Re: [Gimp-gui] Toolbox Groups

[Jehan <jehan girinstud io>]

Hi,

On 2015-10-15 18:55, Akkana Peck wrote:
> > On 2015-10-15 01:51, Andrew Pullins wrote:
> > >To improve user experience I propose toolbox groups. Attached is an
> > >image showing how this could be done. In Preferences > Toolbox there
>
> Jehan writes:
> > This is an interesting idea, but I wonder if we can't do better than 
> > this.
> > It does not feel that efficient to me to basically have submenus on 
> > tools.
>
> I didn't entirely understand how the tools would be grouped and how
> the groups would look, but I like the idea of "Toolbox groups" and
> made me think of another way we could group tools.
>
> What if you could have more than one Toolbox arrangement? For
> instance, sometimes I'm primarily editing photos, and most of what
> I'm doing involves Crop, Scale, Brightness/Contrast/Curves, Rotate,
> maybe Clone and Smudge and Dodge/Burn, and selection tools. I don't
> need any drawing tools. Other times I'm drawing, and I need the
> Paintbrush, Text, Move, Smudge, Paths etc.

I actually thought at first this was the proposition from reading the 
thread title (then I read the email and saw that was a completely 
different concept).

I also thought this was an interesting idea though I am not sure how it 
would go when confronted to real life. Wouldn't most users end at first 
create various toolbox because they think it's a cool idea at first then 
end up always using the same (the one with all the tools) because they 
get used to it the most?

This is pretty similar to the idea of profiles from another thread (the 
profile idea includes the concept of toolbox arrangement) by the way.

> What if I could have multiple toolbox arrangements? If I'm drawing,
> I see only the tools I need for that; if I'm photo editing, I see
> only those tools. And there's a Show All version for when I'm doing
> something unusual or learning new skills.

I thought about the exact same examples, and then I realize that 
sometimes photographers would use the paint tools too (to make small 
fixes here and there, to change selections in quick mask mode, etc.) and 
that many painters would still use other tools (selections, warp, 
transformations, etc.).
So would you really want to hide them (hence make it more difficult to 
get to them) even if to use it once every hour? At first this could look 
like a good idea but I really wonder if it will hold with the time.

> To create a new toolbox, a new window comes up, I can name it and
> then drag tools from the "Show All" toolbox into the new window.
> (Ideally I can also choose the location of each tool in the new 
> toolbox.)
>
> Switching between toolboxes could be like setting tool option
> presets (though I'd hope it would be a bit clearer than that: I've
> lost presets more than once because of confusing the "Save new
> preset" and "Restore preset" buttons, which are right next to each
> other and have almost identical looking menus.)
>
> I like Andrew's idea of spacers too, and of generally being able to
> choose where things go in the toolbox. That would help in grouping
> tools and telling tools apart. Like fuzzy select and the color
> picker: I can never remember which icon is which, but if fuzzy
> select was clearly grouped with the selection tools and the color
> picker was somewhere else, far away from fuzzy select, it would be a
> lot easier to tell them apart. Same with clone and perspective clone,
> or Move and Alignment.

You can already organize where things are by ordering tools in 
preferences > toolbox. Though clearly this is a good example of not very 
good UI. Basically many of the things we have which requires to go to 
the preferences are not very good in my opinion because I end up nearly 
never go there to customize (or forgetting you even could).

Jehan

>         ...Akkana
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