Re: [Gimp-gui] Possible places to save vertical space in Single (and Multiple) Window Mode

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

On 12/30/2017 12:00 AM, Liam R E Quin wrote:
> what about
> collapsing groups for related sliders etc? E.g. i shouldn't have to
> scroll down in the box to change the dodge tool from highlights to
> shadows (which i do often) or to add/remove jitter from painting. Or
> maybe i should, i'd rathern't.

Yes, checking all the paint tools, the dodge/burn tool has the longest 
dialog.

RawTherapee has the option to collapse individual subsets of options, 
and this helps a lot when trying to navigate through vast terrain of the 
RT user interface. The main reason I find this useful in RT (aside from 
making the scrollbar shorter - RT has a *lot* of dialogs) is because 
personally I don't use most of what RT offers in the way of editing 
options, as I prefer to edit using GIMP.

For GIMP's paint tools, personally I probably wouldn't use a 
"collapse/uncollapse" dialog even if it were available, because in GIMP 
I do use all the available paint tool options. So collapsing groups 
within the dialog would require clicking to open/close groups instead of 
just scrolling up and down.

But for use with small screens or for people who only use a few of the 
available options for any given tool, then collapsible groups might help 
quite a lot.

> So maybe best to focus on not a more compact view but a more usable
> view?

Yes. I was asking about "more compact" because it takes less clicking if 
all the relevant options for the relevant tool dialogs are available 
without having to scroll up and down or back and forth inside the dialog 
box.

This is an alternative "two-pane" arrangement that I've experimented 
with, using "F11" in Single Window Mode: 
https://ninedegreesbelow.com/files/two-pane-toolbox.png

My specific goal is to set up a "square area" for editing/painting, 
because I'm just as likely to work with portrait or square ratios as 
with landscape ratios. And then have all the dialogs relevant to 
painting visible at once (I use the paint tools even when I'm editing 
photographs). So when using a brush tool, this also means being able to 
pick a brush, modify the dynamics, set the color (which I usually do 
using the Change Foreground Colors dialog from the toolbox), and then 
make sure I'm actually painting on the intended layer.

The "two-pane" dialog pictured in the screenshot somewhat (drastically) 
shortchanges the layers dialog because it requires scrolling to see all 
the layers and sometimes (usually) my layer stacks are complex. If I 
can't see the layers dialog it's too easy for me to accidentally modify 
the wrong layer, so this arrangement works, but does require more 
scrolling in the layers dialog than I'd prefer.

There seems to be a fair amount of "padding" between the vertically 
arranged options at the bottom of the various paint tool options 
dialogs. Maybe there could be less padding, or maybe free-floating check 
boxes such that for example the "Dodge" and "Burn" check boxes could be 
side by side if the dialog box is sufficiently wide.

I'd be very interested to see how other people - especially people who 
paint or draw using GIMP - solve the task of setting up  the workspace 
to show "everything relevant, all at once".

Elle