[gimp-help-2] General review of setup, concepts, and basic-setup.
- From: Roman Joost <romanofski src gnome org>
- To: svn-commits-list gnome org
- Subject: [gimp-help-2] General review of setup, concepts, and basic-setup.
- Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:41:52 +0000 (UTC)
commit 2a6a78fcd7d133ba6b386c28263991b4251471ec
Author: Andrew Pitonyak <andrew pitonyak org>
Date: Sun Jun 28 10:50:55 2009 -0400
General review of setup, concepts, and basic-setup.
src/concepts/basic-setup.xml | 47 ++++++++++++------------
src/concepts/concepts.xml | 69 +++++++++++++++++------------------
src/concepts/intro.xml | 81 +++++++++++++++++++++--------------------
src/concepts/setup.xml | 34 ++++++++---------
4 files changed, 115 insertions(+), 116 deletions(-)
---
diff --git a/src/concepts/basic-setup.xml b/src/concepts/basic-setup.xml
index 9d787ff..25f7575 100644
--- a/src/concepts/basic-setup.xml
+++ b/src/concepts/basic-setup.xml
@@ -40,25 +40,25 @@
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>The Main Toolbox:</emphasis>
- This is the heart of GIMP. It contains the highest level menu,
- plus a set of icon buttons that can be used to select tools, and more.
+ This is the heart of GIMP. It contains a set of icon buttons
+ used to select tools, and more.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>Tool options:</emphasis>
Docked below the main Toolbox is a Tool Options dialog, showing
- options for the currently selected tool (in this case, the Rectangle
- Select tool).
+ options for the currently selected tool (in this case, the Smudge
+ tool).
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>An image window:</emphasis>
- Each image open in GIMP is displayed in a separate window. A lot of
- images can be open at the same time, only limited by the system
+ Each image open in GIMP is displayed in a separate window. Many
+ images can be open at the same time, limited by only the system
resources. Before you can do anything useful in GIMP, you need to
- have at least one image window open. The image window holds the
+ have at least one image window open. The image window holds the
Menu of the main commands of GIMP (File, Edit, Select...), which you
can also get by right-clicking on the window.
</para>
@@ -66,7 +66,8 @@
<listitem>
<para>
The <emphasis>Layers, Channels, Paths</emphasis> dock with the
- Layers Dialog open.
+ Layers Dialog open; note that the <quote>dialogs</quote> in the
+ <quote>dock</quote> are tabs.
This dialog window shows the layer structure of the currently active
image, and allows it to be manipulated in a variety of ways. It is
possible to do a few very basic things without using the Layers
@@ -77,7 +78,7 @@
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>Brushes/Patterns/Gradients:</emphasis>
- The docked dialog below the layer dialog shows the dialogs for
+ The docked dialog below the layer dialog shows the dialogs (tabs) for
managing brushes, patterns and gradients.
</para>
</listitem>
@@ -86,15 +87,15 @@
This is a minimal setup. There are over a dozen other types of dialogs
used by GIMP for various purposes, but users typically open them when
they need them and close them when they are done. Knowledgeable users
- generally keep the Toolbox (with Tool Options) and Layers dialog around at
+ generally keep the Toolbox (with Tool Options) and Layers dialog open at
all times. The Toolbox is essential to many GIMP operations; in fact, if
you close it, GIMP will exit after confirming that that is actually what
you want to do. The Tool Options section is actually a separate dialog, shown
docked to the Main Toolbox in the screenshot. Knowledgeable users almost
always have it set up this way: it is very difficult to use tools
effectively without being able to see how their options are set. The
- Layers dialog comes into play whenever you work with an image that has
- multiple layers: once you advance beyond the very most basic stages of
+ Layers dialog comes into play when you work with an image with
+ multiple layers: after you advance beyond the most basic stages of
GIMP expertise, this means <emphasis>almost always</emphasis>.
And of course it helps to display the images you're editing on the screen;
if you close the image window before saving your work, GIMP will ask you
@@ -102,13 +103,13 @@
</para>
<note>
<para>
- If your GIMP layout gets trashed, fortunately your arrangement
- is pretty easy to recover by using
+ If your GIMP layout is lost, your arrangement
+ is easy to recover using
<menuchoice>
<guimenu>Windows</guimenu>
<guisubmenu>Recently Closed Docks</guisubmenu>
</menuchoice>
- To add, close or detach a tab from a dock, click on
+ To add, close, or detach a tab from a dock, click
<guiicon>
<inlinemediaobject>
<imageobject>
@@ -118,7 +119,7 @@
</guiicon>
in the upper right corner of a dialog. This opens the Tab menu. Select
<guimenuitem>Add Tab</guimenuitem>,<guimenuitem> Close Tab
- </guimenuitem> or <guimenuitem>Detach Tab</guimenuitem>.
