Alan Horkan wrote:

I think the user installer could be shortened or even removed entirely. Distributions like Knoppix already skip it entirely.

At the very least the second and third pages about the files that are getting installed could be removed
At most all you would need say is one sentence, something like GIMP will need to install configuration files which take up roughly 500 kb. The documentation could explain what these files are for those who want to know more.

I agree for the most part. We don't really need to tell the user that the mkdir of .gimp-1.3/patterns succeeded. At the very least we could hide this kind of thing behind a "More info" button.

Personally I have no problem with the licence screen, but after "Continue", everything should be automated. Only in the event of install failure should the user be prompted to help out. While the "Personal GIMP Folder" page is nice with context help and the like, it is not something everyone needs to know about.

The "User installation log" page is pretty poor UI in my opinion - we execute a number of commands, saying what commands we're executing, followed by a Success or Failure. And at the end, if it's all Success, we say "Installation Successful" at the end. Why not skip saying what we're doing, just put up the "Installation Successful" at the end if all goes wiell, or a "Could not complete installation" with a "More details" button.

And, IMHO, the GIMP performance tuning page should be left out. These things are parametrisable in the preferences, and they should probably be better documented in a "Troubleshooting" section under performance problems and disk space problems.

And page 5 (monitor calibration) should definitely be skipped. Get the resolution my default from the monitor, as we do, and allow manual calibration in the preferences.

So there are 5 installation pages to go through, of which someone unfamiliar with the GIMP, or somewhat familiar with the GIMP, but not with computing in general, might be interested in 1, or even 0.

I think it can be simplified a lot too.

Cheers, Dave.

Hi,

Alan Horkan writes:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117010 Sven closed my bug report suggesting removing or reducing the user installer. I have moved it to NeedInfo, as I hope with more information you can be convinced it is worth reopening.

I did not close your report. I marked it as a duplicate of bug #113165 because the issue has already been discussed there.

At the very least the second and third pages about the files that are getting installed could be removed

The information about the files that are installed in the user directory is about the most important part of this dialog. The installation log may be unneeded in case of success but I don't think we should just drop a number of files in the user directory. Unlike the GNOME developers we don't expect our users to be stupid. We put a lot of effort into writing user-editable configuration files. We try to document what the user can do with her personal gimp directory. The user installation dialog is an important part of this. It shows the user that there are files to manipulate, directories to add to, things to look at it. Hiding this information would not improve anything.

At most all you would need say is one sentence, something like GIMP will need to install configuration files which take up roughly 500 kb. The documentation could explain what these files are for those who want to know more.

Which documentation? At the moment the user installation dialog is the best documentation we have about this topic. Unless you write a better documentation, it won't be removed.

Sven

On Wed, 9 Jul 2003 08:17:12 +0200, David Neary wrote:

Alan Horkan wrote:

I think the user installer could be shortened or even removed entirely. Distributions like Knoppix already skip it entirely.

[...]

I agree for the most part. We don't really need to tell the user that the mkdir of .gimp-1.3/patterns succeeded. At the very least we could hide this kind of thing behind a "More info" button.

I agree.

[...]

And, IMHO, the GIMP performance tuning page should be left out. These things are parametrisable in the preferences, and they should probably be better documented in a "Troubleshooting" section under performance problems and disk space problems.

This is something that I disagree with, for two reasons: - The user should pay attention to that. This is probably the most important part of the user installation. The default settings are unfortunately wrong in many cases, so it is a good idea to draw the user's attention on these settings. - No matter what default value is used (64 MB, 128 MB or more), this default will be wrong for almost half of the users. But the user installation step is a good place to add some code that could at least attempt to improve the default value presented to the user.

Some time ago, I proposed to add a call to a script that would try to guess the appropriate size for the tile cache by running some commands such as "free" or looking into /proc/meminfo if it exists. If the script finds any way to get the amount of free memory, it would multiply it by 0.8 (for example), round to the nearest multiple of 10 MB (for example) and show that as the default value that the user can edit. This will not work in every case, but then the script can fall back to the initial default if it cannot find any way to estimate the amount of free memory.

