On Thu, 2003-11-13 at 08:13, Daniel Rogers wrote:

cl0kd already sent me a screenshot of gimp 1.3.x running on macos 10.3!

One of the cool thing about The GIMP is that it is cross-platform. The exact same source code can be built on a variety of platforms. I often meet people who think The GIMP is a GNU/Linux-only thing - maybe it is worth mentioning that it runs on a large number of platforms?

Sincerely, ./Brix
PS: Have a nice trip to Vegas, Daniel :)

Hi,

Henrik Brix Andersen wrote:

On Thu, 2003-11-13 at 08:13, Daniel Rogers wrote:

cl0kd already sent me a screenshot of gimp 1.3.x running on macos 10.3!

One of the cool thing about The GIMP is that it is cross-platform. The exact same source code can be built on a variety of platforms. I often meet people who think The GIMP is a GNU/Linux-only thing - maybe it is worth mentioning that it runs on a large number of platforms?

It is true that it's less stable on Win32 though... partially because of a shortage of people building it from source on that platform, yielding a smaller pool of potential bug-fixers. I regularly crash the GIMP on Win32... and crashes aren't nice for demos.

Cheers,
Dave.

Hi Daniel,

Daniel Rogers wrote:

Gimp demos. Show off some of our killer features. Any ideas as to what these might be? (layers, brushes, plugins, script-fu)

He might not forgive me for this, but here's jimmac's list of user visible changes in 2.0 when compared to 1.2: http://jimmac.musichall.cz/stuff/private/gimp-2/html/index.xhtml

The biggies are of course docks, the path tool, the text tool, the themability (I like showing off the small interface - do we have a big & chunky interface too?), the grid, fullscreen mode, and tool contexts.

There are also the colour pickers for the levels tool (amazingly useful) and GAP. But Jakub's the man to talk to about that stuff...

If you're doing a general gimp demo, then the stuff that impresses people is the clone tool, selections/masks, channel & layer manipulations. A good thing to do is search through your collection for a few shitty photos that you are fairly certain can be hugely improved with one technique, and then do that.

Here, I'm thinking of Jakub's tutorial in Berlin where he had, for example, one image with a contre-jour, one image with a red cast at sunset, another image with the tourist walking across the wall, another with the bright red plane, and no other red in the picture, another with a good clear red-eye, etc.

Tips for working with the gimp in a corporate enviroment. (examples of previous corporate help would be great). Buy a programmer to add features. Strenths of open source, weaknesses of open source.

This kind of philosophical stuff is interesting, but the FSF and OSI have lots of stuff on this. But getting someone to buy a programmer for a year or two would rock.

Future gimp plans (gegl, high bit depths, color management).

Personally, I'd tend to avoid future plans until there's something to present. If someone asks about CMYK, pre-press, color profiles, etc then by all means go into the details, but I wouldn't include it in a presentation.

Good luck in Vegas, and don't lose too much money :)

Cheers, Dave.

Dynamic keys assignment.

Don't forget to show that extensively. IMHO, it is THE feature that allows for a fast work flow in The GIMP.

Paths..the new paths drawing and lib-art stroking is great too, as is the fact that they save to .svg.

Regards,

JS ->

Daniel Rogers (daniel@phasevelocity.org) wrote:

Gimp demos. Show off some of our killer features. Any ideas as to what these might be? (layers, brushes, plugins, script-fu)

From my experience most of the people don't know the most basic stuff.

So show them how to use selections, layer masks, color correction stuff. That should make 80% of your audience happy.

Then some of the new stuff already mentioned by Dave and you have a nice presentation.

If you want to have some introduction about the history of the GIMP you might find some helpful remarks at http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/gimp/guadec2002/using-gimp/html/

Hope this helps, Simon

Hi,

David Neary writes:

He might not forgive me for this, but here's jimmac's list of user visible changes in 2.0 when compared to 1.2: http://jimmac.musichall.cz/stuff/private/gimp-2/html/index.xhtml

That's a nice draft (not sure though if Jimmac will be happy about seeing the URL posted here). However it is already quite outdated. Some of the points that are marked as being annoyant or incomplete have been addressed in the meantime. Also most screenshots need to be redone.

