Re: [Gimp-gui] UI also for nonexperts would be helpful

[Nick Levinson <nick_levinson yahoo com>]

Hi, Jehan --

From February 18:

I don't disagree with designing for advanced users and am glad that someone's open to possibilities for simplicity where that's compatible with sophisticated use.

I found the 1x1-pixel paintbrush, although it was nowhere near the 3x3 brush but was buried near much bigger brushes. Not being near the top with the other small brushes may have been why I turned to Google for help. It seems more useful to group similar brushes together. You suggest using only "official" references but you evidently changed your mind by the end of your email, and I agree with the latter. I won't look for what I found by Googling last time because it isn't needed anymore; perhaps it was for another version. Meanwhile, the 1-px brush left a streak far thicker than a pixel, but I'll suppose that's my error.

I found the FG/BG Color tab dock (called just Colors in Dockable Dialogs) and it is what I needed. I was looking in the dialogs that don't need docks and I should have thought of this submenu. I've selected a few colors but, so far, the brush and the bucket are not visibly painting, and I can't tell if they're painting white on a white canvas or not painting at all. The brush did paint black until I double-clicked. Adding a layer didn't fix that. Maybe exiting Gimp and starting again will do it, but that seems a bit far.

The color picker that looks like an eye-dipper is an on-canvas tool, but FG/BG has a button with an icon and a tooltip that says "Click the eyedropper, then click a color anywhere on your screen to select that color." The screen is usually bigger than the visible part of the canvas. I shrank windows to expose some of my Gnome desktop workspace green background pattern and then used that button on the green. The result was that with one eyedropper click the dialog self-selected a matching color and gave its six-digit number value. The Gimp icon disappeared from the desktop panel while the FG/BG dockable window was active, but that's a minor or trivial issue.

Whether I can paint if nothing or all are selected, I'm getting inconsistent results in two layers with the bucket. I assume there's a skill I'm lacking.

That some layers commands are in other than the Layer menu is the case; my point was not that you need to move them, since I assumed there might have been good reason for the present decision, just that it encourages me to run around all the menus for anything I want, rather than assume that if the obvious menu lacks an item then you don't have it. Merge Visible Layers and Align Visible Layers are commands in the Image menu and not in the Layer menu. Maybe both commands should be in both menus. That duplicates already exist is also the case; compare Colors menu > Color Balance and Tools menu > Color Tools > Color Balance, both of which yield the same dialog. Likewise, compare Colors menu > Hue-Saturation and Tools menu > Color Tools > Hue-Saturation, both of which also yield the same dialog. There seem to be more in those menus.

What are called docks or dockable dialogs I thought were called toolboxes, so I was looking for toolboxes and found only one. That's my fault.

For help for us simple-minded folks, I suggest the Help menu offer a menu command that goes straight to chapter 3 of the existing user manual (First Steps with Wilbur). Call the menu item just Basic Concepts. Someone should edit the chapter's first page or the chapter's table of contents to include "canvas" and "path", but a direct menu command doesn't have to wait for that.

Forums and mail lists are good and I recommend their use, but online or built-in help would be better when we want to get something done within an hour and not wait a few hours until someone answers a question. I don't have to ask if I can Google and get roughly equal quality that way. If a procedure or tip makes it into the user manual, then that is an imprimatur of reliability.

 I'm an in-between user, albeit closer to newbie than to expert. I have a few websites and I typically create a thematic image for each site, plus I may add an image or two to a site. So I may spend a few hours on an image once every few months. Thus, I probably use more features than a newbie usually does but don't remember how I did something in the past and have to rediscover the how-to. I tend to hack around menus and should spend more time in the user manual.

Being not a company and not thinking in terms of market share and competitors have their value, but Gimp and Photoshop are competitors in fact, if friendly, and market share is a proxy for how highly users rate your software creation compared to a competitor's. Whether you think of it is secondary. And how you're institutionally organized (my websites, both those intended for profit and those not, are entirely under my name, thus a sole proprietorship) doesn't much matter. You might well invent a feature that only three people will ever want but you might invent and implement it because it's still good even though no one's writing a check for your service, but if Gimp wasn't good its market share would be infinitesmal and hardly anyone would even notice it, never mind develop for it. There've probably been other FOSS projects that fell into a black hole for lack of interest by anyone else; Gimp's success is a positive for the developers.

Thanks for helping.

--
Nick