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Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

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Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#271

Post by DonHopkins »

jimmaswell wrote: post #186
thomastjeffery wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time you want to do a thing with the GIMP, you have to go find the specific thing-doer. That's not a really big deal, so long as you can remember where it is or what it is called; but it's really not good tool design. To contrast, Blender has neatly organized every feature contextually . There are specific modes for organizing objects, editing meshes, sculpting, UV painting, etc. that each present their own sma…

For me, I find that modality in Blender annoying and confusing.

Yet you would make it more like GIMP.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#272

Post by DonHopkins »

tantaman wrote: post #145
timbit42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Then we could have a Beowulf Cluster of them.

LLMs on consumer grade hardware are a thing and will become more so. Something that only needs to understand the space of the application is certainly attainable.

Whoosh. That was the sound of you missing a hilarious joke. I guess you weren't around slashdot back then. Fortunately it's 2023, and I have at my disposal an LLM to explain the joke that doesn't necessarily require such an extensive computing setup.

User:

Explain the joke.

ChatGPT:

The joke here revolves around a classic internet meme that originated from discussions on Slashdot, an online community similar to Reddit or Hacker News but older and more focused on technology and science. The meme is about creating a "Beowulf Cluster," which refers to a network of computers configured to work together on complex tasks, effectively creating a powerful supercomputer from less powerful individual machines.

The original context for this meme was discussions where someone would invariably suggest, often irrelevantly, that a problem could be solved by creating a Beowulf Cluster. It became a running joke to propose a Beowulf Cluster as a solution to virtually any tech-related problem, regardless of whether it made sense or not.

In the conversation you're referring to, when "timbit42" mentions a Beowulf Cluster in response to the idea of integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT into applications like GIMP, Photoshop, or CAD, they are likely invoking this meme. The joke is in the overkill of suggesting a massively parallel computing solution (like a Beowulf Cluster) for integrating an LLM into a software application, which is a task that doesn't necessarily require such an extensive computing setup.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#273

Post by DonHopkins »

cdcarter wrote: post #153
crazygringo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> macOS has had the ability to search menus for what seems like a decade. Wow, TIL. Talk about a hidden feature. So it turns out it's under the "Help" menu, and it just says "Search". I had always assumed that this searched help topics, not menus. But it's also pretty miminal, seemingly without support for synonyms or features inside of dialog boxes -- e.g. if you type "pref" it won't find "Settings". It also doesn't…

Cmd-Shift-/ triggers the macOS help search in any normal app. Easy as pie.

But not as easy, efficient, or self revealing as pie menus! ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37907449

>The whole point of pie menus is to be "self revealing", supporting discoverability and browsing and prompting and gently training users to quickly use the gestures without looking, through rehearsal. They solve the problem of gestures being invisible and impossible to discover and learn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu

>>Pie menus are a self-revealing gestural interface: they display multiple options to a user and direct them to select one.

>>Users operate the menu by observing the labels or icons present as options, moving the pointer in the desired direction, then clicking to make a selection. This action is called a "mark ahead" ("mouse ahead" in the case of a mouse, "wave ahead" in the case of a dataglove).

>>Repetition of actions and memorization of the interface further simplify the user experience. Pie menus take advantage of the body's ability to remember muscle motion and direction, even when the mind has forgotten the corresponding symbolic labels.[1]

>However Apple has never adopted pie menus, Steve Jobs thought they sucked, and Donald Norman has never been a big fan, and he totally missed the point when I tried to explain it to him at Ted Selker's NPUC workshop.

>I had the honor of meeting Steve Jobs at EduCom on October 25 1988, when he released the NeXT machine. Sun had lent me a workstation to demonstrate NeWS software in their booth, right across from the NeXT booth, and Ben Shneideman brought him over for a demo of the stuff we'd developed at HCIL.

>So I gave Jobs a whirlwind tour of pie menus, the NeWS window system, UniPress Emacs and HyperTIES for about half an hour. Jobs was jumping up and down, pointing at the screen, and yelling "That sucks! That sucks! Wow, that's neat! That sucks!"

>When I explained to him how flexible NeWS was, he replied "I don't need flexibility -- I got my window system right the first time!" But I gave him a NeRD button, anyway (which I'd made for NeWS window system NeRDs, but he liked because it had a lowercase "e" like NeXT).

[...]