Inspired by a comment from this article, I just added a (somewhat hackish) power user feature. Since it might also be useful for demonstrations, I am mentioning it here. With very latest CVS you can now specify a session name on the command-line. This will cause an alternate sessionrc to be used. This allows you to prepare setups for different purposes. Might be useful for demonstrations: first show a default setup, then start again with all dockables on screen. Also allows you to keep sessions for different screen resolutions.

Sven

Hi,

"Joao S. O. Bueno" writes:

Dynamic keys assignment.

Don't forget to show that extensively. IMHO, it is THE feature that allows for a fast work flow in The GIMP.

That's not even a GIMP feature but implemented on the GTK+ level (except some parts like saving the changed keybindings across sessions). Apart from that it's a lousy hack, it's disabled by default, very unintuitive and should be replaced by a menu editor better sooner than later. So, IMO, you better don't show it.

Sven

Hi...

On Thursday 13 November 2003 2:15 pm, Sven Neumann wrote:

"Joao S. O. Bueno" writes:

Dynamic keys assignment.

Don't forget to show that extensively. IMHO, it is THE feature that allows for a fast work flow in The GIMP.

That's not even a GIMP feature but implemented on the GTK+ level (except some parts like saving the changed keybindings across sessions). Apart from that it's a lousy hack, it's disabled by default, very unintuitive and should be replaced by a menu editor better sooner than later. So, IMO, you better don't show it.

Sven

Come on,

there was enough noise here (on gimp-devel, at least) when it was disabled by default.
Before switching to a linux box at work, I used CorelPhotoPaint there..the "menu editor" in that software,a fancy GUI, completely fails to be usefull at all, taking tenths of clicks and browsing through tenths of "informational strings" - total garbage - to change a single shortcut.

Even more, any such editor would have to replicate the menu navigation, but using a different interface.How having to get to the same menu options under a different interface could __ever__ be considered simpler, or easier, or more mantainable, or more intuitive, is a thing to wonder about.

What could be done, and this could go in right now, is a rewrite of the tooltip for "Preferences->interface->Dynamic Keyboard Shortcuts" Currently it is "when enabled you can change keyboard shortcuts to menu items on the fly.". Appending "by hitting a non conflicting key combination when the desired menu item is highlighted".

That will make it better than any separated shortcut editor I can think of. Anyway, if a shortcut editor is in the plans (and nothing was said on this or the devel list before), the current toggleable dynamic assignment should be kept.

regards,

JS ->

sven@gimp.org (2003-11-13 at 1715.33 +0100):

That's not even a GIMP feature but implemented on the GTK+ level (except some parts like saving the changed keybindings across sessions). Apart from that it's a lousy hack, it's disabled by default, very unintuitive and should be replaced by a menu editor better sooner than later. So, IMO, you better don't show it.

Some people that use it intensively do it to have very quick access and reconfiguration, for example assign some F# keys to some Filters that are going to be used a lot in a row, but probably not in next work session or image.

GSR

Hi,

"Joao S. O. Bueno" writes:

there was enough noise here (on gimp-devel, at least) when it was disabled by default.

we didn't disable it. The GTK+ developer decided that the feature is more harmful than useful and I tend to agree. You outlined the major drawback yourself:

"by hitting a non conflicting key combination when the desired menu item is highlighted".

There is no way you can figure out what a non-conflicting key combination is. If there happens to be a conflict, the keybinding is silently reassigned. This is a long-standing issue and it's a shame that it wasn't resolved for 2.0.

The other point is that the feature is so well hidden that 99% of our users will never figure out that it is there, let alone how to use it.

Even more, any such editor would have to replicate the menu navigation, but using a different interface.How having to get to the same menu options under a different interface could __ever__ be considered simpler, or easier, or more mantainable, or more intuitive, is a thing to wonder about.

Press F8 (or whatever) to open the menu editor with the selected menu item already selected. Nothing simpler than that. Such an editor would of course allow you to do a lot more things than only reassigning shortcuts. You could for example add a menu with your favorite functions so you don't need to go down several levels in the menu hierarchy to access them.

