[Gimp-developer] Gimp UI ... hesitant about compiling a list...

[RMMjr <bob montgomery jr gmail com>]

I caught this e-mail address on someone's signature line in a post...

Apologies in advance if this isn't the proper forum for a comment on Gimps
UI, and please don't consider this as simply a rant, but Gimp could use the
feedback of 1,000 idiots.  Art is not something to be done like coding or
scripting.. While I appreciate the necessity of properly placed semicolons
and the syntactical issue which might arise in formal language from stray
commas, Gimp simply drives me crazy.

      I Suggest you monitor a gaggle of spastics (again, apologies if that
isn't a PC term ) who with no prior instruction, are trying to use Gimp.
Whatever it is that they do when they want to do something, implement that.

I've worked with a lot of software, and delved into usability issues, and
while I'm not a luminary like Nielsen/Norman & Co, I can recognize when a
UI is taxing me, or in some cases, when it reduces me to babbling, schitzo
spaz trying to learn again how to use a stupid pencil. There is something
about neuro-motor circuitry and art-brains which just doesn't cotton to
sitting through hours of explanatory videos to do even simple stuff. You
might recoil and suggest I just use some simple tool like 'paint' and be
happy. I do use stuff like Blender, which similarly has an amazingly Star-
Trekkie-esque UI, which can be similarly daunting if your mice and tablet
and trackpads aren't deconfilicted with your systemwide hotkeys.

I know there's a place for folks who spend half their lives learning to use
these amazing tools. But even if it is a CAD package, it's simply wrong to
impose a strict behavioral syntax which makes complete sense to developers
but which is initially counter-intuitive to un-indoctrinated users.  I've
actually demo'd Photoshop numerous times and managed to accomplish things
after only a short time experimenting with theUI. Gimp, after using it for
years, I'm still wondering how cut & paste, which is complicated by multiple
'floating' layers, selections which persist, things which behave like 'bugs'
- modal stuff where strange boundaries which seemingly can't be eradicated
constrain operations, where actions happen with selections long thought to
be forgotten, surprises abound to the extent 'learning' by doing is not a
practical approach. The UI never seems to explain itself.




--

    RMMjr

  Bob Montgomery, Jr.

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