Hi,

Carol Spears writes:

now, to the new file selector. there is a huge difference between the file selector in gimp-2.0 and the file selector in gimp-2.1. the newer of the two is an invalid (sickly person) compared to its proud ancestors. i have tried to make a tutorial that shows what the old file selector can do and what the new one stuggles to do. the person who designed this is being paid by a company -- it would be nice to see some evidence that it is not an attempt to destroy free software. i cannot find this evidence, however.

Your comparison is interesting but the gimp-user list is of course the wrong address for complaints about GtkFileChooser. We can't really change the way this widget works. Why don't you send this mail to gtk-devel-list@gnome.org and usability@gnome.org instead?

Sven

On Saturday 04 September 2004 08:18 pm, Carol Spears wrote:

hello back,

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 01:48:06AM +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:

Carol Spears writes:

now, to the new file selector. there is a huge difference between the file selector in gimp-2.0 and the file selector in gimp-2.1. the newer of the two is an invalid (sickly person) compared to its proud ancestors. i have tried to make a tutorial that shows what the old file selector can do and what the new one stuggles to do. the person who designed this is being paid by a company -- it would be nice to see some evidence that it is not an attempt to destroy free software. i cannot find this evidence, however.

Your comparison is interesting but the gimp-user list is of course the wrong address for complaints about GtkFileChooser. We can't really change the way this widget works. Why don't you send this mail to gtk-devel-list@gnome.org and usability@gnome.org instead?

well, it is not a complaint on this list. it is supposed to be more for educational purposes. there are so many different operating systems using the gimp that some of the nice things are not known and also being design "out of existenence".

as far as complaining to the proper channels, been there done that. volunteers flew me thousands of miles. when i asked the Ximian employee about this decision, he made it sound like all of these new users (these gimp users, many on this list) were too stupid to understand how to work the old file selector and that this ability needed to be hidden from the simpletons.

i consider the problem to be more of a lack of knowledge of the capacity and am trying to educate users who are not simpletons to use it.

going through the right channels, i was told by miguel@ximian.com to fork the gimp tool kit.

education is the only thing that will help me. i think that the gimp users are smart enough to be able to use such a complicated thing.

carol

_______________________________________________

Carol,
As much as I agree with you on the new file selectors and disappointment that the Gimp developers can't change them, I'm afraid this is the state of Gnome/GTK+ presently. If you haven't seen Gnome lately, 2.4 or 2.6 versions, then you will be even more disappointed. It seems that those developers have decided taking away user control over the interface will make it an easier transition for user's of other OS's to move to Linux. You have to realize now, it's worked for Apple & Windows so far. Hide everything, lock it into a consistent look & feel and remove as many user controls as possible to eliminate confusion on their part!

Fortunately for us, the Linux users, we have other choices to go too that are still Linux oriented, full control, but this is not an option for Gimp, built so heavily within GTK+. Maybe something will change, maybe they'll realize the error of their ways, but presently, they have decided to go this route. We'll see if pays off and if it does, Linux gets more users and if not, the Linux users get an ugly GUI interface that can't be changed much.

Patrick

Hi Carol.

Carol Spears (carol@gimp.org) wrote:

[...] i really am responsible to a whole bunch of people who contributed time and money to send me to a developer meeting in which i was told by luis, representing ximian, that the changes were made for his mom. for shame.

I start to regret to have supported your attendance to Guadec.

The fuzz you make about this obviously casual and illustrative remark by Luis is annoying and does not at all help with the necessary improvements to the file selector. In fact it even is counterproductive. Very much so.

And you'd do yourself and your credibility a favor if you'd treat personal emails with respect and not publish them on mailinglists.

Bye, Simon

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 07:43:29PM +0200, Simon Budig wrote:

And you'd do yourself and your credibility a favor if you'd treat personal emails with respect and not publish them on mailinglists.

Actually, they are public emails, but miguel is not subscribed to this list so they are trapped in the moderation queue by the mailman filter.

Miguel, I recommend you resend your postings.

-Yosh

Manish Singh (yosh@gimp.org) wrote:

And you'd do yourself and your credibility a favor if you'd treat personal emails with respect and not publish them on mailinglists.

Actually, they are public emails, but miguel is not subscribed to this list so they are trapped in the moderation queue by the mailman filter.

Oh, could not see this. Sorry Carol for this wrong assessment.

Bye, Simon

Carol Spears (carol@gimp.org) wrote:

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 07:43:29PM +0200, Simon Budig wrote:

Hi Carol.

Carol Spears (carol@gimp.org) wrote:

[...] i really am responsible to a whole bunch of people who contributed time and money to send me to a developer meeting in which i was told by luis, representing ximian, that the changes were made for his mom. for shame.

I start to regret to have supported your attendance to Guadec.

you were the decision maker i take it?

I was one of many people who wanted to meet you at Guadec. That doesn't mean that I made the decision to fund you but I think it helped.

did anyone ever tell you that changes were made to a community project to suit someones mothers needs? if so, how did you handle it. an example of how to deal with such a thing needs to be given i guess instead of idle reprimands.