That will make it better than any separated shortcut editor I can think of. Anyway, if a shortcut editor is in the plans (and nothing was said on this or the devel list before), the current toggleable dynamic assignment should be kept.

We won't see a menu editor in 2.0 but certainly in 2.2 and I am very sure that this has been mentioned on the list.

Sven

Hi,

GSR - FR writes:

sven@gimp.org (2003-11-13 at 1715.33 +0100):

That's not even a GIMP feature but implemented on the GTK+ level (except some parts like saving the changed keybindings across sessions). Apart from that it's a lousy hack, it's disabled by default, very unintuitive and should be replaced by a menu editor better sooner than later. So, IMO, you better don't show it.

Some people that use it intensively do it to have very quick access and reconfiguration, for example assign some F# keys to some Filters that are going to be used a lot in a row, but probably not in next work session or image.

I am fully aware of this since I use this feature myself. The menu editor I proposed should allow you to this almost as quick and a lot more convenient than it is now. We might even allow a shortcut for temporary reassigments that doesn't popup any dialog unless your new shortcut collides with an already assigned one.

All I'm saying is that the current implementation is severily broken and that this needs to be addressed. Fortunately the whole menu mess has been deprecated for gtk+-2.4 and was replaced by a much nicer system. Let's see what we can make out of this for GIMP-2.2.

Sven

On Thursday 13 November 2003 7:34 pm, Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

GSR - FR writes:

sven@gimp.org (2003-11-13 at 1715.33 +0100):

That's not even a GIMP feature but implemented on the GTK+ level (except some parts like saving the changed keybindings across sessions). Apart from that it's a lousy hack, it's disabled by default, very unintuitive and should be replaced by a menu editor better sooner than later. So, IMO, you better don't show it.

Some people that use it intensively do it to have very quick access and reconfiguration, for example assign some F# keys to some Filters that are going to be used a lot in a row, but probably not in next work session or image.

I am fully aware of this since I use this feature myself. The menu editor I proposed should allow you to this almost as quick and a lot more convenient than it is now. We might even allow a shortcut for temporary reassigments that doesn't popup any dialog unless your new shortcut collides with an already assigned one.

All I'm saying is that the current implementation is severily broken and that this needs to be addressed. Fortunately the whole menu mess has been deprecated for gtk+-2.4 and was replaced by a much nicer system. Let's see what we can make out of this for GIMP-2.2.

All right.

I liked the "F8" idea. My main concern would be a parallel way to navigate through the menus in order to change their shortcuts,as commercial apps do.

Regards,
JS
->

On 13 Nov 2003 18:31:26 +0100
Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

"Joao S. O. Bueno" writes:

there was enough noise here (on gimp-devel, at least) when it was disabled by default.

we didn't disable it.

It's disable by default in Gimp2. Was'nt so in Gimp1. That's all. Joao is rigth there.

The GTK+ developer decided that the feature is more harmful than useful and I tend to agree. You outlined the major drawback yourself:

"by hitting a non conflicting key combination when the desired menu item is highlighted".

Because mnemonics are there now. they gives a lot of work for the translators, for almost nothing ... Who really use mnemonics ? (OK enough noise)

There is no way you can figure out what a non-conflicting key combination is. If there happens to be a conflict, the keybinding is silently reassigned. This is a long-standing issue and it's a shame that it wasn't resolved for 2.0.

The other point is that the feature is so well hidden that 99% of our users will never figure out that it is there, let alone how to use it.

Well give this nice feature a chance instead of hidding it more.

99 % of users will never figure out that it is there ? That's not true. I think that the potential of user of this feature is more that 30%. How many for mnemonics this stone age feature ? 1% ?? (OK enough noise)

Even more, any such editor would have to replicate the menu navigation, but using a different interface.How having to get to the same menu options under a different interface could __ever__ be considered simpler, or easier, or more mantainable, or more intuitive, is a thing to wonder about.

Press F8 (or whatever) to open the menu editor with the selected menu item already selected. Nothing simpler than that. Such an editor would of course allow you to do a lot more things than only reassigning shortcuts. You could for example add a menu with your favorite functions so you don't need to go down several levels in the menu hierarchy to access them.

