Krita Workspace Proposal + Mock-ups

[Valerie]

> I guess that makes two of us :) Sorry I didn't have the time 
> to look at your mail before.

No problem. Happy new year! :)

On workspaces: basically, yes, it's nothing but saving settings (and
also resources) and managing them. The concept of workspaces is 
basically a divide and conquer approach to make the interface both 
easy to use, easy to learn And easy to remember.

Workspaces are bloated because everybody wants to do something
different: painters, website designers, photo editors and script
kiddies need access to very different commands, all of which end
up cluttering the top or hidden in sub-menus. Your 10% needs aren't
the same as my 10% needs. In fact, my 10% needs for one task (ie
editing photos) aren't the same as my 10% needs for another
(sketching). I've set up Gimp for one task, but it's always a
headache when I want to do something else with it. 

Notice how some people speak of "light-weight" programs? More
elaborate programs can obviously do everything those light-weight
programs can do, and for people with good enough computers the
speed is the same. The difference is in the interface.

Interface bloat basically has several negative sides:
- it takes up space
- it makes the commands you Do need harder to find and access
- it looks Intimidating, which is one of the single biggest 
barriers to entry for a new user, but somehow gets systematically 
overlooked by many interface designers

On the other end of the spectrum, a person I know goes on and on 
about how great the program that came with his camera is, especially
compared to "horrible to use" Photoshop. Basically, that program
has these:
- red eye tool
- crop and transform tools
- darkness/contrast adjust button
- a few filters (actually, I'm not even sure of this one)
- That's it! Really! I actually gawked when I found out how much
enthusiasm he shows for the program.

But it's easy to use, easy to learn, easy to remember, and it has
80% of all the commands he'll ever want to do right at the top.
Also, Oekaki and other online painting programs offer nothing save
a few brushes, a few palettes, and that's it. Oekaki's earlier
versions didn't even do anti-alias. Yet I've met a lot of people 
who love them because it's "so simple".

Through the divide and conquer approach, you can please just
about everybody, and it is my personal belief that this will
even become a necessity as Krita evolves: divide and conquer
would allow More features to be accessed later on, not less.
For templates for example: the professional press person wants
CMYK and the lot. But when an artist loads up Krita, he wants to
see "Watercolor hot-pressed," not "CMYK 16-bit" (though it's funny 
to see their reaction). The person who just wants to touch
up his photos in the meantime, will go around cursing as he tries 
to find the red eye removal option among the mountains of (useless
to him) brushes.

A side benefit I see of workspaces is the branching of 
development work. Those who want Krita to have major photo editing 
capabilities can work on adding photo editing capabilities and
filters, and tweak the photo editing interface, without worrying
about the painter folks who don't want those in their interface. 
You don't have to put up with as much quarreling between people of 
divergent views, like is sometimes the case with Gimp and such.

Is this clear enough? :)

(if you wanted to be even More ambitious... instead of a Krita
program, there'd be a Krita components library and a series of
skins. Programmers could create a brand-new skin and decide
which components they want that particular interface to access,
basically ending as a series of smaller programs that share the
same resources, but I'm not sure if that's doable or desirable D: )

On icons: whoops, I explained that Really badly. XD I didn't
mean icon size. I meant to have icons in the first place, instead
of a bunch of text-only menus and lists. Think iPhone vs the menu
you have to access to program your video recorder (or graphical
interface vs text commands). It's another psychological thing:
the visual presence makes an interface looks less "technical"
thus less intimidating. It's silly but that's the way things are.

I actually have a few further proposals on brush management. The
current workspace concepts detail part of the ideas, but not all.
Well, I'm still working on that one though.

Say... are there any working autopackages available for Krita 2.0?
Pretty please?


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