I noticed the Canvas background colour options under the Image menu in the gimp 2.2.

In gimp 2.0 this option was fairly discrete and was available on the top right just above the scrollbar which seemed fair enough even if it was not something I would ever change (except perhaps by changing my desktop theme).

Is this feature really important to some users, so much so that it needs menu items? I am suggesting it would be better to put this in the preferences if at all rather than cluttering the menus.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, David Odin wrote:

Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 01:02:31 +0100 From: David Odin
To: Alan Horkan
Cc: gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] canvas background options

On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 11:06:21PM +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:

I noticed the Canvas background colour options under the Image menu in the gimp 2.2.

In gimp 2.0 this option was fairly discrete and was available on the top right just above the scrollbar which seemed fair enough even if it was not something I would ever change (except perhaps by changing my desktop theme).

Is this feature really important to some users, so much so that it needs menu items? I am suggesting it would be better to put this in the preferences if at all rather than cluttering the menus.

Yes, this feature is important to me at least. It is important to have a dark surrounding around a dark image and a light one around a light image, so you can judge the contrast better.

I can understand how that would require you to change it regularly and why you might want a menu item for it.
How did you like how the feature was presented in 2.0 or were you unaware of it until it was given a prominant menu item?

- Alan H.

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Sven Neumann wrote:

Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 15:39:58 +0100 From: Sven Neumann
To: Alan Horkan
Cc: gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] canvas background options

Hi,

Alan Horkan writes:

I can understand how that would require you to change it regularly and why you might want a menu item for it. How did you like how the feature was presented in 2.0 or were you unaware of it until it was given a prominant menu item?

Hiding useful functionality in some obscure button with a right-click popup menu in the image corner is not really good user interface design and I am very much surprised that you don't consider this change an improvement.

Given my previous comments that is understandable and I think discoverability is important but it doesn't make sense to have a seperate menu item for every obscure feature and to me this is most definately an obscure feature. (most of the time I shrink wrap my images and dont even see the canvas padding, if I wanted to regularly preview images against a black background I would probably configure the Fullscreen mode for that purpose)

Perhaps I might have been less quick to complain if it had been only one menu item that shows a dialog but it is not, it is a submenu with several menu items and that seems a lot like clutter to me.

We also needed that space in the upper right corner for a more useful and less obscure feature that is also being offered in other applications: linking the image zoom ratio to the window size.

That does seem like a good idea of itself but I dont think it makes the menu items for Canvas Padding idea any better than a workaround.

I'm surprised that enough users would be changing the setting often enough to want to be able to set it on a once off per window basis, I would have though that a single global preference would to override the toolkit default would have been enough (which is as far as I can go towards offering an alternative implementation).

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Jakub Friedl (lists) wrote:

Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 16:57:51 +0100 From: "Jakub Friedl (lists)"
To: Alan Horkan ,
GDev
Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] canvas background options

I'm surprised that enough users would be changing the setting often enough to want to be able to set it on a once off per window basis, I would have though that a single global preference would to override the toolkit default would have been enough

oh please no. or is the gimp supposed to be used only by beginners and not by advanced users?

That line of reasoning can be used to justify adding a whole lot of crud to the gimp that only really benefits the advanced users. if anything recent development has been removing little used plugins to reduce the maintainance burden.

the gimp is the de facto standard for image editing on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and I'm sure a few others. I there hardly any other piece of graphics software as likely to be available as the gimp.

As such is extremely important to cater to ordinary users.

I don't want to make the gimp into something that "advanced users" cannot use quickly and efficiently either, but an uncluttered streamlined user interface should be of benefit to everyone.

I wish you would have resited the urge to overreact, all this is just dicussion and although I would prefer not to have the Canvas Padding feature I do not think my suggestions have yet been convincing enough.

a month ago i was making three images to be placed on a wall, each of them on different one, painted with different colour. i was painting them at the same time (they were a series) and i enjoyed the possibilty to see them all against the proper colour.

