XML editor should be made more usable
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inkscape |
Invalid
|
Wishlist
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
The XML editor in Inkscape 0.92.2 (5c3e80d, 2017-08-06) is providing bad usability.
* In the top right area, the name-value list is shown. Editing a value directly in that list is not possible. Instead, it is half a screen further down in a separate editor. Even double-clicking on a value doesn't focus the editor.
* In the editor at the bottom, when pressing Ctrl+Enter repeatedly, seemingly random attributes get selected for editing. To reproduce, edit a rectangle in the XML editor, select the height in the name-value list and focus the editor at the bottom. Then press Ctrl+Enter repeatedly (at least 20 times). After about 10 times, the selection bar in the name-value list begins to select a (seemingly random) other line. Continue pressing Ctrl+Enter, and the selection line will funnily jump around. I could not identify any predictable pattern.
* The properties are currently ordered alphabetically by name. This is inconvenient. At least for the standard graphical primitives, there should be a useful order. For a rectangle this would be (id, style, x, y, width, height, rx, ry, others). Currently width and height are too far from each other.
* When I press Delete in the element tree, the focus doesn't stay where it was but disappears. This makes it too cumbersome to delete 5 elements in a row.
* When I right-click on an element in the element tree, I expect a popup menu with at least the usual clipboard actions (Copy, Cut, Paste). But at least Ctrl+C and friends work.
* When I select a row in the name-value list and press Delete, the whole element is deleted instead of the single property. This is unexpected. I have no idea how to delete a single attribute, but that should be possible.
| Changed in inkscape: | |
| importance: | Undecided → Critical |
| importance: | Critical → Wishlist |
| Jonathan Hofinger (jhofinger) wrote | #1 |
| Changed in inkscape: | |
| status: | New → Invalid |
The XML editor has been improved a lot for 1.0. Quite a few of your points have been adressed.
* You can now edit attributes directly in the list, both the name and the value. For string attributes such as style, a popup opens and allows for easy editing.
* Ctrl+Enter doesn't do anything else than Enter now, so I assume it's fixed.
* The properties are ordered in the same order as in the SVG file (or reverse order sometimes). For a rectangle, the order is "Style, id, width, height, x, y". I think that's okay.
* That's intended and there are actually a few bug reports that see similar behavior as a bug. It would be confusing if another element was visually selected when an element is deleted. You can of course press Del -> Arrow Down, which selects the item below the deleted element.
* I'm not sure if there are any operations that need a context menu in the XML editor (i.e. you can't do by changing attributes or reordering nodes). But of course, after selecting a row in the XML editor, you can use Edit->Copy and the likes.
* There now is a big fat red button next to every attribute which deletes the attribute.
Give the new XML editor a try, I'm sure you'll like it! Make sure to report new bugs you encounter at http://
Closing since fixed in master.
Closed by: https:/