This is not a perfect solution and it will not work on all systems (some of these optional tests may be Linux-specific), but anything that is adapted to some extent to the amount of memory available on the machine is better than a static default. The value proposed to the user may not be 100% correct and will depend on the applications running at the time of the user installation, but at least it would have a better chance of being close to what the user wants than proposing 64 MB on a machine that has 4 GB of RAM (or proposing 128 MB on a machine that has only 64 MB of RAM).

And page 5 (monitor calibration) should definitely be skipped. Get the resolution my default from the monitor, as we do, and allow manual calibration in the preferences.

Yes, why not. This setting is usually less critical, especially for those who create images for the web and do not have to worry about converting pixels to other units. I guess that the majority of the GIMP users do not care about that setting (even if I do).

So there are 5 installation pages to go through, of which someone unfamiliar with the GIMP, or somewhat familiar with the GIMP, but not with computing in general, might be interested in 1, or even 0.

I think it can be simplified a lot too.

Me too! (tm) ;-)

-Raphaël

On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 11:23:57AM +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:

The information about the files that are installed in the user directory is about the most important part of this dialog. The installation log may be unneeded in case of success but I don't think we should just drop a number of files in the user directory. Unlike the GNOME developers we don't expect our users to be stupid. We put a lot of effort into writing user-editable configuration files. We try to document what the user can do with her personal gimp directory. The user installation dialog is an important part of this. It shows the user that there are files to manipulate, directories to add to, things to look at it. Hiding this information would not improve anything.

What about "Welcome to the GIMP! Configuration files has been installed into [wherever they were put]. You may want to take a look there; there are plenty of possibilities for configuration." (or something along those lines).

I agree that the first-time installation should be shortened -- most users simply don't need an exact DPI setting for their screen, and having to go out searching for CDs or whatever is perceived as annoying. :-)

/* Steinar */

Hi,

Raphaël Quinet writes:

And page 5 (monitor calibration) should definitely be skipped. Get the resolution my default from the monitor, as we do, and allow manual calibration in the preferences.

Yes, why not.

The question here is "Why?". I don't see any good reason to skip this page. The monitor resolution needs to be set, why do want to force the user to find out where she can do this? Doing it during the user installation is a perfectly good place to present the user with this choice. I do not at all understand the reasoning behind simpliying the user installation. GIMP is not a simple app, we can not and we do not want to hide it's complexity. Why should we?

Sven

On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 11:23:57AM +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:

we should just drop a number of files in the user directory. Unlike the GNOME developers we don't expect our users to be stupid. We put a

One need not be stupid to not understand the dialog, though. Even experienced artists (== non-stupid) might not understand, nor even care.

lot of effort into writing user-editable configuration files. We try to document what the user can do with her personal gimp directory. The

Hmm.. yes, that makes perfect sense, but I always wondered why it is hidden inside a dialog I see exactly once, when installing gimp. That dialog is hidden quite perfectly, and users won't normally ever see them again.

Just extracting this info into the help pages would probably help, since people are NOT interested in customizing rc files when they have never seen te program running, since they simply can't know what they should customize.

to look at it. Hiding this information would not improve anything.

Absolutely true. But right now this information is quite hidden to most users. The dialog is great and much better than a html help page for example, but it's presented at a time people will have no clue what it means.

Hi,

"Steinar H. Gunderson" writes:

What about "Welcome to the GIMP! Configuration files has been installed into [wherever they were put]. You may want to take a look there; there are plenty of possibilities for configuration." (or something along those lines).

That would mean to throw away the perfectly good (and already translated) documentation that is available. I don't think a simplification of the user installation warrants such a waste of resources.

I agree that the first-time installation should be shortened -- most users simply don't need an exact DPI setting for their screen, and having to go out searching for CDs or whatever is perceived as annoying. :-)

I would agree with you if we would force the user to calibrate her monitor. But please note that you can go thru the full user installation process by hitting the default button 5 times. Now compare this to the installer of whatever windows software. It's just silly to say that the GIMP user installation would be overly complex or annoying.

Sven

Hi,

writes:

Just extracting this info into the help pages would probably help, since people are NOT interested in customizing rc files when they have never seen te program running, since they simply can't know what they should customize.