Changes to a community project get made to suit quite a lot of people. This includes mothers. Personally I have made changes to the GIMP to suit some of my friends. So what?

i have never asked for or needed your support simon. thank you if i received some ever.

i still thank you for your contributions but your opinion of my frustration is unasked for and out of place.

Want some proof that I did support you for a fairly long time? I could dig in my mail archive should you need some. I obviously do not think that my opinion is out of place - otherwise I wouldn't have written this mail. Your way to deal with your frustration at the expenses of a bunch of other people is - as I said - counterproductive for the GIMP and that directly makes me involved.

simon, did gimp donations pay for your attendance?

Yes, a part of my expenses got covered.

The fuzz you make about this obviously casual and illustrative remark by Luis is annoying and does not at all help with the necessary improvements to the file selector. In fact it even is counterproductive. Very much so.

i was not involved in a casual conversation. i asked a direct question and i am more than capable of understanding a technical answer. one was not provided.

You have yet to explain what is so bad to design a file selector so that Luis' mother can use it. I think this is a great goal (although the GTK+ developers did overshot a bit, hampering the usability for computer-savvy people). And since GUI design and usability is not a pure "technical" topic the illustrative answer "it was designed so that my mother can use" is a perfectly valid answer. There very well might be no answer that suits your implied "technical" request.

[...]

i am trying to get my trip to this conference to mean something or be compensated for.

and i dont really care much beyond that.

So this is it? You feel awkward about having been funded to be able to attend to Guadec? You feel that you have to do something to justificate this? Guess what? You did this already although it *pre*dates the Guadec.

do you respect donations made to promote the development of gimp?

If respecting donations means "pissing off the people we (as in 'the GIMP project') want to cooperate with in the future as well" then no.

Bye, Simon

Hi,

Simon Budig wrote:

Carol Spears (carol@gimp.org) wrote:

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 07:43:29PM +0200, Simon Budig wrote:

I start to regret to have supported your attendance to Guadec.

you were the decision maker i take it?

I was one of many people who wanted to meet you at Guadec. That doesn't mean that I made the decision to fund you but I think it helped.

I guess since I was the one handing out the money, I was the decision maker on this.

I did ask around, and while one or two people asked "why?" when I asked them whether Carol should go, there were several people who were positive on the idea, including Simon.

did anyone ever tell you that changes were made to a community project to suit someones mothers needs? if so, how did you handle it. an example of how to deal with such a thing needs to be given i guess instead of idle reprimands.

Getting something to the stage "where my grandmother would use it" is a proverbial way of describing making technology accessible to a larger public.

I am sure this was the sense in which Luis was talking when he said he wanted something his mother could use. That is not the reason things are simplified, but it is a soundbite describing the general goal of opening things up to a larger public.

Cheers, Dave.

Simon Budig wrote:

Hi Carol.

Carol Spears (carol@gimp.org) wrote:

[...] i really am responsible to a whole bunch of people who contributed time and money to send me to a developer meeting in which i was told by luis, representing ximian, that the changes were made for his mom. for shame.

I start to regret to have supported your attendance to Guadec.

The fuzz you make about this obviously casual and illustrative remark by Luis is annoying and does not at all help with the necessary improvements to the file selector. In fact it even is counterproductive. Very much so.

I would counter that Luis' answer was neither casual nor illustrative. A question was asked and either a insulting inaccurate answer was provide, or worse, a poor change in the toolkit was made for entirely the wrong reason.

And you'd do yourself and your credibility a favor if you'd treat personal emails with respect and not publish them on mailinglists.

I would agree to some extent, although as a long time user of GIMP, I think this list deserves to know the reason for the change. I've not seen it pass the list as of yet.

Carol Spears wrote:

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 09:28:55PM +0200, Simon Budig wrote:

You have yet to explain what is so bad to design a file selector so that Luis' mother can use it. I think this is a great goal (although the GTK+ developers did overshot a bit, hampering the usability for computer-savvy people). And since GUI design and usability is not a pure "technical" topic the illustrative answer "it was designed so that my mother can use" is a perfectly valid answer. There very well might be no answer that suits your implied "technical" request.

http://carol.gimp.org/gimp/basics/gui/fileselector/index.html http://carol.gimp.org/gimp/basics/gui/fileselector/console.html

After reviewing the change, I agree it is for the worse. I was quite pleased when I stumbled on the tab completion in the GIMP. I much prefer the older flavor which includes the tab completion as well as the drop down directory selection.