+ </guimenuitem>, or <guimenuitem>Detach Tab</guimenuitem>.
</para>
</note>
<para>
@@ -127,14 +128,14 @@
window. The GIMP developers have always felt that this is a poor way of
working, because it forces the program to do the work of a
dedicated window manager. Not
- only would this waste a lot of programmer time, it is almost impossible to
- do in a way that works correctly across all of the operating systems GIMP
- is intended to run on.
+ only would this waste programmer time, it is almost impossible to
+ do in a way that works correctly across all of the operating systems
+ on which GIMP runs.
</para>
<para>
- Earlier versions of GIMP (up to GIMP 1.2.5) were very profligate with
- dialogs: advanced users often had half a dozen or more dialogs open at
- once, scattered all over the screen and very difficult to keep track of.
+ Earlier versions of GIMP (up to GIMP 1.2.5) used many dialogs:
+ advanced users often had half a dozen or more dialogs open at
+ once, scattered all over the screen and very difficult to track.
GIMP 2.0 is much better in this respect, because it allows dialogs to be
docked together in a flexible way. (The Layers dialog in the screenshot
actually contains four dialogs, represented by tabs: Layers, Channels,
@@ -142,7 +143,7 @@
learn it, we hope that you will like it.
</para>
<para>
- The following sections will walk you through the components of each of the
+ The following sections walk you through the components of each of the
windows shown in the screenshot, explaining what they are and how they
work. Once you have read them, plus the section describing the basic
structure of GIMP images, you should have learned enough to use GIMP for a
diff --git a/src/concepts/concepts.xml b/src/concepts/concepts.xml
index 26fb7b1..5d64bb0 100644
--- a/src/concepts/concepts.xml
+++ b/src/concepts/concepts.xml
@@ -35,21 +35,20 @@
</mediaobject>
</figure>
<para>
- This section is intended to give you a brief introduction to the basic
- concepts and terminology you will need to understand in order to make
- sense of the rest of the documentation. Everything here is explained in
+ This section provides a brief introduction to the basic concepts and
+ terminology used in GIMP. The concepts presented here are explained in
much greater depth elsewhere. With a few exceptions, we have avoided
cluttering this section with a lot of links and cross-references:
- everything mentioned here is so high-level that you should easily be able
- to locate it in the index.
+ everything mentioned here is so high-level that you can easily
+ locate it in the index.
</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>Images</term>
<listitem>
<para>
- Images are the basic entities that <acronym>GIMP</acronym> works
- with. Roughly speaking, an <quote>image</quote> corresponds to a
+ Images are the basic entities used by <acronym>GIMP</acronym>.
+ Roughly speaking, an <quote>image</quote> corresponds to a
single file, such as a TIFF or JPEG file. You can also think of an
image as corresponding to a single display window, but this is not
quite correct: it is possible to have multiple windows all
@@ -60,8 +59,8 @@
<para>
A <acronym>GIMP</acronym> image may be quite a complicated thing.
Instead of thinking of it as something like a sheet of paper with a
- picture on it, you should think of it as more like a book, whose
- pages are called <quote>layers</quote> In addition to a stack of
+ picture on it, think of it as more like a book, whose
+ pages are called <quote>layers</quote>. In addition to a stack of
layers, a <acronym>GIMP</acronym> image may contain a selection
mask, a set of channels, and a set of paths. In fact,
<acronym>GIMP</acronym> provides a mechanism for attaching arbitrary
@@ -69,12 +68,12 @@
</para>
<para>
In <acronym>GIMP</acronym>, it is possible to have many images open
- at the same time. If they are large, each image may use many
- megabytes of memory, but <acronym>GIMP</acronym> uses a
- sophisticated tile-based memory management system that allows it to
- handle even very large images gracefully. There are, however,
- limits, and having more memory available can help to improve the
- performance of the system.
+ at the same time. Although large images may use many megabytes of
+ memory, <acronym>GIMP</acronym> uses a sophisticated
+ tile-based memory management system that allows
+ <acronym>GIMP</acronym> to handle very large images gracefully.