Good plan. But what help pages are you refering to? The gimp-help project seems abandoned and I fear we will not be able to ship 2.0 with any help pages whatsoever.

to look at it. Hiding this information would not improve anything.

Absolutely true. But right now this information is quite hidden to most users. The dialog is great and much better than a html help page for example, but it's presented at a time people will have no clue what it means.

Perhaps we should show it on every startup then ?

Sven

Sven Neumann wrote:

I would agree with you if we would force the user to calibrate her monitor. But please note that you can go thru the full user installation process by hitting the default button 5 times. Now compare this to the installer of whatever windows software. It's just silly to say that the GIMP user installation would be overly complex or annoying.

Seven said it all here.

The one important fact for clueless users is that the install works by clicking on the default button.

I find myself quite oftenly cliking them, when I run the GIMP from a CD-ROM linux distro, like Knoppix, for demonstration purposes, and even them it's not a burdden. One can go through them while saying "And here I will show you why you won't miss your pirate copy of Photoshop"

Sven

Hi,

Sven Neumann wrote:

Dave Neary wrote:

And page 5 (monitor calibration) should definitely be skipped. Get the resolution my default from the monitor, as we do, and allow manual calibration in the preferences.

The question here is "Why?". I don't see any good reason to skip this page. The monitor resolution needs to be set, why do want to force the user to find out where she can do this? Doing it during the user installation is a perfectly good place to present the user with this choice. I do not at all understand the reasoning behind simpliying the user installation. GIMP is not a simple app, we can not and we do not want to hide it's complexity. Why should we?

The assumption here, and elsewhere, is that most users will know what is being asked of them, and that many of them will care, and want to modify the default settings proposed.

I guarantee you that that is not the case. Most GIMP users click OK, Yes, OK, OK, OK, with a total time elapsed of less than a minute. Most GIMP users don't even read the tile cache dialog, or the screen calibration dialog.

The intro screens (with the exception if the tile cache, arguably) propose decent defaults. The whole point of the intro screen is (should be) to allow the user to modify things global to the installation (the directory in which the app installs globally on Win32, for example, or whether feature X should be enabled).

Proposing modificatiopn of user preferences in an install procedure is generally something which just gets in the way. Particularly when the defaults are grand.

As for the particular example of the screen calibration, it does need to be set. But setting it to the default we get from X is satisfactory in 99% of usage situations. And if it's not satisfactory, we can assume a fairly high level of knowledge for the user (if he knows that his screen calibration is off, he's probably not the average linux user), in which case allowing manual changes in the preferences is not hiding it away.

To answer the more general point (the GIMP is complicated), I would argue that the complexity of the application is independent of the knowledge level of the user, and of the complexity required for installation. We have a complicated preferences dialog which reflects a lot of user-configurable behaviour, yet we don't ask the user to choose which interpolation method he will use when scaling an image during the installation. We set a decent default, and if he knows enough to notice a difference, there is the possibility to change it. This is, IMHO, a reasonable approach.

I don't really get the argument that the users home directory is sacred, and we shall not put files in there without asking for permission first. My wife is not a power user, but she occasionally uses quite a few apps. In her home directory ls -ad .* | wc -l gives 87 dotfiles (including . and ..) - many of those are directories which install a local profile (kde, gphoto, mozilla, galeon, openoffice, etc). Many of those are complex applications. Most of them do not inform the user that they're creating files in the home directory, or if they do, they do so with a dialog that says "Creating user profile... Done", and nothing else.

That's not to say that just because everyone else does that, so should we. Elsewhere, you have said "Unlike GNOME, we don't assume the user is stupid". I'd argue that a graphics app should assume that the user is stupid (by which I mean, unfamiliar with the inner workings of the computer). I would argue that setting a reasonable tile cache, getting the screen calibration from the windowing system, and putting the swap file in either .gimp-1.3 or /tmp (why don't we put it in /tmp?) is fine for the vast majority of GIMP users. If that's the case, there is no need to ask permission, and no need for them to know what you are doing in detail.

What's being proposed is replacing the GIMP installation procedure by something which conforms more to the average users expectations - personally I think that's a reasonable goal.

Cheers, Dave.