Geoffrey (esoteric@3times25.net) wrote:

Carol Spears wrote:

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 09:28:55PM +0200, Simon Budig wrote:

You have yet to explain what is so bad to design a file selector so that Luis' mother can use it. I think this is a great goal (although the GTK+ developers did overshot a bit, hampering the usability for computer-savvy people). And since GUI design and usability is not a pure "technical" topic the illustrative answer "it was designed so that my mother can use" is a perfectly valid answer. There very well might be no answer that suits your implied "technical" request.

http://carol.gimp.org/gimp/basics/gui/fileselector/index.html http://carol.gimp.org/gimp/basics/gui/fileselector/console.html

After reviewing the change, I agree it is for the worse. I was quite pleased when I stumbled on the tab completion in the GIMP. I much prefer the older flavor which includes the tab completion as well as the drop down directory selection.

Please note that I did not ask carol for the reasons why the new GTK+-Filechooser has deficiencies. I'd guess that we would come to the same conclusion very quick. I too see the need to improve the GtkFilechooser and I am not happy with the current state.

If you read my question on top of the mail again you'll notice that I did not ask what is bad about the fileselector, I asked what would be bad with a fileselector that Luis Mother can use. I firmly believe that making the FileChooser accessible to people with few computing experience (lets say my grandmother, Luis Mother or whatever, pick your favourite person) is a good goal to have in mind.

Implicitely you raise two questions:

1) What are the reasons for the way the (new) GtkFilechooser is designed?

2) Why did GIMP switch from GtkFileSelector (old) to GtkFilechooser (new) despite the deficiencies in the Filechooser?

I cannot really comment on question 1, since this is in the responsibility of the GTK+-Team. There is (was? AFAIK it used to live on http://www.gnome.org/~seth/filechooser-spec/ ) a document online that discusses the reasoning behind the design.

For question 2 the person to ask probably is Sven or Mitch. From what I understood the old Fileselector had quite a number of technical problems. It was hard to extend with the stuff Gimp needs. Things like the Thumbnail preview had to be embedded in a very hackish way, making it very sensitive against changes in future versions of GTK+. Plus it is foreseeable that the Fileselector will become deprecated at some point.

The Gimp always has been an early adopter of new GTK+ features and since the FileChooser is a step in the right direction it was only logical to use it and it should be our goal to help the GTK+ developers to overcome the current problems in the FileChooser.

However, this needs cooperation with the GTK+ developers.

Bye, Simon

Hi!

I have few ideas to improve the poor 2.1 fileselector. (yes, its me who came up already with one alternative)

Which is the apropriate forum where can I write this ideas? Or its decided to not change?

Best regards, Khiraly

Hi,

Geoffrey writes:

I would counter that Luis' answer was neither casual nor illustrative. A question was asked and either a insulting inaccurate answer was provide, or worse, a poor change in the toolkit was made for entirely the wrong reason.

I don't understand what Miguel and Luis would have to do with the GtkFileChooser widget. I might be wrong but as far as I know they are not involved at all.

I would agree to some extent, although as a long time user of GIMP, I think this list deserves to know the reason for the change. I've not seen it pass the list as of yet.

This topic has been discussed to the maximum possible extent and way beyond on various GTK+ and GNOME mailing-lists. It would be rather off-topic here so I suggest you read the relevant archives. The fact that these discussions have very often been rather hostile has not helped at all. The developers responsible for the new file chooser widget have done a very good job at implementing the widget the way it has been planned a good while ago. Back then would have been the right time to complain. Complaining now is silly and counter-productive. What can be done right now is to attach patches to the many bug-reports in Bugzilla that ask for improvements to the widget. So far the developers have shown that they are very willing to incorporate such changes and the behaviour of the file-chooser widget is constantly being improved.

Another thing that helps a lot is to learn how to work with the new file chooser. The screenshots that Carol has shown around, very clearly show that she hasn't learned to use the new widget yet. If she would start to make use of bookmarks (the left pane) she might find the widget less useless than it appears to her now.

This discussion doesn't belong here. I told people what to do if you want to see the dialog improved. End of discussion!

Sven

Hi,

Khiraly writes:

I have few ideas to improve the poor 2.1 fileselector. (yes, its me who came up already with one alternative)

Which is the apropriate forum where can I write this ideas?

Bugzilla has many good ideas about how to improve the file chooser. Did you even check yet if your idea is among them already? Most probably it is.

Sven

Hi,

Quoting Geoffrey :

I would agree to some extent, although as a long time user of GIMP, I think this list deserves to know the reason for the change. I've not seen it pass the list as of yet.

Seth Nickell was the owner of the file chooser design. Seth now works at RedHat, although I'm not sure he did at the time he came up with the design.

The relevant lists for the filechooser discussions are usability: http://lists.gnome.org/archives/usability/

Notable threads: (excuse me, threads often start on other lists and get moved to usability, so I often don't have the start of the thread here) http://lists.gnome.org/archives/usability/2004-January/msg00149.html http://lists.gnome.org/archives/usability/2004-January/msg00006.html http://lists.gnome.org/archives/usability/2004-February/msg00043.html http://lists.gnome.org/archives/usability/2004-April/msg00017.html

gtk-devel-list: http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/

Notable threads: http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2004-March/msg00172.html

I was going to get a few more, but you can try your own searches. There are thousands (literally) of posts on gtk-list, gtk-devel-list and usability about the file chooser.