I'm still convinced it is a minority feature and although it may be useful I'm not convinced it is useful enough for most users to deserve such prominant location in the menus.

Gimp 2.2 seems to be largely decided, and it is unlikely that my suggestion would be taken on board until after 2.2 has been released.

BTW: if you feel that the gimp should be simplified as possible for beginners,

I believe it should be simplified for everyone, most usability improvements are optimisation of a different kind and just as accessibility benifts more than just the disabled so too should good usability benfit everyone.

I'm not arrogant enough to claim I'm an expert, but I thought I should be able to discuss the change before 2.2 and if I didn't do it now I'd probably be berated for not having mentioned it sooner.

wouldnt be possible to keep advanced features visible for advanced users but not for beginners? but not remove them completelly? single option in preferences (or in gimprc file) which would enable more advanced features which some consider as interface clutter but others may need them?

Did you use Nautilus when it had a Normal mode and an Advanced mode? It was a disaster because most users wanted one or two of the supposedly "Advanced features" which meant turing on a whole lot of other advanced features.

It is better to think of the task and the results you are trying to achieve and see if there is a way to stream line the process.

I do not doubt that it is useful for you to have a way to easily compare your image against various backgrounds.

What I am asking is if the current implementation is really the best way to provide that feature?

You have made it clear that you want to be able to set a different background colour for each image. Do you set different colours for different views of the same image?

If so might it not be beter even better to reorganise this functionality in a way that allowed you to more quickly preview an image with various different background rather than having to choose a different back colour each time you wanted to make your comparisions.

If you describe in more detail how exactly you go about your work I might be able to refine my suggestions.

I'm trying to make things easier for _everyone_ including you :)

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Sven Neumann wrote:

Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 18:49:26 +0100 From: Sven Neumann
To: Alan Horkan
Cc: gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] canvas background options

Hi,

Alan Horkan writes:

Given my previous comments that is understandable and I think discoverability is important but it doesn't make sense to have a seperate menu item for every obscure feature and to me this is most definately an obscure feature.

It has been requested over and over again so there are certainly people who see a need for it.

I never claimed some people wouldn't find it useful.

Perhaps I might have been less quick to complain if it had been only one menu item that shows a dialog but it is not, it is a submenu with several menu items and that seems a lot like clutter to me.

It is a submenu, so it is only a single menu entry

i dont follow that logic

and thus certainly not clutter. It would have been clutter to use a dialog for something that can be easily done using a small submenu.

i think a small dialog with all the options in one place would not be any worse than the current setup

Can we please stop this useless discussion here?

'Useless discussion'.

Thanks for the encouragement, with that attitude is it any wonder more people dont try and provide feedback and try and improve the gimp.

And you don't seem to understand why I think you are rude and abrupt.

I get the impression that you are trying very hard to find something to criticise.

I'm not trying very hard to find it, finding problems is relatively easy finding solutions and finding the time to provide feedback in way you will actually listen to is what is time consuming. There is plenty of room for improvement as the long list of bug reports in bugzilla will attest to, as the numerous FIXME in the PDB Browser and the TODO in the code. If more developers were to use other graphics software like Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro you would see there is even more ways that the gimp could be could be improved.

What am trying hard to do is discuss ideas and find ways to improve things but you seem unwilling to tolerate polite and resonable discussion, perhaps you expect ideas to come out of nowhere fully formed or implementations to be just right first time.

Why do you have to show so much disrespect for other people's work?

Why are you so resistant to discussion? Why are you so willing to dismiss criticisms instead of trying harder to see if things really can be improved?

It is not disrespect to think that things can be improved. If I had no respect I would give up entirely and would not make any effort to use the gimp or provide feedback and try and improve it.

- Alan H.