Fine, we need that !
But this has nothing to do with reassign dynamically the shortcut, because 'dynamic' is not your favorites, that is what you need more at the moment in a session.
Both are useful and really important in a huge program like Gimp where the Filters/Script-fu/Python-fu/and more from internet... menus are some kind of bazaar.

That will make it better than any separated shortcut editor I can think of. Anyway, if a shortcut editor is in the plans (and nothing was said on this or the devel list before), the current toggleable dynamic assignment should be kept.

We won't see a menu editor in 2.0 but certainly in 2.2 and I am very sure that this has been mentioned on the list.

@+
Raymond

Hi,

"Joao S. O. Bueno" writes:

What could be done, and this could go in right now, is a rewrite of the tooltip for "Preferences->interface->Dynamic Keyboard Shortcuts" Currently it is "when enabled you can change keyboard shortcuts to menu items on the fly.". Appending "by hitting a non conflicting key combination when the desired menu item is highlighted".

Joan, you know that you are supposed to send a patch to Bugzilla if you want this to be changed. Otherwise your suggestion will likely be forgotten.

Sven

Hi,

Raymond Ostertag writes:

It's disable by default in Gimp2. Was'nt so in Gimp1. That's all. Joao is rigth there.

Perhaps right about the final result but you should also know what has happened under the hood. As I said, dynamic keybindings are a GTK+ feature. Because it has lots of drawbacks, the GTK+ developers decided to disable it for GTK+-2.0. So what the GIMP developers did was to reenable it. That's the facts; please don't put this wrong.

The GTK+ developer decided that the feature is more harmful than useful and I tend to agree. You outlined the major drawback yourself:

"by hitting a non conflicting key combination when the desired menu item is highlighted".

Because mnemonics are there now. they gives a lot of work for the translators, for almost nothing ... Who really use mnemonics ? (OK enough noise)

Mnemonics have been requested by the people that use GIMP a lot for their daily work. You will agree that it is indeed a useful feature if you ever get the chance to see how for example Jimmac makes use of it.

And you misunderstood me here. Non-conflicting key was refering to a key that isn't assigned as a shortcut elsewhere. That is the major problem of the current implementation of dynamic shortcuts. There is no warning and no possibility to cancel or undo the operation if you reassign an already assigned shortcut.

Please don't get me wrong. I know how important the dynamic shortcuts are. It's just that the current implementation sucks and that it I consider it more harmful than useful for the casual user. The power users can reenable it in the preferences. That's why we added the possibility to do that.

Sven

On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 10:34:07PM +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:

and reconfiguration, for example assign some F# keys to some Filters that are going to be used a lot in a row, but probably not in next work session or image.

I am fully aware of this since I use this feature myself. The menu editor I proposed should allow you to this almost as quick and a lot more convenient than it is now. We might even allow a shortcut for

I am guessing here, but it looks to me as if you are talking of two different things: No menu editor will be "almost as quick" and "more convinient" when it goes to dynamically reconfiguring shortcuts.

For example, when I use a filter twice in a row it usally gets a shift-f shortcut assigned by me. No dialog can make that faster for me.

I guess there are three styles of usages:

- mnemonics (i rarely used them under windows, and never under unix) - shortcuts relatively static (get used often by me) - shortcuts, dynamic (get used often by me)

As you can see, I am not the mnemonics type, but I am also not the icon type (if I had time I'd donate a text version of the toolbox :). Others might have problems with dynamic shortcuts and need mnemonics to support their style of work.

All that is well. And if my type is the absolue minority and people _do_ get confused by dynamic shortcuts (something I personally have never seen evidence of, but I don't deny it's possible existence), then switching it off by default is a sane decision.

Howwver, I think the disucssion in the past suffered from the "my style is the only style" problem on all sides.

On Thu, 2003-11-13 at 23:12, Raymond Ostertag wrote:

Because mnemonics are there now. they gives a lot of work for the translators,
for almost nothing ... Who really use mnemonics ? (OK enough noise)

I hear this a lot of time. Apart from having stuff accessible with a keyboard easily, here's one example when mnemonics/access keys rock.