Cheers,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
Lyon, France

Carol,

if you want to "discuss" this any further, move it to a different channel. It doesn't belong to any of the GIMP mailing-lists.

Sven

On Mon, 6 Sep 2004, Khiraly wrote:

Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2004 02:47:43 +0200 From: Khiraly
To: Gimp-user@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [Gimp-user] gimp2 file selectors

Hi!

I have few ideas to improve the poor 2.1 fileselector. (yes, its me who came up already with one alternative)

Which is the apropriate forum where can I write this ideas? Or its decided to not change?

There are various bug reports and feature requests in Bugzilla against the new file chooser and I would recommend you look there first.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&product=gtk%2B&component=GtkFileSel&long_desc_type=allwordssubstr&long_desc=&status_whiteboard_type=allwordssubstr&status_whiteboard=&keywords_type=anywords&keywords=&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&emailtype1=substring&email1=&emailtype2=substring&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&changedin=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&cmdtype=doit&namedcmd=Dia+-+All+Open+Bugs&newqueryname=&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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

Hello Carol,

i received a verbal assault because i was responding to mail that was sent by miguel to a list he is too important to subscribe to.

here we have someone who actually took the time to *publish* my personal mail. can i please see the same treatment extended to miguel?

This is after:

a. You did forward a personal email to some list, you sent me the reply:

> On Saturday 04 September 2004 23:25, Carol Spears wrote:

Which you can find attached (attachment1)

b. You said in a personal email that it was better for our personal email to be kept public (attachment2)

So you were the first one to distribute personal e-mail, I figured after your second post that you did not mind it.

Miguel.

From carol@gimp.org Sun Sep 5 01:50:02 2004 Return-Path:
Delivered-To: miguel@ximian.com
Received: from wilber.gimp.org (shill.XCF.Berkeley.EDU [128.32.112.247]) by skeptopotamus.ximian.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D4996312E for ; Sun, 5 Sep 2004 01:50:02 -0400 (EDT) Received: from carol by wilber.gimp.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1C3pub-0005QV-00 for ; Sat, 04 Sep 2004 22:50:01 -0700 Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2004 22:50:01 -0700 To: miguel@ximian.com
Subject: [carol: Re: FIle Selector- was Re: [Gimp-developer] [miguel@ximian.com: Re: introductions]] Message-ID:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i
From: Carol Spears
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check this out dude:

----- Forwarded message from carol -----

To: "Joao S. O. Bueno Calligaris" Subject: Re: FIle Selector- was Re: [Gimp-developer] [miguel@ximian.com: Re: introductions]

i will never be able to thank you enough for taking the time on the day of your wedding to type this.

god bless you and your new family, carol

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 12:53:42AM -0300, Joao S. O. Bueno Calligaris wrote:

It did not appear to me as an accusation at all. A bit curde, one could say, but as it is, it is out of context.

On the other hand, maybe reverting to a file selector were no secret CTRL+L is needed __should__ be indeed considered. Somw work toward customizing it maybe would do no harm. But I have to agree, I find the new file selector of little use.

Regards,

JS ->

On Saturday 04 September 2004 23:25, Carol Spears wrote:

hi,

anyone want to handle this accusation from miguel? he says that the new file selector is the responsibility of the gimp developers.

carol

----- Forwarded message from Miguel de Icaza -----

Envelope-to: carol@gimp.org Subject: Re: introductions
From: Miguel de Icaza
To: Carol Spears

Hello Carol,

You should complaint to the GIMP people for using the new file selector. The old file selector is still available in Gtk+, and it is them who have chosen to use a different file selector.

Maybe they are also conspiring against you, you are probably too annoying.

Miguel

----- End forwarded message ----- _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer

--
_______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer

----- End forwarded message -----

From carol@gimp.org Sun Sep 5 12:22:07 2004 Return-Path:
Delivered-To: miguel@ximian.com
Received: from wilber.gimp.org (shill.XCF.Berkeley.EDU [128.32.112.247]) by skeptopotamus.ximian.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CCF0963792 for ; Sun, 5 Sep 2004 12:22:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: from carol by wilber.gimp.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1C3zmJ-0008C3-00; Sun, 05 Sep 2004 09:22:07 -0700 Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 09:22:07 -0700 To: Miguel de Icaza , GIMPUser
Subject: Re: [Gimp-user] gimp2 file selectors Message-ID:
References:






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1) i went to a "developers conference". my trip to this conference was funded by a foundation and therefore the donations of people who are interested in gimp and gimp tool kit development.

2) several people on the list of people who are responsible for these changes pointed me to luis.

3) when i spoke to luis he explained to me that the changes were made for his mother. being a developer meeting and being the person i was instructed by to talk to, i have no other choice than to believe what he said.

4) after the conference, luis was unavailable.