+ There are limits, however, and having more memory available
+ may improve system performance.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
@@ -83,13 +82,13 @@
<listitem>
<para>
If an image is like a book, then a layer is like a page within the
- book. The simplest images only contain a single layer, and can be
- treated like single sheets of paper, but sophisticated
- <acronym>GIMP</acronym> users often deal with images containing many
- layers, even dozens of them. Layers need not be opaque, and they
- need not cover the entire extent of an image, so when you look at an
- image's display, you may see more than just the top layer: you may
- see elements of many layers.
+ book. The simplest images contain only a single layer, and can be
+ treated like single sheets of paper. Sophisticated
+ <acronym>GIMP</acronym> users often deal with images containing
+ many layers, even dozens of them. Layers need not be opaque, and
+ they need not cover the entire extent of an image, so when you
+ look at an image's display, you may see more than just the top
+ layer: you may see elements of many layers.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
@@ -100,16 +99,16 @@
In <acronym>GIMP</acronym>, Channels are the smallest units of
subdivision in the stack of layers from which the image is
constructed. Every Channel in a layer has exactly the same size as
- the layer it belongs to and consequently consists of the same
- pixels. Every pixel can be regarded as a container which can be
- filled with a value ranging from 0 to 255. The exact meaning of this
- value depends on the type of channel, e.g. in the
+ the layer to which it belongs, and, consequently consists of the
+ same number of pixels. Every pixel can be regarded as a container
+ which can be filled with a value ranging from 0 to 255.The exact
+ meaning of this value depends on the type of channel, e.g. in the
<acronym>RGB</acronym> color model the value in the
<emphasis>R</emphasis>-channel means the amount of red which is
added to the colour of the different pixels, in the selection
- channel the value denotes how strongly the pixels are selected and in
- the alpha channel the values denote how transparent the
- corresponding pixels are.
+ channel, the value denotes how strongly the pixels are
+ selected, and in the alpha channel the values denote how
+ transparent the corresponding pixels are.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
@@ -117,14 +116,14 @@
<term>Selections</term>
<listitem>
<para>
- Often when you do something to an image, you only want a part of it
+ Often when modify an image, you only want a part of the image
to be affected. The <quote>selection</quote>
mechanism makes this possible. Each image has its own selection,
which you normally see as a moving dashed line separating the
selected parts from the unselected parts (the so-called
<quote>marching ants</quote> ). Actually this is a bit misleading:
selection in <acronym>GIMP</acronym>
- is really graded, not all-or-nothing, and really the selection is
+ is graded, not all-or-nothing, and really the selection is
represented by a full-fledged grayscale channel. The dashed line
that you normally see is simply a contour line at the 50%-selected
level. At any time, though, you can visualize the selection channel
@@ -137,7 +136,7 @@
effectively is acquiring the art of making good
selectionsâ??selections that contain exactly what you need and nothing
more. Because selection-handling is so centrally important,
- <acronym>GIMP</acronym> gives you a large number of tools for doing
+ <acronym>GIMP</acronym> provides many tools for doing
it: an assortment of selection-making tools, a menu of selection
operations, and the ability to switch to Quick Mask mode, in which
you can treat the selection channel as though it were a color
@@ -171,14 +170,14 @@
<term>Plug-ins</term>
<listitem>
<para>
- Many, probably most, of the things you do to an image in
+ Many, probably most, of the things that you do to an image in
<acronym>GIMP</acronym> are done by the <acronym>GIMP</acronym>
application itself. However, <acronym>GIMP</acronym> also makes
extensive use of <quote>plug-ins</quote>, which are external programs
that interact very closely with <acronym>GIMP</acronym>, and are
capable of manipulating images and other <acronym>GIMP</acronym>
- objects in very sophisticated ways. Many important plug-ins come
- packaged together with <acronym>GIMP</acronym>, but there are also
+ objects in very sophisticated ways. Many important plug-ins are
+ bundled with <acronym>GIMP</acronym>, but there are also
many available by other means. In fact, writing
plug-ins (and scripts) is the easiest way for people not on the
<acronym>GIMP</acronym> development team to add new capabilities to
diff --git a/src/concepts/intro.xml b/src/concepts/intro.xml
index 7c2030b..d8a109a 100644
--- a/src/concepts/intro.xml
+++ b/src/concepts/intro.xml
@@ -26,17 +26,19 @@
to open files from within GIMP once it is running.
</para>
<para>
- In most operating systems, you can set things up so that various
- types of image files are <quote>associated</quote> with GIMP, and cause
- it to start automatically when icons for them are double-clicked.
