the user hasn't chosen a different one).

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Thanks for clarifying, suv. I never use the swatches, and I also hide the palette, to have more space.
The HSL sliders are the part in Inkscape my mouse probably touches most often.

I guess if I would do design work, I'd need named colors to stay in my color scheme, but I'm mostly using Inkscape for rather simple things, and Ctrl+Shift+V gets my colors transferred...
Might be I'm not using the tools as intended - but I don't think there's a rule that I have to ;) - but of course, others don't need to do it my way, either.

So what would you prefer for the tutorial, instead?

[su_v (suv-lp)]

On 2015-12-16 18:29 (+0100), Hachmann wrote:
> So what would you prefer for the tutorial, instead?

For now, I'd probably omit the first sentence of the first paragraph about the dialogs and just start with

   "Probably the simplest way to paint an object some color is to ..."

and then refer to the palette below the canvas, e.g.:

   "... select an object, and click a swatch in the palette below the
    canvas to paint it (change its fill color)."

The second paragraph then could continue as now with

   "More powerful is the Fill and Stroke dialog ..."

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Yep, that's really better :)

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

@jazzynico: are you already working on this? (and will any changes now make it into 0.92 at all? - i.e. is this urgent?)

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

@Maren - I'm going to fix this one today.

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

1. (based on comment #8), 3. and 4. modified locally, but not pushed yet.

I've tested 2. back to 0.44.1 (10 years ago), and it's exactly the same behavior what we have in the trunk. So I suggest to remove the last part of the parenthesis and keep:
"(only objects that overlap the selection count)"

Tell me if it's ok for you.

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Huh? That's really weird.

For me, raise and lower always raised and lowered by exactly one step, no matter if there were any overlaps or not.

I wonder if there's a preference for that somewhere?...

Argh. I found it. It's not the *objects'* overlap that decides about this behaviour.
It's their *bounding boxes*. And I tested with circles, LOL...

Maybe mentioning the bounding box as point of reference could help to clarify...

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

So what about "(only objects that overlap the selection count, based on their respective bounding boxes)"?

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Very unambiguous! :)

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

XML and PO files updated in inkscape-docs, rev. 541.
Thanks for your help, Maren!

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

All tutorials updated in the 0.92.x branch (rev. 15047) and trunk (rev. 15079).