The GIMP developers are even more stubborn and insular-minded than Steve Jobs, but with absolutely none of the design skills, visionary creativity, empathy for users, or obsession with usability.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#274

Post by kiney »

SebastianKra wrote: post #179

I'm surprised there's uncertainty about how Gimp should be redesigned. Just copy Photoshop! Select tools on the left, configure the current tool at the top, global options on the right. Affinity does this and nobody complains. Thanks to MacOS help search, we even already have the command search that this video proposes. And it has interaction hints too. Gimp isn't more complex than Photoshop. We don't need it to rein…

Please no. I very much prefer the multi window UI of gimp, especially with multiple screens

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#275

Post by Shish2k »

ColonelPhantom wrote: post #220
eviks wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is discoverability 100% if you - can't search - don't have 100% functionality

GIMP does have search, just hit / and you can find any action. The problem with search and discoverability is that search requires input from me, whereas discoverability means that the program explicitly offers its features to me. With search, I would never discover some handy new feature I wouldn't think of myself, or something that is named differently than I expect. Hunting through a menu, while not optimal, allow…

> a 'catalog' of all the features.

A “menu”, if you will ;)

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#276

Post by torstenvl »

eviks wrote: post #261
torstenvl wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, but you must have only skimmed the OP. It is quite explicit. > [Search] kinda works when you generally know what you need or how a feature you want could be called. But really not when this is your first rodeo.

That's the sentence I thought you meant, but you're just reading it wrong. This doesn't support your radical statement. "General knowledge of what you wantl is perfectly fine and doesn't block discoverability, that's also how you discover a lot of things on the web It's also wrong, for example, you can discover all the file operations by typing in "file" in the search box even if it's your first rodeo Also, search bo…

Dishonesty is not acceptable behavior, nor is being coy and snarky.

If that's the sentence you thought I meant, then pretending you didn't know what I was talking about was a lie and you should find somewhere other than HN to hang out.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#277

Post by torstenvl »

kazinator wrote: post #257
torstenvl wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, but you must have only skimmed the OP. It is quite explicit. > [Search] kinda works when you generally know what you need or how a feature you want could be called. But really not when this is your first rodeo.

Will a web page be discoverable if its server blocks all search-related robots? Now if search were the only means of discovery, that would be bad. Imagine if no two pages linked together: everything had to be found in an index. That's a strawman though. Search complements other modes of discovery. How about REdiscoverability. You remember some feature in the program and some words related to it, but ... where the hec…

Just to be clear:

(a) what percentage of web pages do you think can be found by a person using a search engine, without specific prior knowledge of the content?

(b) do you believe an application in which the same percentage of features are discoverable has acceptable discoverability?

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#278

Post by eviks »

torstenvl wrote: post #276
eviks wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the sentence I thought you meant, but you're just reading it wrong. This doesn't support your radical statement. "General knowledge of what you wantl is perfectly fine and doesn't block discoverability, that's also how you discover a lot of things on the web It's also wrong, for example, you can discover all the file operations by typing in "file" in the search box even if it's your first rodeo Also, search bo…

Dishonesty is not acceptable behavior, nor is being coy and snarky. If that's the sentence you thought I meant, then pretending you didn't know what I was talking about was a lie and you should find somewhere other than HN to hang out.

So why were you being coy in your reference then? And it's rather dishonest to conflate knowledge with a guess (by the way, I still don't know which part of "this thread" you meant, I didn't find another statement like yours)

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#279

Post by formerly_proven »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #235
formerly_proven wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can port GIMP to the QML-based UI framework used by Muse 4.

I would estimate that would be a 3 person-year project, and the result will contain precisely zero improvements for any user (even if theoretically it might be easier to bring various improvements after that is done). That is a hell of an ask.

Would be funny though

And would it be more work than the gtk2->gtk3 port?

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#280

Post by mackrevinack »

ohdannyboy wrote: post #249
pessimizer wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI to Photoshop is horrific (and unbelievably old and crufty, though not as bad as Illustrator.) I used to be convinced that the reason people think it's reasonable is Stockholm Syndrome. Now I'm convinced it's because most Photoshop users only ever use Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign, and simply aren't familiar with other software. It's bizarre that a search bar that unfolds a vertical menubar when highlighted bu…

I'll admit I'm a novice with Photoshop, I've never used it for more than a moderately complex task. Usually simple cuts and meme making type stuff. I also once designed a poster that required me to make a vector background and arrange some ripped svg elements from a old swf file. Every time I try GIMP it's a nightmare. Even the simplest thing usually makes me find a video to explain where to find it. Cutting, pasting…

i used to have a lot of trouble finding things as well until i discovered the command pallette (the / key opens it). now i do nearly most things just by fuzzy searching for them
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