GSoC 2012 Improve Usability Chelen

Improve usability and get rid of little bugs

Scribus is a really powerful and allow us to do very professional stuffs. But, sometime, it doesn't behave as expect by the user and it looks unfriendly as you have to redo some part of your work. As this subject suggest, it will not be just one big task but different little ones to improve user-friendliness of Scribus. During the GSoC, I will focus on three goal describe below : undo-redo, make easier user handling and fix incorrect behaviour.

Undo-redo

When we speak about user-friendliness, it also means that Scribus has to do what the user expect it does. We can notice that it remains some bug in undo/redo functionalities. Hence, it will be one of the main part of this proposal.

Description

Currently, undo/redo is absent in for some functionality (changing style character http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=10310) or have an abnormal behaviour (with pattern/graphic http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=6220 , http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=5210 , http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=5210 or about save functionality http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=3455). As we can see with those examples, there are some improvement to do in these case and especially with undo/redo when we resize/rotate a frame or a graphic. We can also notice that story editor lack undo/redo functionalities but cezary have already programmed that and will export his word from 1.4 to 1.5.

Implementation

-I will firstly look at abnormal behaviour. Most of the time, it is due to separation between different basic actions. As Scribus can remember only 20 actions by default, this issue filled this queue and the user is enable to completely undo this action.

-Then, I will add this functionality where it is missing like with style to be sure that the user can always come back when he does a mistake.

-To see until where he can come back. It could be great to add a widget with an history. With this, the user can see if the action that he want undo is again in the queue and he can select where he wants to come back without clicking to many time.

make easier user handling

To improve usability of scribus, we have to avoid repetitive actions and quicken access to different linked actions. Even if regular users used to do with these actions, new ones can be disturb by this kind of behaviour and think it is a real waste of time.

Description

In this case, we can think there are a lot of different thinks to do but in reality, it is pretty much the same in all different case. Indeed, whether adding some space after a paragraph or enable/disable pre press or remembering rename or replace and many others, what the user want is just that scribus remember a default behaviour.

The second case is when the user have to click 10 time to do what he wants or when he has to go in another panel like with contour definition. In all these case, we have to the number of manipulation that the user need to do an action.

Implementation

-Firstly, we will have to define which data is always the same so we have to remember this one.

-Then I will add these functionalities firstly to save usual data and then to reduce the number of manipulation needed to be done.

fix incorrect behaviour

The last but not the least is to correct these strange behaviour. Of course, there will always have this kind of issue in a program but some of them can be more unpleasant than others and this is a necessary to improvement the usability of Scribus. Furthermore, we can see some of them in an everyday use of scribus.

Description

As many bug report refer, Shape are the part where most of problem are. Shape are important in Scribus because we use these tools for text frame shape. An other example is about font selection. In some case, we can select a missing font so there are some issue. In all case, it is not issues about configurations but about final render of scribus which is its main functionality.

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