Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] Text on path indents

[Alex Bligh <alex@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Moir wrote:
> Alex said;
> > I think there may be people who draw a short line for the 
> > text to fit onto, then carry on typing.
>
> Don't buy that. I bet you couldn't find any real-world example of this.

It's amazing the peculiar habits people get into. See (for instance)
the fact that by default the colour editor does not edit in
native colour model. People tend to rely on all sorts of
strange historical behaviour. You yourself often make the argument
for not changing UI unless absolutely necessary - surely it's
worse to change something and not support the old UI at all?

> > Actually editing the 
> > curve is non-trivial as it requires understanding select 
> > inside, then adding a line segment with the bezier tool...
>
> Er, no it doesn't, it requires you to press F4 (shape Editor) and drag
> the line as required. That's all I ever do or all I've seen anyone else
> do. No select inside should be necessary.

And if it's a curve? You need to add a line segment on the end, no?

> Not at all, just that adding UI for a feature that isn't useful (flowing
> off the end of curves and changing from wrapped to un-wrapped) is the
> type of thing Xara does not do. It's the type of think Inkscape and
> Adobe do do. It's a sort of cowards way out (sorry Inkscape guys) when
> you can't decide how to do something, or you think you have an idea for
> a slightly useful feature, so you just add a new button or menu. You
> then end up with an Adobe or MS like product - huge clutter, thousands
> of options, terrible leaning curve.

It looks like Phil put the argument more eloquently than me
anyway. I agree that it is much more useful to change unwrapped
text into wrapped text than vice-versa, but if it's free
(given turning turning unwrapped into wrapped is useful),
and it maintains a feature that (the text going beyond the
end of a line) which we would not in retrospective have
introduced but which now people /may/ rely on, I don't
really see it as a bad thing. You wouldn't put in a greying
action button that just converted it one way, would you?

I wouldn't argue for it if we didn't already have the
(mis)feature, and I agree it should probably be selected
by default when we fit text to a curve.

Alex