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GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

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Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#31

Post by jcfrei »

blub wrote: post #19
nodata wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name some of these things that have been bothering you for the past nine months?

The biggest problem I have with GIMP is that it's not intuitive. Every time I open it I have to stop and think how I am supposed to do what I am trying to do, my work never flows. This has such an impact on my productivity that I'm desperately looking for alternatives that don't involve purchasing Photoshop - now looking at Pixelmator. Other members of the team have switched to Paint.NET or other simple editors, but…

thanks - I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. GIMP completly breaks your photoshop habits, because it's so similar yet makes tiny little differences along the way. either embrace the photoshop design philosophy fully - or build your own, distinct and intuitive GUI - now it's just confusing to the point of being useless, whenever I have to quickly edit a picture on linux.

Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#32

Post by SoftwareMaven »

jcfrei wrote: post #31
blub wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem I have with GIMP is that it's not intuitive. Every time I open it I have to stop and think how I am supposed to do what I am trying to do, my work never flows. This has such an impact on my productivity that I'm desperately looking for alternatives that don't involve purchasing Photoshop - now looking at Pixelmator. Other members of the team have switched to Paint.NET or other simple editors, but…

thanks - I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. GIMP completly breaks your photoshop habits, because it's so similar yet makes tiny little differences along the way. either embrace the photoshop design philosophy fully - or build your own, distinct and intuitive GUI - now it's just confusing to the point of being useless, whenever I have to quickly edit a picture on linux.

I understand what you mean, since i feel the same way every time i use gimp. However, I don't think you can blame it for breaking your photoshop habits. It is, after all, not photoshop.

The problem I've had (and the most common one I've seen) is that people use gimp 15% of the time and don't learn it's flow, then get frustrated because it's not photoshop's flow.

I've done full-time in both gimp and photoshop and decided, for now, to stick with photoshop. Too many niggly UI issues (like the GP mentioned) in gimp (not that photoshop is great, but it is at least reasonably consistent). Same reason I'm on a Mac instead of Linux (after doing full-time Linux, too).

Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#33

Post by windsurfer »

pwg wrote: post #23
LawnGnome wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To an extent it is Gimp's fault, though. It's not as though click-to-focus is a new fad that's sprung up and surprised everyone -- it's been the default way focus has worked in GNOME and KDE for as long as I can remember, and I've been using it for the best part of fifteen years on Linux. The fact that such a common use case (almost certainly the most common use case, not to mention Gimp-related irritation, for at le…

> almost certainly the most common use case [click-to-focus] Most common only if you are coming from a ms-windows background. Click-to-focus is only a relatively recent newcomer to the Unix/X-Windows system in the scheme of how long X-Windows has existed. And if you ever break out of your ms-windows mindset and actually give focus follows mouse a try, focus follows mouse is actually the more powerful method.

The new window managers are a hybrid. Mouse events are focus follows mouse, while keyboard events are focus follows click. This allows you to highlight a bit of text and middle click on another window to paste, but leave the focus on the first window and continue typing, for instance. It also allows you to code in an editor while scrolling a documentation window.

MS Windows is only focus follows mouse.

Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#34

Post by windsurfer »

nodata wrote: post #27
blub wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem I have with GIMP is that it's not intuitive. Every time I open it I have to stop and think how I am supposed to do what I am trying to do, my work never flows. This has such an impact on my productivity that I'm desperately looking for alternatives that don't involve purchasing Photoshop - now looking at Pixelmator. Other members of the team have switched to Paint.NET or other simple editors, but…

Great! A list of problems with a description of _why_ it's a problem. Can I ask if you have put this list anywhere near the GIMP developers - mailing lists or bugzilla?

If you've tried the latest build, litereally every issue he's described has been fixed.

Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#35

Post by BDFL_Xenu »

gst wrote: post #11
blub wrote: post #8

I have been using GIMP for 9 months and the UI is exasperating. It's not just multi-window mode, things like the way the windows are rendered and designed, focus issues, shortcuts, missing features and a lot of other annoyances. The most disappointing thing is that I'm not even doing intensive graphical work, just retouching some photos, moving things around, resizing, etc.

