Re: [Gimp-developer] Feedback from an ordinary user

[Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Fri, 2012-11-16 at 14:05 +0200, Ali Carikcioglu wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> First of all, I want to thank all developers for making this great program
> GIMP.
> 
> And I have some improvement suggestions about GIMP.
> 
> (you don't have to respond them, and I am not searching support either)
> *
> *
> 
> 1)* a more simple and clear GIMP website: [...]

>  Even to subscribe to this mail list, I had to go to IRC
> and ask for a link. Maybe it's easy for developers, but I think the website
> should be also understandable for newbies like me.

Ideally a beginning user wouldn't need to contact the developers...



> 2) *Create New Image Preview: *Sometimes I have no data about the image
> pixels, and I simple want to work on my own, but I have to give data to
> image size each time, to see the actual size. It would be nice to see a
> preview whenever I enter directly, and not trying back and forth.

The easiest way is to make an image that's your current screen size (if
you know it) and then use the crop tool. I don't know if we've
encountered people wanting a preview of the image size before, but for
me at least the average image is 10 or 20 times taller than my screen,
and even a digital photo from my camera is bigger than my screen. How
would this preview work?


> 3) *Select None Button Shortcut in Toolbox: *It's an important button after
> finishing the task and It should be present in Toolbox shortcuts. There are
> much unimportant shortcuts present in toolbox, so I see no reason why it
> should not be there.

The toolbox has tools in it, not shortcuts or operations. Use
control-shift-a to select none.

I *can* imagine being able to drag menu items onto the toolbox and would
love to hear from the Usability Team about that.

> 4) *Layer Selection Bug: *I don't know if this is a bug or not, but whenver
> I have two layers, and I press "Move Layer", I can move one layer but I
> can't select the layer I am moving.

I am not sure I understand - please describe the exact sequence of what
you think should happen, and what does happen, like this:
[[
1. I press the "move" icon in the toolbox.
   The image pointer changes to a cross made of four arrows.
2. I click on a part of the image in a non-active layer and drag to move
it.
   The layer is moved.
3. The active layer remains unchanged

   I would like the most recently moved layer to become active.
]]
Is that what you are asking for?

Note that the page up and page down keys cycle through the layers.

I agree that it's sometimes hard to click on a layer in order to move
it. I wonder if having layer bloundaries emit a soft blue glow when the
mouse pointer hovers over them, when the move tool is active, might
help.

I don't think it's apporpriate that a "move layer" tool should select
layers too as a sort of side-effect, but a "manipulate layer" tool could
perhaps do both.

> Also, I can't pick color from a layer
> if it's not selected from layer menu.

I can. :-)

1. Choose the eye-dropper icon from the toolbox.

2. in the Tool Options dock, click in the box next to "Sample merged"

3. click anywhere on any image layer to set the foreground colour. Hold
down control while you click, to set the background colour, shift to
bring up a window without changing colour.

> 5) *Text Color: *Why are there seperate color pick for paintbrush and text.
> It irritates the user.
What irritates one user soothes another.

>  The text input color should be chosen from the same
> paintbrush color in my opinion.
Maybe this is because it's common to interleave painting and text, and
to want the text all to be the same colour. A new text layer starts out
with the foreground colour from painting though, so they are actually
linked. The swatch in tool options is also there so that you can edit
the colour of the text later, without changing the paint colour.

> 
> 6) *Combine **Save As** and **Export** buttons:*  Click Save As and, save
> as jpg, is not possible. I think Save As and Export serve the same purpose
> and can be combined.

As you discovered, this is controversial, but is not about to change.
Use control-shift-e to export the image.

GIMP is aimed at professional users, people who are expected to learn to
use keyboard shortcuts. As with other professional software, GIMP can be
harder to learn as a result.

> Thank you very much for taking your time. Please do not send me answers,
> because these are only suggestions and it's up to you if you consider them
> in the next update or not.

The GIMP project does not have a large team of programmers. It's roughly
the equivalent of between one and three full-time people. There is no
shortage of suggestions. There is a shortage of people implementing
them. We can learn a lot by observing what happens when someone first
starts using GIMP, so your comments may have been useful in that way.
Thank you for sending them.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml