>> On Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.10 i find that the cursor is mostly the I-beam when hovering over the text.
- unfortunately I do not have Windows 7 running Inkscape trunk. I have Windows 7 running Inkscape 0.48.4, and Windows XP running the latest trunk code. The difficulty of getting the I-beam to appear is actually my main problem with the control. Even when the zoom level is 1%, which means that the slider bar has disappeared entirely, it is still very difficult to get the I-beam to appear. In this case one would intuitively expect that the entire control would be given over to text since there is no slider bar at all, and that therefore it should be very easy to get the I-beam to show up. But in this case, roughly 75% of the left side of the control will produce the two vertical arrows, and only 25% at the right side will produce the I-beam.
>> The slider was taken directly from Gimp - do you see the same issue there ?
- I was not able to find this particular slider bar in Gimp, but I am not a regular user of Gimp, so maybe I did not look in the right place. I was able to find a very interesting double control in the Gimp Brushes dialog box. I am attaching a screenshot of it. This one shows a slider for Spacing, plus a separate spin box for spacing, and they are synchronized with each other, and you can type into the spin box using the keyboard. This would be absolutely perfect as far as I am concerned, but I guess this would probably consume more real estate than desired.
>> the right click context menu
thanks for pointing this out, I was not aware that this context menu existed. Yes, it would be extremely helpful to have more levels to choose from, as you mentioned. Currently I have (200, 100, 50, Page, Drawing, Selection). However even here there is a practical problem, namely that the context menu is available only if you have the I-beam cursor, which is the source of the problem in the first place. If you have the vertical arrows cursor, then the context menu does not appear when you do a right click, and instead you get movement of the zoom as though this were a left click. This is atypical for Windows. As far as I know most Windows applications will give you a context menu on a right click regardless of what the left click functionality is and regardless of the appearance of the cursor. Here the right click behaviour is contingent upon the cursor which is very unexpected.
(P.S. sorry to give you a hard time about this. I am aware of the fact that this is a Gtk issue, not an Inkscape issue, but I am not familiar with how to report problems to Gtk, and so I am complaining here instead. I guess all I'm saying is that for a typical Windows user this will be a very steep learning curve. Perhaps if there were a more appropriate forum elsewhere, then my complaints could be re-directed there, somewhere...)
>> On Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.10 i find that the cursor is mostly the I-beam when hovering over the text.
- unfortunately I do not have Windows 7 running Inkscape trunk. I have Windows 7 running Inkscape 0.48.4, and Windows XP running the latest trunk code. The difficulty of getting the I-beam to appear is actually my main problem with the control. Even when the zoom level is 1%, which means that the slider bar has disappeared entirely, it is still very difficult to get the I-beam to appear. In this case one would intuitively expect that the entire control would be given over to text since there is no slider bar at all, and that therefore it should be very easy to get the I-beam to show up. But in this case, roughly 75% of the left side of the control will produce the two vertical arrows, and only 25% at the right side will produce the I-beam.
>> The slider was taken directly from Gimp - do you see the same issue there ?
- I was not able to find this particular slider bar in Gimp, but I am not a regular user of Gimp, so maybe I did not look in the right place. I was able to find a very interesting double control in the Gimp Brushes dialog box. I am attaching a screenshot of it. This one shows a slider for Spacing, plus a separate spin box for spacing, and they are synchronized with each other, and you can type into the spin box using the keyboard. This would be absolutely perfect as far as I am concerned, but I guess this would probably consume more real estate than desired.
>> the right click context menu
thanks for pointing this out, I was not aware that this context menu existed. Yes, it would be extremely helpful to have more levels to choose from, as you mentioned. Currently I have (200, 100, 50, Page, Drawing, Selection). However even here there is a practical problem, namely that the context menu is available only if you have the I-beam cursor, which is the source of the problem in the first place. If you have the vertical arrows cursor, then the context menu does not appear when you do a right click, and instead you get movement of the zoom as though this were a left click. This is atypical for Windows. As far as I know most Windows applications will give you a context menu on a right click regardless of what the left click functionality is and regardless of the appearance of the cursor. Here the right click behaviour is contingent upon the cursor which is very unexpected.
(P.S. sorry to give you a hard time about this. I am aware of the fact that this is a Gtk issue, not an Inkscape issue, but I am not familiar with how to report problems to Gtk, and so I am complaining here instead. I guess all I'm saying is that for a typical Windows user this will be a very steep learning curve. Perhaps if there were a more appropriate forum elsewhere, then my complaints could be re-directed there, somewhere...)