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Sven Neumann wrote:

Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 23:42:42 +0100 From: Sven Neumann
To: Alan Horkan
Cc: gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] canvas background options

Hi,

Alan Horkan writes:

'Useless discussion'.

Thanks for the encouragement, with that attitude is it any wonder more people dont try and provide feedback and try and improve the gimp.

Alan, the discussion became useless after the facts had been exchanged and several people explained you that the feature is indeed useful. That makes further discussions on this topic rather useless.

I am still hoping to get more information on how the feature is actually use to try to better solve the problem rather than dwell on the implementation any further.

I was unable to get to use the gimp 2.1 series until recently. I cannot provide feedback only when it suits your timetable. When I pointed out problems with 2.0 you gave out to me for not mentioning them during the 1.3 cycle so I am making my points before 2.2 is released.

Especially during times of string and UI freeze.

All that means it that no changes will be made until after that freeze, not that changes shouldn't be suggested.

(I really hope Gfig will be rolled back as the developer working on it has previously suggested, it is definately not ready for 2.2)

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

On Sat, 13 Nov 2004, Simon Budig wrote:

Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:41:18 +0100 From: Simon Budig
To: gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] canvas background options

Hi all.

Alan Horkan (horkana@maths.tcd.ie) wrote:

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Sven Neumann wrote:

Alan Horkan writes:

Given my previous comments that is understandable and I think discoverability is important but it doesn't make sense to have a seperate menu item for every obscure feature and to me this is most definately an obscure feature.

It has been requested over and over again so there are certainly people who see a need for it.

I never claimed some people wouldn't find it useful.

You did however harp on the uselessness of this feature and advocate its removal. Despite numerous people supporting it. Just because you don't see the use of this feature that doesn't mean that it has none.

In hindsight I should have been more diplomatic, and I repeated the comment excessively.

Perhaps I might have been less quick to complain if it had been only one menu item that shows a dialog but it is not, it is a submenu with several menu items and that seems a lot like clutter to me.

It is a submenu, so it is only a single menu entry

i dont follow that logic

Simple: If a menu entry pops up a dialog or if a menu entry pops up a submenu is irrelevant for the menu itself. It is exactly one menu entry in the menu. It doesn't clutter less or more than a dialog.

My counterpoint is that even though a submenu means only one extra menu in the parent menu it means another level and more items to search through. It doesn't make the specific feature any more difficutl to use but more menu items overall can complicate the task of finding anything.

I'm not trying very hard to find it, finding problems is relatively easy finding solutions and finding the time to provide feedback in way you will actually listen to is what is time consuming.

From my point of view the most things brought up by you are details.

While I like attention to the detail I don't like that these things tend to need lots of discussion. The issue here is a perfect example: Configurability of the border color. This discussion should have been over when everybody except you agreed that it is useful. Suddenly about 14 Mails pop up, 5 of these by you not understanding the point of the others. This does not help.

As we had started I had hoped to finish and move some way towards improving the feature for those who want it and possibly making it less obtrusive. If the task is to compare an image with a Black Background, a white Background and a Blue background, changing it one at time would be slower than firing off a script that made copies and added a border in a selection of colours (that is just a possible scenario, maybe there is no room for improvement but if I'm not allowed to discuss it I'll never find out).

I'll try and show more restraint and not drag out discussions longer in future, I admit I got a little carried away. In other mailing lists normally only those interested in the thread would keep reading and responding to it.

- Alan H.

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004, Sven Neumann wrote:

Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 00:31:13 +0100 From: Sven Neumann
To: Alan Horkan
Cc: gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] canvas background options

Hi,

Alan Horkan writes:

I was unable to get to use the gimp 2.1 series until recently. I cannot provide feedback only when it suits your timetable. When I pointed out problems with 2.0 you gave out to me for not mentioning them during the 1.3 cycle so I am making my points before 2.2 is released.

A couple of days before 2.2 is released and a long time after the feature set and the user interface has been frozen. Not a very good timing. But of course we are always open for suggestions.