You surely appreciate shortcuts. Everybody knows how sweet they are for accessing most used functions. But there is a limited number of shortcuts until they become too obscure. They are flat keycombos. Mnemonics on the other hand are structured/nested. You can memorize access keys (sequences of keys) for features you use often, but not _TOO_ often.

I usually use features from the layer menu without adding shortcuts for them. A simple Alt+L,C,C gets me the curve tool, Alt+L,C,L the levels tool. There's a couple of functions I use as often. Mnemonics are a default so wherever I go, they work (on the same locale).

So please don't play down their usefulness. I love them. I love the dynamic shortcuts too btw. I'd say I can't imagine a shortcut editor more user-friendly than the dynamic shortcuts hack.

cheers

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 19:02:17 +0100 Jakub Steiner wrote:

I usually use features from the layer menu without adding shortcuts for them. A simple Alt+L,C,C gets me the curve tool, Alt+L,C,L the levels tool. There's a couple of functions I use as often. Mnemonics are a default so wherever I go, they work (on the same locale).

ALT-L,C,C sounds not like easy and ergonomic to me. Don't know for you but for me ALT-L with only one hand is not ergonomic. Then three letters to memorize for each function to call it's not easy. And for the localisation I hope (but I am not sure ) that all the translator really check all menus and dialogs to avoid letters duplications.

So please don't play down their usefulness. I love them.

You are a Gimp 'power user' and you are probably a good keyboard player, no doubt that you can achieve something powerful with mnemonics. But you probably understand that consedering the wide range of Gimp users and the world of artists it's hard for me to imagine a large usefulness.

@+ Raymond

You are a Gimp 'power user' and you are probably a good keyboard player,

Basically, there are people who utilize mnemonic use and there are those who don't. It's nothing to do with the Gimp.

ALT-L,C,C sounds not like easy

Yeah, that does look a little rough out of context. However, as you type 'ALT-L,C,C' you will think 'Alt-L(evels)-C(olors)-C(urves)' as you watch the menus pop by. After a while, mnemonic combinations becomes an unconscious flick of the wrist as you become particularily comfortable with them. And there's a logic to it - a logic in how you 'locate' any given menu item within the menu tree. People who don't use mnemonics remind me of people who never learned to touch type. They get the job done, but it's inefficient as hell. Same goes for those who don't use mnemonics - once your hand leaves the keyboard to grab for the mouse, you lose your momentum. Granted you could argue that the Gimp is mouse intensive. And obviously there are some things you simply must use the mouse for, but some people would be surprised just how much (and how quickly) you can get work done in the Gimp by extreme keyboard utilization. (wow... that could be a new X Game..)

Then three letters
to memorize for each function to call it's not easy.

I wouldn't recommend using mnemonics for each function either. I'd keyboard shortcut as much as possible. The few stragglers are where mnemonics step in to save the day. If you use keyboard shortcuts extensively, then the rest of the menu functions you need to get to can be handled competently by mnemonics.

Shit, did I say too much? Oh, I forgot to mention that I have Suriphobia. Eric Pierce
Ps. Did someone claim mnemonics were ergonomic? Maybe they are somehow.

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 19:02:17 +0100 Jakub Steiner wrote:

I usually use features from the layer menu without adding shortcuts for them. A simple Alt+L,C,C gets me the curve tool, Alt+L,C,L the levels tool. There's a couple of functions I use as often. Mnemonics are a default so wherever I go, they work (on the same locale).

ALT-L,C,C sounds not like easy and ergonomic to me. Don't know for you but for me ALT-L with only one hand is not ergonomic. Then three letters to memorize for each function to call it's not easy. And for the localisation I hope (but I am not sure ) that all the translator
really check all menus and dialogs to avoid letters duplications.

So please don't play down their usefulness. I love them.

You are a Gimp 'power user' and you are probably a good keyboard player, no doubt that you can achieve something powerful with mnemonics. But you probably understand that consedering the wide range of Gimp users and
the world of artists it's hard for me to imagine a large usefulness.

@+ Raymond

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 01:01:04 -0600 (CST) "Eric Pierce" wrote:

Oh, I forgot to mention that I have Suriphobia.

Then Getrude is your patron(ess) saint:

http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintg14.htm