+ Most operating systems support file associations, which associates a
+ class of files (as determined by their filename extension, such as .jpg)
+ with a corresponding application (such as GIMP). When image
+ files are properly <quote>associated</quote> to GIMP, you can double
+ click on an image to open it in GIMP.
</para>
<sect2 id="introduction-platforms">
<title>Known Platforms</title>
<para>
The <acronym>GIMP</acronym> is the most widely supported image
- manipulation available today. The platforms that The
- <acronym>GIMP</acronym> is known to work on include:
+ manipulation available today. The platforms on which
+ <acronym>GIMP</acronym> is known to work include:
</para>
<para>
<productname><acronym>GNU</acronym>/Linux</productname>,
@@ -52,7 +54,7 @@
<productname>BeOS</productname>.
</para>
<para>
- The <acronym>GIMP</acronym> can easily be ported to other
+ The <acronym>GIMP</acronym> is easily ported to other
operating systems because of its source code availability. For further
information visit the GIMP developers homepage.
<xref linkend="bibliography-online-gimp-dev"/>.
@@ -65,9 +67,9 @@
<primary>Languages</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>
- All being well, GIMP detects the system language. This may fail on some
- machines and you may want use another language. It is possible to change
- the language:
+ GIMP automatically detects and uses the system language. In the
+ unlikely event that language detection fails, or if you just want to
+ use a different language, you may do so:
</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
@@ -78,9 +80,9 @@
type <userinput>LANGUAGE=en gimp</userinput> or
<userinput>LANG=en gimp</userinput>
replacing en by fr, de, ... according to the language you
- want. Background: By using <userinput>LANGUAGE=en</userinput>
- you're setting an environment variable for the executed
- program <userinput>gimp</userinput> here.
+ want. Background: Using <userinput>LANGUAGE=en</userinput>
+ sets an environment variable for the executed
+ program <userinput>gimp</userinput>.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
@@ -100,15 +102,16 @@
<guibutton>OK</guibutton> to validate your choice.
</para>
<para>
- If you often change language, you can create a batch file. Open
- NotePad. Type the following commands (for french for instance):
+ If you change languages often, you can create a batch file to
+ change the language. Open NotePad. Type the following
+ commands (for french for instance):
<!--do not reformat the following lines (literallayout)-->
<literallayout><userinput>set lang=fr
start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
Save this file as <filename>GIMP-FR.BAT</filename> (or another
name, but always with a
<filename class="extension">.BAT</filename> extension). Create
- shortcut and drag it to your desktop.
+ a shortcut and drag it to your desktop.
</para>
<para>
Another possibility:
@@ -118,7 +121,7 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<guimenuitem>GTK Runtime Environment</guimenuitem>
</menuchoice>
Then <guimenuitem>Select language</guimenuitem> and select the
- language you want in the dropping list that shows up.
+ language you want in the dropdown list.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
@@ -126,7 +129,7 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<term>Apple Mac OS X</term>
<listitem>
<para>
- Go to System Preferences, click on the International icon, and in
+ From System Preferences, click on the International icon. In
the Language tab, the desired language should be the first in the
list.
</para>
@@ -136,11 +139,11 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<term>Another GIMP instance</term>
<listitem>
<para>
- You can have a new GIMP instance by running the command line with
- the <userinput>-n</userinput> option:
- For example: <userinput>gimp-2.6</userinput> for GIMP in your
- language and <userinput>LANGUAGE=en gimp-2.6 -n</userinput> to
- have GIMP in English also. This is useful for translators.
+ Use <userinput>-n</userinput> to run multiple instances GIMP.
+ For example, use <userinput>gimp-2.6</userinput> to start GIMP
+ in the default system language, and
+ <userinput>LANGUAGE=en gimp-2.6 -n</userinput> to start another
+ instance of GIMP in English; this is very useful for translators.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
@@ -153,15 +156,13 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<primary>Command line Arguments</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>
- Ordinarily you don't need to give any arguments when starting
- GIMP, but here is a list of some that may at one time or another be
- useful. This is not a complete list; on Unix systems you can get
- a complete list by running <userinput>man gimp</userinput> in a
- terminal window.
+ Although arguments are not required when starting GIMP, the most
+ common arguments are shown below. On a Unix system, you can use
+ <userinput>man gimp</userinput>for a complete list.
