Summer of Code

[Valerie]

> But, when we listed the things that needed to be done, it came out
> that it is a huge undertaking. Especially that XMLGUI, the library 
> that manage Krita's menu and toolbar is rather inflexible, at some 
> point of KDE4, a replacement (liveui ?) might appear that solves 
> that issue. 

I'm not surprised. Architectural-level changes are always the 
most tricky ones (see: Gimp and GEGL). And I do see how it 
could be risky to have someone inexperienced tampering with 
architectural-level code. I was Hoping that on the short term, 
there might be an easy solution (if possibly code-wasteful) where 
users can save several versions of the top-level interface, since 
the settings can already be saved, and chose which to start with 
upon start-up. This would just be for starters. I guess it was 
too wishful thinking though.

Is it possible for the Krita developers to contact the people in 
charge of Liveui to see if they could implement this possibility?

> And also have the possibility to have an entry in your system 
> menu that would directly launch the "sketch" profile.

Of course! :) People can configure a bunch of desktop shortcuts,
each launching a different workspace, for all I care.

> And I really need that sketchpad for my own use :-)

In that case, good luck with the sketch spin-off! Maybe it can
eventually be re-implemented in Krita-main once workspaces do 
get implemented. I do agree that it'd be good practice.

May I suggest the following interface features then?

Upon start-up, users has several choices (UI to be discussed):
- "Trace new image" (which would prompt you to load a base image)
- "Sketch new image" (same as above minus the need to load anything)
- "Continue existing Sketch" (which would prompt you to load a file)

In all cases, upon start-up, you select at the bottom the file output
type (Krita file in RGB etc, maybe already prompting you for a name
if one's not available yet just in case).

If the image contains a "trace" layer, there could be a bottom 
toolbar section where you can adjust the visibility of the traced 
image, including a button for "invisible", without having to change 
layers or open the layers palette. Well, there could be a drop-down
to select which layer you want this applied to (see Inkscape bottom
layer selection drop-down: someone that looks like that, with buttons)

And of course, the settings would have custom shortcuts. After 
all, when sketching, you often need to adjust the visibility of 
the image being sketched to see if your lineart is turning out well.

And/or an option to turn off the visibility of all layers except the
current active one and ones that are linked to the current active
one (though this linking is a feature that may have to be defined).

I'm lazy, so if you ever need to know what issues annoy a lazy user
such as me, do ask. :P

Speaking of sketching, any plans on *ahem* "borrowing" the
calligraphy code from Inkscape? That happens to be some seriously
nice code, especially with the dynamic options and the smoothing
options (via "weight", that actually works darn well to produce
smooth lines).


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