5) if luis told the truth, it is time for Ximian to get their hands out of development of gtk. if luis did not tell the truth, someone at Ximian owes me, the people who donated to gimp and the gnome foundation an apology.

6) when you ask someone who they are and they politely answer back, it is just plain good manners to respectfully do the same and politely explain who you are back. you had your chance, you decided not to.

7) then miguel suggested that gimp fork the gimp tool kit.

either Ximian has a bad way with volunteers or with female volunteers in particular. no matter what, as far as i know from the what those people on this list told me -- stupid changes has been made to the gimp toolkit because luis mom is too stupid to use her computer.

please fix this. and suggest again to me what to name the gimp fork of the gimp tool kit.

after that, explain the reason Ximian is unwilling to put their own name on this software they "help" so much.

miguel, question. do all the Ximian employees treat volunteers and volunteer funding the way i was treated? you are in charge of them? if not, who is?

what you will find there is a person wondering why this company changes free software to suit a mother and not the needs of the community.

a lot of people contributed to get me there. Ximian has been fairly disrespectful about this. perhaps you can address that.

thanks for the time you suddenly have to deal with luis answer, and thank you for pointing out that i have gone through the right channels and now i am dealing with you.

have you sent an apology to tim ney yet? or is your whole group still standing behind luis reason for the changes?

carol

Hello,

or perhaps there can be a list of what makes miguel different than me and perhaps other volunteers. there are some differences. miguel does not work with gpl or gnu anymore, he works with microsoft design.

I work on Mono, which is open source/free software code, licensed under the GPL, the LGPL and the MIT X11 licenses.

Your attempt at demonizing me is a bit weak.

I lead an effort of 25 paid developers that produce nothing but open source/free software code as well as steering the 300 volunteers that work on a daily basis on the Mono project.

We implement parts of a Microsoft designed runtime and API. If you do not like this its your problem, work it out with a professional.

If you really want to play `Microsoft puritan', you might want to start by removing any XML related tools from your system and downgrade to Netscape 2.0 before Microsoft had a chance to contribute to the HTML specs as well, they must be evil.

i guess it is time to decide what behavior we are to expect from the corporate funded developers and the funded by the people developers.

It is not about `male' vs `female', its about you harassing me over something I had nothing to do with in the less possible constructive way.

You want your file selector fixed, and by attacking me, you are not going to get anything done. Contribute, engage, discuss with those responsible for the changes (Gimp maintainers, Gtk+ maintainers).

I have explained this time and again, and you keep trying to make this into a corporate vs the free world issue, which it is not (or your more laughable attempt at making this an issue of sexual discrimination).

Miguel

May this be my last mail about this on the mailinglist.

Carol Spears (carol@gimp.org) wrote:

simon budig, here is the information for you: On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 12:00:27PM -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

Hello,

For an introduction to this discussion, please see:

http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/tmp/carol

the archives of email I have received from this annoying person.

Miguel, you'd do yourself and your credibility a favor if you'd treat personal emails with respect and not publish them on mailinglists.

[...]

or perhaps there can be a list of what makes miguel different than me and perhaps other volunteers. there are some differences. miguel does not work with gpl or gnu anymore, he works with microsoft design.

you obviously did not understand the term "dual licensing".

miguel is male, i am female -- i really really hope that this is not an issue.

You probably know better than me. At least this is a convenient explanation.

i guess it is time to decide what behavior we are to expect from the corporate funded developers and the funded by the people developers.

gimp is still gnu, right?

Yes, although it has been funded by corporations. Probably more than you realize right now.

Bye,
Simon

when i look for luis (you provided email lately, i looked right after i barely managed to correct my homeless situation right after guadec) i was told he was not available. in the real world, you go to the boss. this is you? you are the boss at Ximian? or who is responsible for

I am not Luis or Federico's boss, they work on a different organization than I do.

Even in that case, the decision to use the new file selector (as I have repeated now about three times) is not Luis/Owen/Federico, it was a decision by some hacker in the Gimp itself.

So you are barking at the wrong tree.

Miguel

please respect the human beings who have been volunteering.

who was/is in charge of luis?

I do not know.

Do not bother sending me more e-mail, I have added you to my spam assassin.

Miguel

On Mon, Sep 06, 2004 at 06:53:20PM +0200, Simon Budig wrote:

Carol Spears (carol@gimp.org) wrote:

i guess it is time to decide what behavior we are to expect from the corporate funded developers and the funded by the people developers.

gimp is still gnu, right?

Yes, although it has been funded by corporations. Probably more than you realize right now.

Though not to the degree Gnome has been funded, and no funding at all from large, publically traded companies. GIMP still is by and large, a volunteer supported project.

-Yosh

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 09:55:59PM +0200, David Neary wrote:

Getting something to the stage "where my grandmother would use it" is a proverbial way of describing making technology accessible to a larger public.

I am sure this was the sense in which Luis was talking when he said he wanted something his mother could use. That is not the reason things are simplified, but it is a soundbite describing the general goal of opening things up to a larger public.