On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 20:50:14 +0100 (BST) Alan Horkan wrote:

The user does not need to know about the General Public License (it does not apply unless you want to distribute modified versions).

The GPL also applies to unmodified programs. For example, users may not give copies of the binaries to other without telling them that it is GPL-ed and giving them access to the sources. I am not a great fan of licenses either, but from a legal point it is really important to inform all users about their license.

greetings,

Ernst Lippe

Hi,

Alan Horkan writes:

The information about the files that are installed in the user

The dialog tells you what the names of the files that are going to be installed but not their purpose or roughly how much space they will take.

You need to play with the dialog a little more. It does tell you about the purpose of the files. It does only tell the interested user, but it does so.

The user does not need to know about the General Public License (it does not apply unless you want to distribute modified versions). I know why developers want it there (evangelism) but it is annoying when Proprietary crap spews non essential license information at you (which most users ignore anyway) something most developers prefer not to copy.

The point is that the GPL explicitely asks to present the user with this copyright notice on very startup. I think it is good style to do so at the very first startup at least. Find it annoying, I find it amusing and it definitely doesn't hurt.

It will be a day or two before I can build from CVS and look at the changes that you said have been recently made. I dont see any mention in the Changelog yet
http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gimp/ChangeLog

The changes are not in CVS yet.

The GIMP already does hide complexity in many ways, the GIMP has a menu item to Rotate 90 degrees, would you argue that Rotate is enough and that users are perfectly able to specify 90 degrees if they want it?

This is a bad example since there are other reasons for this being a separate menu entry.

Take the example of Red Eye correction, you can do Red Eye correction in the GIMP but many programs have a dialog specifically for doing this task which makes things easier but does not make the program any less powerful.

We would certainly be happy to include such a dialog. I don't see your point here. We are constantly improving GIMP all over the place. I just don't see why we should put valuable developers time in removing features that have been added for a good reason in the first place. The user install dialog was added because it was needed. It serves its role, it works, there are hundreds of places where developers effort is better spent than in removing it.

Sven

Hi,

Alan Horkan writes:

You are telling me that most of the programs in Gnome and KDE are wrong and the GIMP is right. I will go and read the GPL again and I will read the GPL FAQ and see if I can figure out where is this explicit requirement to display the license.

You will certainly find it since it is pretty clear. Almost all GUI applications ignore it however and the GIMP isn't any better. If we would take this really really seriously, we'd have to add a GPL disclaimer to the splash screen.

There was no way for me to know what the recent changes you made are, could you please say what they are?

I already said that the changes are minor. Basically some UI polishing, nothing that would be worth calling a change.

(* Photoshop allows a menubar in fullscreen mode which really allows you to make the most of the available space and still have the convenience of a menubar. If the GIMP does I have not yet figured out how to keep the menubar turned on in Fullscreen mode)

Go to the menu and toggle "View Menubar". How did you miss this?

I am not asking you to do it. I am asking you to let it happen.

As I said, the user installation dialog was added for a number of reasons. I don't see why I should let it disappear for no good reason.

The attitude I keep encountering is a strong resistance to progress.

Sorry, but removing features looks more like a regression to me.

Sven

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 19:25:22 +0200 Sven Neumann wrote:

The attitude I keep encountering is a strong resistance to progress.

Sorry, but removing features looks more like a regression to me.

I agree, but if on the second window there is 2 buttons, one to skip the other installation window and one to continue as it is now, is this a regression ?

The fact is that people are not stupid but 95% use only 5% of the nice features of Gimp and don't need special settings.

Then I'd prefer to see some other settings in the installation process like the default interpolation.

@+
Raymond

On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 04:08:21PM +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:

in such an approach and I am sure that not many XML parsers will like CDATA blocks of several megabytes.

_all_ xml parsers cope with cdata blocks of several megabytes.

On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 06:48:08PM +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:

users. The dialog is great and much better than a html help page for example, but it's presented at a time people will have no clue what it means.

Perhaps we should show it on every startup then ?

It's setting preferences, so it quite naturally could be accessible from the preferences. I always wondered why I get this nice fancy "wizards" only on configuration, but when I later want to change these values I need to set them using a totally different interface (while the installer is soooo much cooler and nicer :)