Even though it seems rather useless, let me point you to bug #142996

Thank you that is intersting and helpful, I had not seen that report before. I didn't realise there was a context menu on the old button. I never would have accidentally discovered context menu with such a tiny context target area.

(I really hope Gfig will be rolled back as the developer working on it has previously suggested, it is definately not ready for 2.2)

We have another developer working on it at the moment and he's contributing his free time for the task of finishing the changes to GFig that Bill started. This comment of yours (and you did the same comment on gnomedesktop.org) is discouraging, nothing else. Please try to avoid this in the future.

It might help you to understand my negativity when I explain that the underlying instability of windows doesn't do the gimp any favours. When binaries are available windows is the easiest platform to test on and in a way the instability of the platform is actually helpful for testing. I have tried to compile the gimp serveral times during 2.1 but rather than asking even more questions here and needing to chase down and compile lots of little dependancies and parts of the toolchain I dont have I waited for more releases to try again (until eventually there was a windows binary I could test with).

My comments [1] were very restrained, I did say it had potential. The new SDI application style inteface for Gfig will be very good as it is an easier way to present all the features that Gfig managed to cram into the old dialog style of interface. The Gfig had crashed several times (reproducably and in different places) and if I recall correctly it crashed badly enough to take the rest of the gimp down with it. Feedback takes time, and I haven't gotten around to checking if the problems are known issues or writing a detailed explaination of how to reproduce them or otherwise tracking them down. I have started to David Odin offlist about it further.

- Alan H.

[1] The new Gfig is definately is a bit rough around the edges. It has a lot of potential though. It really should be reverted to the old usuable ugly but stable version for the 2.2 release.

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004, David Odin wrote:

Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 21:28:44 +0100 From: David Odin
To: Alan Horkan
Cc: gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: new gfig [Re: [Gimp-developer] canvas background options]

On Sun, Nov 14, 2004 at 07:13:32PM +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:

It might help you to understand my negativity when I explain that the underlying instability of windows doesn't do the gimp any favours. When binaries are available windows is the easiest platform to test on and in a way the instability of the platform is actually helpful for testing. I have tried to compile the gimp serveral times during 2.1 but rather than asking even more questions here and needing to chase down and compile lots of little dependancies and parts of the toolchain I dont have I waited for more releases to try again (until eventually there was a windows binary I could test with).

So, you're telling us you haven't yet tried the current cvs version of gfig, yet asking us to use the 2.0 one?

I have tried the version in gimp 2.2 pre1

I haven't seen any bug-report for this. I'm am aware of some bugs in gfig and I have told the mailing list about them. May be you could take the time to check if your crashes and mines are related?

I will try, but I only have a working copy of gimp 2.2 pre1 on my home machine.

One bug is very easy to trigger: draw a line, erase it, draw another line. Don't tell me this takes too much time to check.

Working at home, verify the bug reoccurs and bringing it takes time. I use the computers available to me and they dont lend themselves to keeping up to date and I've never had much luck compiling the gimp from CVS (but that is just me, I'm not claiming it is difficult if you know what you are doing, have admin rights on your machine and a fast internet connection).

I'll try and look at a CVS version of gfig this week, but it is painfully difficult for me to get this organised.

new gfig has some issues and I've tried to list them on this very mailing-list. If you can list more, please list them in the correct thread.

Will do.

and as I already said before, using the 2.0 version of gfig would mean to at least port the old version to the HIG standards,

I was suggesting shipping the old unmodified version because it was more stable.

To be nominally HIG compliant would require some adjustment of the old dialog. To meet the spirit of the HIG and provide a more user friendly does require the valuable work you are doing.

If gfig is not frozen and will be shipping a more stable and up to date version than was in gimp 2.2 pre1 then that would be a different matter entirely. I would much prefer to see your version (with a few improvements) to be the one included when gimp 2.2 is released.

- Alan H.