And it is, when it boils down to it, a cop out fluff answer. Which is Carol's point, that it was a non-answer, and that she expected a better answer, more from a technical perspective.

Perhaps the assumption that making technology accessible to a larger, untrained public should be revisited. There wouldn't be spam if nobody bought from spammers.

-Yosh

Hi,

Manish Singh writes:

And it is, when it boils down to it, a cop out fluff answer. Which is Carol's point, that it was a non-answer, and that she expected a better answer, more from a technical perspective.

Sure. We all understood this already. It doesn't change the point though that whatever answer was given to whatever GIMP developer about the rationales of the design of the new file chooser widget is not a question that is interesting to our users, nor do any of the GIMP developers really care. It may be an interesting question for Carol but she got to live with whatever answer she has been given and stop harassing everyone for it.

Actually I doubt that anyone but Carol is actually surprised about the answer. This topic has been discussed so many times that of course anyone involved has by now made up an answer that is tries to stop the discussion from coming up again. Basically there isn't much that has not yet been said about the new widget. What needs to be done now is to improve it. Of course in order to improve it, you first need to understand the reasons behind the design choices that have been made. There is however plenty of answers on this subject in various mailing list archives and web-pages (such as this one: http://www.gnome.org/~seth/designs/filechooser-spec/).

The new file-chooser gives plenty of room for improvements and I am the first one to vote for the addition of a filename entry to it. The way that Carol "discusses" this topic is however a guaranteed way to drive away each and every developer who might be capable of doing such a change.

Sven

Hi,

I'm not interested in gnome any way, I'm not interested in arguing anyone about file selectors at appropriate gtk lists. I think this is not gnome's businnes, it is gimp's businnes. If gnome's fileselector is bad, gimp should not. If gnome will be a toy of idiots, gimp should not.

And I just dont understand, how is it possible to make a filedialog without filename entry?

I dont understand, and I am sad, very sad. Things went wrong. In every aspects.

was, Aewyn

And yes, I know, I get mightiness's anger on me, but gimp's (!) new fileselector is a piece of crap. You can add my address to your spam assassin.

Sorry.

Hi,

Aewyn writes:

I'm not interested in gnome any way, I'm not interested in arguing anyone about file selectors at appropriate gtk lists. I think this is not gnome's businnes, it is gimp's businnes. If gnome's fileselector is bad, gimp should not. If gnome will be a toy of idiots, gimp should not.

You ignore that GIMP 2.1 is not using a GNOME file selection widget. What it uses is the new file chooser that is provided by GTK+, the GIMP toolkit. This new widget solves a lot of problems we had with the old one. The old file selection dialog has been the cause for numerous bug reports and user complaints.

Of course not everyone can be satisfied and your mail clearly shows that you don't have much of a clue, let alone respect. But I think that most users will like the new dialog after getting used to it. It took a while for me to get used to it and I first had to create the bookmarks that I need. But now I usually get to my files quicker than I used to do. Only sometimes do I use the entry widget that is bound to Ctrl-L.

Sven

Thanks,

Really, I'm an outsider in gtk/gnome topic. I just like gimp, and I'm afraid a little bit of gimp starts to leave bazaar concept as seen at gnome.

I realized that old fileselector is not too perfect, so I used filemanager's drag and drop to open files. (what is nonsense to open a new app for that reason, but an image viewer is needed for graphics work, because gimp has not such a selector), so I will continue this way (until I learned the new one).

Best regards, Aewyn

On Tuesday 07 September 2004 12:15, Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

Aewyn writes:

I'm not interested in gnome any way, I'm not interested in arguing anyone about file selectors at appropriate gtk lists. I think this is not gnome's businnes, it is gimp's businnes. If gnome's fileselector is bad, gimp should not. If gnome will be a toy of idiots, gimp should not.

You ignore that GIMP 2.1 is not using a GNOME file selection widget. What it uses is the new file chooser that is provided by GTK+, the GIMP toolkit. This new widget solves a lot of problems we had with the old one. The old file selection dialog has been the cause for numerous bug reports and user complaints.

Of course not everyone can be satisfied and your mail clearly shows that you don't have much of a clue, let alone respect. But I think that most users will like the new dialog after getting used to it. It took a while for me to get used to it and I first had to create the bookmarks that I need. But now I usually get to my files quicker than I used to do. Only sometimes do I use the entry widget that is bound to Ctrl-L.

Sven

Manish Singh wrote:

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 09:55:59PM +0200, David Neary wrote:

Getting something to the stage "where my grandmother would use it" is a proverbial way of describing making technology accessible to a larger public.

I am sure this was the sense in which Luis was talking when he said he wanted something his mother could use. That is not the reason things are simplified, but it is a soundbite describing the general goal of opening things up to a larger public.

And it is, when it boils down to it, a cop out fluff answer. Which is Carol's point, that it was a non-answer, and that she expected a better answer, more from a technical perspective.

