[bitmap import] modal dialog destroys workflow

Bug #555234 reported by jimmac
34
This bug affects 6 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Inkscape
Invalid
Medium
Jon A. Cruz

Bug Description

I very much appreciate the effort to address the long standing issue to bitmap embedding/linking. That said, the popup modal dialog asking for a decision each time a bitmap is imported is the most obtrusive UI solution that really creates barriers to a pleasant experience. This is especially true when importing a series of images. Another not such a good solution is to define an Inkscape preference for the default behavior.

What strikes me as the best approach here is to simply decide on the default behavior, which I'm sure will cause a lengthy argument, but good design is not about avoiding decisions. Either choice we pick, the alternative should be allowed by the following two ways:

a) file dialog -- when importing bitmaps through the menu/toolbar item, the file dialog should be extended with a checkbox listing that alternative option ("[ ] embed image").

b) when dropping a target using DnD, when a modifier key is pressed (Alt on Linux and Windows), a menu should be shown listing all the actions possible to apply to the dragged items. This behavior is similar to how the Nautilus file manager deals with drag and drop for example.

As for the default discussion I vote for embedding even if it poses a performance and file size cost. There is an insanely high number of mockups in circulation which have the 'missing bitmap' icon instead of actual artwork and based on my use paterns the need to embed large bitmaps or needing the images to be linked have been rather low. That said, I strongly suggest to use relative paths by default.

Tags: bitmap ui
jimmac (jimmac)
description: updated
Changed in inkscape:
status: New → Confirmed
importance: Undecided → Medium
assignee: nobody → Jon A. Cruz (jon-joncruz)
status: Confirmed → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Jon A. Cruz (jon-joncruz) wrote :

Yes, there was much discussion on this already, with the need to address both the users who would need embedding vs. the users who would need linking explicitly covered. There was a student project underway that would address this, that we had decided to wait for. Then some changes were unexpectedly added that did not quite cover all the use cases.

I've been getting a cleanup of that in. This includes proper link vs. embed on DnD via modifier key, including following the standard keys and to also follow the standard to allow the user choice menu.

Not using relative paths is a separate bug. This had been fixed a few times in the course of 0.47 development, but kept being unfixed by other changes. This is currently covered by bug #170225.

Revision history for this message
Jon A. Cruz (jon-joncruz) wrote :

Related items (showing both general user groups) are

"Make a Bitmap Copy should embed" bug #169108

"Dialogue box Bitmap Copy" bug #555066

jazzynico (jazzynico)
tags: added: bitmap ui
Revision history for this message
Krzysztof Kosinski (tweenk) wrote :

Adding the checkbox to the file import dialog is rather hard, because they are implemented as native dialogs on Windows (e.g. using Windows API). That's why we went for the simple solution at first. I think the proper way forward is to just remove the native Windows file dialogs and stick to GTK ones.

Revision history for this message
Garrett (garrettl) wrote :

I agree. This is really awful as a workflow is concerned.

Part of the problem with linked images is that they're referenced with absolute paths to a user's specific filesystem instead of having linked images with a relative path, so that linked images could move around with a file (as in the case of a shared folder).

Inkscape should really try hard to make linked images have a relative path (which works, by-the-way, if you hand-edit the file) and only try to fallback to the absolute path if the graphic cannot be found.

Due to the absolute path for linked images, many more people are embedding graphics, as it "just works" when sharing files. If we had proper linking (as in, being able to zip up a dir w/ SVGs and assets and send via email... or using the same SVGs over sshfs or Dropbox), then embedding wouldn't be quite as important.

Revision history for this message
Jon A. Cruz (jon-joncruz) wrote :

Yes. We've fixed things to relative paths a few times, and it has gotten unfixed.

0.48 will be going out with corrected relative linking.

Revision history for this message
petitdidier (alain-petitdidier) wrote :

Hello .

I use Inkscape with students and images must be for us always embedded. Until now, the fact that this is not automatic is a handicap for us yet, I understand that for other uses, it is necessary not to encumber the files and then let the images link.

Concerning this problem, we can define three types of users:
- Users need not add to their files using multiple or large images.
- Users who need to incorporate the images and must not forget to systematically incorporated.
- The users whose needs may change during the use of the software.

The solution would not it placing the three options in the Inkscape preferences so that the option is set once by the user. Thus it would not require to repeat this choice every time you open the software.

What do you think about this? Is this solution technically simple? thank you very much for your work.

Revision history for this message
jazzynico (jazzynico) wrote :

Related (in progress) Bug #171842 'Add an option to the preferences-dialog: "Auto embed images" '.

Revision history for this message
ScislaC (scislac) wrote :

Jon: It says "in progress", what is the current status on this?

Revision history for this message
Kis András Gábor (frontrider) wrote :

Still in progress after more than 5 years?

Changed in inkscape:
status: In Progress → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Jonathan Hofinger (jhofinger) wrote :

Since a fix for this has been released in 2015, I'm closing this issue as part of Inkscape's bug migration.

Closed by: https://gitlab.com/jhofinger

Changed in inkscape:
status: Triaged → Invalid
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