Frame in a tif I do not want

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a.l.e

#15
i don't want to get into your analogies (still missing a car analogy... :-) but

- i don't think that preview should switch to full resolution... create a pdf for that.
- not sure if the user really expects the monitor to be reliable by default (as others also wrote)

and for the proposals:

- renaming to "display resolution" or similar: it's better than the current one... i still don't like "resolution", though (once we have something perfect, we can add it to the issue tracker!)
- don't add anything to the "new document" dialog. please. we have to remove things from there, not add any. (you're proposal is typical for that: a user is very unlikely to choose a different preview settings for a document when creating it... it's just the same as the units: no need to have them in the new document dialog).


really, i have the feeling that we have to make scribus simpler, not more complex.
the interface should become more expressive, so that people can easily find how to achieve their goals.
i don't believe that we can help them by replicating the same settings over and over at different places. on the contrary, we should make it very clear that there is a single place where you can find each thing. (not 100% possible, of course... but i hope you get what my message is)


the "new dialog" is the common place where everybody has to go thorough. it should contain the minimal common part.
the next step is different for for every user and we should help each of them to setup the document in the fastest and most comfortable way: you should have a fast access to the full settings and fine tune your document.


and what nermander says about the algorithm is worth to be looked at. really! does anybody want to create a ticket in the bug tracker with images that are optimized in a bad way?

GarryP

Thanks for adding to the discussion a.l.e.

I can't think of a good car analogy. "Would a car manufacturer apply a speed limit of 30MPH just in case you wanted to drive too fast?" No, that doesn't really work.

Anyway, I'll reply to your points as best as I can from my point of view.

If the preview mode shouldn't show things as they would be exported, then what's the preview mode actually for? Is it more of a "tidy" mode? If so, it should be renamed to remove confusion.

I don't think many users would expect their monitor to show images at print resolutions but with HD/Retina screens we're getting close. And what about when we have 4K monitors and laptop screens? They'll probably be here soon so it might be worth thinking about this now while there's time to do something about it and do a bit of future-proofing.

I'd much prefer to rename the menus/options to something that mentions "display" but I'm not bothered about "resolution". As long as it tells the user what it's actually about then that's fine. Semantic user interfaces etc.

I'm not sure about making the "New Document" dialog simpler instead of adding to it. Personally I often change the UOM when I'm creating a document as I measure the original using MM then switch back to PT for editing. I don't have a ruler that measures in PTs! If I couldn't specify the UOM when I'm making the new document it would make things very difficult. Not everyone uses A4/Letter.

I'm all for making Scribus simpler to use. I'm also behind any work on removing the current preferences/document-set-up confusion (it's very difficult to know if you're changing a global setting or a document one). If more of the "preferences" could be brought out into the main interface then I think that would be good. For instance, in this case, would a new icon near the preview mode eye for switching document-wide image resolutions do the job better? There's plenty of space for it.

I'm thinking that the Properties Palette might be a good place to have a new "Document (or Page, or both) Properties" tab which gives the user direct access to a lot of functions that are currently in preferences, such as: page orientation; grid spacing; margin sizes; baseline settings; etc.

There are too many things that are "hidden away" in the preferences that could be brought "into the light", so to speak.

My earlier suggestions were ways of fitting things into how Scribus already works in the simplest way but if we can dream of a brighter, more efficient, tomorrow then that's all the better.

a.l.e

the "new document" in my experience:

- personally, i try to get out of there as soon as possible and then start setting up my document (there is much more to do than what is possible to add into there...)
- when i introduce people to scribus, the "file > new" is the first they see from scribus. they're basically lost.
- over and over, we get questions from beginners who oversee the simplest things that are in the new document dialog

that's why i would prefer to remove from there all the things that are easily achieved later on.

concerning the properties palette: my dream is to have it split in two, one context sensitive for the content and one for the frames.
the context sensitive one, would then (very likely) show the page / document settings (button) as you suggest.
we will -- probably -- be going in that direction with 1.5.4...

the settings and preferences dialogs are of course a hard to thing to solve in a good way. but i fully agree with you that the way scribus currently splits them is not friendly.
i would tend to go in the direction of having only documents settings, that can then be promoted as general settings, as soon as a document is open.
and one would define the preferences when no document is open.
but i don't have a good solution for it yet.

(our opinion diverges on grids :-) ... i think that scribus should not have the grid as it current it's implemented: it's a vector graphics thing that in my experience leads to bad results when applied to DTP. but i would like to have an optional local grid when editing the shapes nodes!)

and, of course, we all different opinion and try to find out what is good for scribus: it's a long way :-)

Nermander

Quote from: GarryP on May 12, 2016, 10:13:23 AM
So why would DTP software, by default, "de-res" images so there was less to display?
Because, as I wrote, the screen has a lower resolution than the printer.

Even when Scribus is showing the "full resolution" preview it is not showing the full resolution.

So there are at least two steps of reduction involved in the display of images on screen.

GarryP

a.l.e:

I'm all for simpler dialogs - as long as they let you do what you need to do - but I'd say that the set-up of the document would be one of the first things you'd want to do so taking stuff away from that dialog would just mean more work to do later. Maybe there's a way of adding an "Advanced" extension to the dialog so users who just want the basic set-up only see the basic stuff and other people can open the advanced settings. Best of both worlds?

A context-sensitive PP sounds good. The work on the IndigoDock looks like it will help there.

For the settings/preferences, would it not be a good idea to split them into "general" settings and "document" settings? Stuff that's relevant to Scribus as a whole - external tools etc. - could go in one "general" dialog, and the rest could go in another, for "document" settings. If there's a document open then these "document" settings will apply to the current document, and if there's no document open then they are the "default" settings. It's just a thought and I've probably overlooked something major. (I realise that we already have Preferences and Document Setup but they show the same things which is why they're confusing. Making the split will make it better.)

The grid is very useful for drawing vector shapes but it has some quirks that mean it's not quite right yet. I'd never recommend anyone using it for page layout. (I just mentioned the grid as an example of what could go into one of the PP tabs, it's not an issue here.)

Nermander:

I realise that the screen is usually at a lower resolution than a printer when you are viewing a document at 100% but what about when you are zoomed in? Zoom in on a "de-rezed" image and it just looks blurry and awful; the user is not seeing the full image. What I mean by "Full resolution" in this case means, I suppose, "draw every pixel" instead of "draw what you think should be a good approximation". That's all you can ask for given the limitations of the output device; I didn't expect it to do anything more than that.

Having said that though, if there's a funky way that Scribus can automatically de-rez an image - on the fly depending on document zoom + image DPI + screeen - to exactly match the display resolution pixel-for-pixel then that would be fine. No-one would be any the wiser in that case. It's when you can clearly see that the image has been de-rezed that it becomes an issue, and that was my point.

a.l.e

concerning the new document dialog: i fear that discussing what should be in or out based on personal preferences won't bring us much further...

if one day i have some spare time, i would like to write down a small set of use cases and see what's the best UI for them...

creating a document and setting it up according to a task is what people do as soon as they meet the scribus... and they should have a good experience!