This is the essence of the whole issue. The bottom line is, Carol, or anyone else for that matter, deserved a real answer.

Perhaps the assumption that making technology accessible to a larger, untrained public should be revisited. There wouldn't be spam if nobody bought from spammers.

True. You're not going to please everyone, so you've got to target SOME audience. For example, a reasonable question regarding the change is: will this change benefit the majority of the user base? Sure, it's more complicated then that..

Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

Manish Singh writes:

And it is, when it boils down to it, a cop out fluff answer. Which is Carol's point, that it was a non-answer, and that she expected a better answer, more from a technical perspective.

Sure. We all understood this already. It doesn't change the point though that whatever answer was given to whatever GIMP developer about the rationales of the design of the new file chooser widget is not a question that is interesting to our users,

I must respectfully disagree, as a GIMP user, I am most definitely interested in the reason for the change. It may be that I am a developer as well, that prompts me to want to know, but the bottom line is, any time a change is made that seems to be less intuitive (to me), I'm going to wonder and inquire why the change was made.

Hi,

Geoffrey writes:

I must respectfully disagree, as a GIMP user, I am most definitely interested in the reason for the change. It may be that I am a developer as well, that prompts me to want to know, but the bottom line is, any time a change is made that seems to be less intuitive (to me), I'm going to wonder and inquire why the change was made.

Well, the answer has been given here multiple times already. You did read the relevant threads that have been linked from this thread as well as the design spec that I mentioned yesterday? The answer is in their.

So much for the reasoning behind the design of the GtkFileChooser. The reasons for us to switch to the new widget are that one of the major complaints about GIMP 1.2 and GIMP 2.0 was the horrible file selection dialog. The horrible API of the old widget is another reason to abandon it. We believe that the new dialog is an improvement. It works more like what people are used to from other desktop environments and due to the modular nature of the underlying GtkFileSystem it also (potentially) integrates better with whatever desktop you are using. There are a couple of issues with the new dialog but certainly less than there have been with the old one. Some of these issues can and will be fixed in GIMP (for example automatic preview generation), others can (and perhaps will) be fixed at the GTK+ level. Whether the GTK+ developers decide to accept any changes largely depends on the way that they are addressed. Constant bitching will make it very unlikely that any volunteer will want to spend time on this.

Sven

Hi,

Geoffrey writes:

This is the essence of the whole issue. The bottom line is, Carol, or anyone else for that matter, deserved a real answer.

No, she didn't. Carol was asking a FAQ. The topic had been discussed over and over again and these discussions as well as documents describing every single aspect of the changes are publically available. Of course Luis could have taken the time to repeat all this for Carol. But there is certainly no obligation for him to do that. It was obviously a badly researched question and it might even have been received as a provocation. It doesn't deserve an answer.

Sven

Sven, is it possible (in theory) to have several dialog types in GIMP at the same time? OpenOffice under Windows allow using native system openfile dialog or its own style dialog. A user can chhose it in the preferences.

If anybody is interested, this could solve this problem at all. One way is to modify GTK+ to add several dialog types. Other is to add new type to GIMP but not to remove old one.

Hi,

Quoting Geoffrey :

This is the essence of the whole issue. The bottom line is, Carol, or anyone else for that matter, deserved a real answer.

This is a misconception. People do not *deserve* answers to whatever question they choose to ask.

There are good ways and bad ways to ask a question. The good ways involve a minimum of (1) asking the right person (2) in a way that won't piss them off (3) and waiting for the answer, and (4) reformulating your question if for some reason you're not happy with it (the answer).

There's a whole essay that ESR wrote on this called "Asking smart questions" - a lot of the time I disagree with ESR, but many of the points in this essay are spot on.

One of the big no-nos in asking smart questions is not to feel that you have a sense of entitlement.

This is, of course, not specifically directed at this thread (thus the topic change), but is a general remark to people who feel they deserve any type of answers to questions they ask.

Cheers, Dave.

--
Dave Neary
Lyon, France

Hi,

Alexander Rabtchevich writes:

Sven, is it possible (in theory) to have several dialog types in GIMP at the same time? OpenOffice under Windows allow using native system openfile dialog or its own style dialog. A user can chhose it in the preferences.

Almost everything is (in theory) possible. The question is if it is feasible and the answer is no. We decorate the file chooser dialog quite a bit and that would not be possible (or rather not feasible) if it wasn't a well-defined dialog with a well-defined API. We don't have the resources to maintain a number of different file dialogs in GIMP (and all it's plug-ins).

There are also a couple of features in the new file chooser that simply are not available in the old widget. We will for example want to introduce a virtual filesystem layer in future versions of GIMP. That would allow people to work directly with files on remote filesystems that are accessible over ssh, webdav, ftp, ... This has been requested every so often.

The new filechooser supports this kind of stuff by means of the pluggable GtkFileSystem interface. We just need to extend GIMP and its file plug-ins so that they access files by means of a virtual filesystem layer. This could then be implemented for example using gnome-vfs but of course we would want to allow other implementations as well. All this won't work with the old file selection and it shows that your proposal is not feasible.