</para>
<para>
- To use the command line options, you have to put them in the command
- line which you use to start GIMP as
+ Command line arguments must be in the command line that you use
+ to start GIMP as
<command>gimp-2.6 [OPTION...] [FILE|URI...]</command>.
</para>
<variablelist>
@@ -187,14 +188,14 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<term>-v, --version</term>
<listitem>
<para>
- Print the version of GIMP being used, and exit.
+ Print the GIMP version and exit.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>--license</term>
<listitem>
- <para>Show license information and exit</para>
+ <para>Show license information and exit.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
@@ -234,10 +235,9 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<varlistentry>
<term>-f, --no-fonts</term>
<listitem>
- <para>Do not load any fonts. This option could be
- useful either for speeding up GIMP start-up for scripts that
- does not use fonts or to find malformed fonts related problems
- that could hang GIMP.</para>
+ <para>Do not load any fonts. This is useful to load GIMP
+ faster for scripts that do not use fonts, or to find problems
+ related to malformed fonts that hang GIMP.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
@@ -285,7 +285,7 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<varlistentry>
<term>--system-gimprc=<replaceable>filename</replaceable></term>
<listitem>
- <para>Use an alternate system gimprc file</para>
+ <para>Use an alternate system gimprc file.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
@@ -296,8 +296,8 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<para>
Execute the set of commands non-interactively. The set of commands
is typically in the form of a script that can be executed by one
- of the GIMP scripting extensions. When commands is
- <userinput>-</userinput>, the commands are read from standard
+ of the GIMP scripting extensions. When the command is
+ <userinput>-</userinput>, commands are read from standard
input.
</para>
</listitem>
@@ -305,7 +305,8 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<varlistentry>
<term>--batch-interpreter=<replaceable>proc</replaceable></term>
<listitem>
- <para>The procedure to process batch commands with</para>
+ <para>Specify the procedure to use to process batch commands.
+ The default procedure is Script-Fu.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
@@ -326,7 +327,7 @@ start gimp-2.6.exe</userinput></literallayout>
<varlistentry>
<term>--stack-trace-mode=<replaceable>mode</replaceable></term>
<listitem>
- <para>Debug in case of a crash (never|query|always)</para>
+ <para>Debug in case of a crash (never|query|always).</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
diff --git a/src/concepts/setup.xml b/src/concepts/setup.xml
index 3c430d6..89d9117 100644
--- a/src/concepts/setup.xml
+++ b/src/concepts/setup.xml
@@ -18,19 +18,17 @@
<primary>Setup</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>
- The first time you run GIMP, it goes through a series of steps to set up
- options and directories. This process creates a subdirectory of your home
- directory called <filename class="directory">.gimp-2.6</filename>.
- All of the information about the choices you make here goes into that
- directory. If you later remove that directory, or rename it as something
- like <filename class="directory">.gimp-2.6.bak</filename>,
- then the next time you start GIMP, it will go through the whole setup
- sequence again, creating a new
+ When first run, GIMP performs a series of steps to configure
+ options and directories. The configuration process creates a
+ subdirectory in your home directory called
+ <filename class="directory">.gimp-2.6</filename>. All of the
+ configuration, information is stored in this directory. If you remove
+ or rename the directory, GIMP will repeat the initial configuration
+ process, creating a new
<filename class="directory">.gimp-2.6</filename>
- directory. You can exploit this if you want to explore the effect of
- different choices without destroying your existing installation, or if you
- have screwed things up so badly that your existing installation needs to
- be nuked.
+ directory. Use this capability to explore different configuration
+ options without destroying your existing installation, or to recover if
+ your configuration files are damaged.
</para>
<sect2>
@@ -38,12 +36,12 @@
<phrase>Finally . . .</phrase>
</title>
<para>
- Just a couple of suggestions before you start, though: First, when you
- run GIMP, by default it shows a "tip" each time it starts up. These tips
- tell you things that are very useful but not easy to learn by
- experimenting, so they are worth paying attention to. If you find it too
- distracting to look at them each time you start, you can disable them;
- but please go through them when you have the chance: for your
+ Just a couple of suggestions before you start, though: First, GIMP
+ displays a "tip" each time it starts. The tips provide information
+ that is considered useful, but not easy to learn by experimenting;
+ so they are worth reading. If you do not want tips to be displayed
+ when GIMP starts, you can disable them;
+ but please read the tips when you have the chance: for your
convenience, you can read them at any time using the menu command
<menuchoice>
<guimenu>Help</guimenu>
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