The UI works quite well with a focus-follows-mouse policy - as it has been standard in Unix for decades. With today's click-to-focus window managers the UI is just horrible (but that's not Gimp's fault).

So that's the justification? That the GIMP expects WM settings that were only the default on TWM and the like over 15 years ago?

Well, I must say that I haven't seen any other application of its size take the "NO WARRANTY" shouting of the GPL so seriously.

   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
But the program did start as a showcase for some graphics manipulation algorithms that the authors made. Maybe the fault is with the people with the high hopes that it was actually meant for them to use and edit their photos.

Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#36

Post by blub »

nodata wrote: post #27
blub wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem I have with GIMP is that it's not intuitive. Every time I open it I have to stop and think how I am supposed to do what I am trying to do, my work never flows. This has such an impact on my productivity that I'm desperately looking for alternatives that don't involve purchasing Photoshop - now looking at Pixelmator. Other members of the team have switched to Paint.NET or other simple editors, but…

Great! A list of problems with a description of _why_ it's a problem. Can I ask if you have put this list anywhere near the GIMP developers - mailing lists or bugzilla?

I assume windsurfer below is correct and that most of these have been fixed in the latest build (unavailable to me yet).

I will wait for it to become available and then write a small list with the issues and try to send it to the mailing list/bugzilla.

Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#37

Post by nodata »

windsurfer wrote: post #34
nodata wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great! A list of problems with a description of _why_ it's a problem. Can I ask if you have put this list anywhere near the GIMP developers - mailing lists or bugzilla?

If you've tried the latest build, litereally every issue he's described has been fixed.

It would be interesting to know if it's because he brought these issues to the attention of the developers.

Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#38

Post by eropple »

pwg wrote: post #23
LawnGnome wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To an extent it is Gimp's fault, though. It's not as though click-to-focus is a new fad that's sprung up and surprised everyone -- it's been the default way focus has worked in GNOME and KDE for as long as I can remember, and I've been using it for the best part of fifteen years on Linux. The fact that such a common use case (almost certainly the most common use case, not to mention Gimp-related irritation, for at le…

> almost certainly the most common use case [click-to-focus] Most common only if you are coming from a ms-windows background. Click-to-focus is only a relatively recent newcomer to the Unix/X-Windows system in the scheme of how long X-Windows has existed. And if you ever break out of your ms-windows mindset and actually give focus follows mouse a try, focus follows mouse is actually the more powerful method.

And if you ever break out of your ms-windows mindset and actually give focus follows mouse a try, focus follows mouse is actually the more powerful method.

Not this again. Focus-follows-mouse is different, not more powerful. It provides a different way of working that not everyone agrees with and not everyone wants to use.

Seriously, get over yourself.

Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#39

Post by eropple »

nodata wrote: post #37
windsurfer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've tried the latest build, litereally every issue he's described has been fixed.

It would be interesting to know if it's because he brought these issues to the attention of the developers.

Given the fairly legendary hostility of GIMP developers, I'd hope he brought an asbestos suit.

(History aside, they're actually acting like they care about their users as of late, and good on them for it. It certainly took long enough.)

Re: GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned

#40

Post by sapphirecat »

I'v been eagerly awaiting this, since my major annoyances all have to do with the floating dialogs:

Not hiding the palettes when the last gimp window was minimized. Minimize -> d'oh! -> unminimize -> secret key shortcut[1] -> minimize again. Older versions used to hide them with any image window being minimized, so it was minimize#1 -> sigh -> minimize#2 -> unminimize#2 back then.

Placing the toolboxes at x,0 by default so they were underneath the taskbar/menubar. I keep my taskbar on top on Windows, and I'm glad I know about Alt+Space there.

Not having the image window's keyboard shortcuts work when a tool window is focused, for which I know no workaround.

Having the tool windows appear in the Alt+Tab list.

Actually, I can think of one more that was remedied with 2.0: the menu used to be hidden. You could right-click the image or hit the ">" button at the corner of the rulers, but it took me a long time to figure out how to save my first image.

[1] TAB. I think its action is finally available in the menus, and the shortcut displayed with it, in 2.7.x.

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