Sven

Hi Geoffrey (and Carol, and yosh),

Quoting Geoffrey :

I must respectfully disagree, as a GIMP user, I am most definitely interested in the reason for the change. It may be that I am a developer as well, that prompts me to want to know, but the bottom line is, any time a change is made that seems to be less intuitive (to me), I'm going to wonder and inquire why the change was made.

As Sven pointed out, this has been addressed several times throughout this thread with external links. Perhaps if I summarise the history of the thing it will help.

There have been problems with the GTK+ file selector since the 1.0 days. One of the big things people wanted to see changed for GNOME (and GTK+) 2.0 was the file selector. Since there was no agreement on what made up a good file selector, the old one stayed in, and since then it has been a stick with which other projects have beaten the GNOME crowd over the head with (including GTK+ apps which don't use the GNOME libraries, like the GIMP).

So it was decided that it would definitely, definitely change in GTK+ 2.4, and at a certain moment it became clear that there was a "too many cooks" situation developing again. There were lots opf mock-ups, lots of Glade projects, lots of ideas for the new file chooser, but no interface expert directing the effort.

A decision was made by the GTK+ developers to assign ownership of the design for the file selector (now known as the file chooser) to one person, Seth Nickell. He took advice from many people, but in the end, the ownership of the design was his. The GTK+ developers agreed to implement his design in all its glory without letting their opinions on it interfere.

So we now have a new file chooser. There is a person responsible for it, and if you convince him that something is a good idea for it, he will modify his design to include it. If you fail, then your change will not be included. There is still the old crummy file selector, if you wish to use it. The new one is better. Anyone depending on GTK+ 2.4 and not using the new one by choice is probably a bit mad. Of course, it's entirely possible that they haven't gotten round to migrating it yet, but the presence of the old file selector in any GNOME 2.8 application is considered a bug. This is a measure of how big an improvement the new one is.

Please note that several of the GTK+ developers implemented stuff they didn't agree with themselves, which is a sign of huge progress in interface design in free software.

So - in resumé: 1. The GIMP uses the new file chooser because it is better than the old one. Not perfect, but much, much better.
2. If you (or anyone else) would like to see changes made to the file chooser, then there is one person you need to convince. That person is reachable via the GtkFileChooser module of the GTK+ product in bugzilla. 3. There are no plans to fork the GtkFileChooser to have a special copy of it with a wishlist of stuff from GIMP users in the GIMP. 4. That means that if you want to get the file chooser changed in the GIMP, you should engage (positively) the GTK+ developers and designers, and the GIMP user list is a most inappropriate place to do that. That is quite simply because 99% of the people involved don't read this list.

I hope this clears up the issue.

Cheers, Dave.

--
Dave Neary
Lyon, France

Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

Geoffrey writes:

I must respectfully disagree, as a GIMP user, I am most definitely interested in the reason for the change. It may be that I am a developer as well, that prompts me to want to know, but the bottom line is, any time a change is made that seems to be less intuitive (to me), I'm going to wonder and inquire why the change was made.

Well, the answer has been given here multiple times already. You did read the relevant threads that have been linked from this thread as well as the design spec that I mentioned yesterday? The answer is in their.

Yes, I did and I do understand the reasoning. I was addressing your statement that:

'It doesn't change the point though that whatever answer was given to whatever GIMP developer about the rationales of the design of the new file chooser widget is not a question that is interesting to our users,'

Which I disagreed with. Unfortunately in your followup, you neglected to have it as a part of your response.

So much for the reasoning behind the design of the GtkFileChooser.

I appreciate you restating the reasoning, but that was not the issue in the post you responded.

I know we have beat this to death, but all I'm trying to say is that I believe Carol had a valid question which was not properly, professionally answered. Since I don't use the 2.1 series, I wouldn't see the change until it shows up in 2.2, thus I think it's a good thing that she brought it up. I try to stay on top of these kind of issues, but GIMP is not a tool I use terribly often.

First of all, I apologize everyone to be further extending this thread.

It's unquestionable that Carol step over the line several times over on personal accusations.

Nonetheless I had to write this because... On Monday 06 September 2004 13:26, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

Hello Carol,

i received a verbal assault because i was responding to mail that was sent by miguel to a list he is too important to subscribe to.

here we have someone who actually took the time to *publish* my personal mail. can i please see the same treatment extended to miguel?

This is after:

a. You did forward a personal email to some list, you

sent me the reply: > On Saturday 04 September 2004 23:25, Carol Spears wrote:

Which you can find attached (attachment1)

...This presumedly personal e-mail was sent from me to the gimp-developers mail list, and was not personal at all. That being clear, I will say no more on this thread.

b. You said in a personal email that it was better for our personal email to be kept public (attachment2)

So you were the first one to distribute personal e-mail, I figured after your second post that you did not mind it.

Miguel.