[Gimp-gui] About the "floating selection"

[Jehan <jehan girinstud io>]

Hello everyone!

We have been pondering about the use cases of floating selections and 
possible changes for GIMP 3.

# Current behavior

Currently say you copy, then paste over a layer, you get a "Floating 
selection". You can do nothing so far except modify the floating 
selection contents (you can't select another layer for instance), and 
finally create a new layer off it, merge it to the layer below or delete it.

## Going simpler?

Beginners are often confused at this stage when they don't realize they 
have a floating selection and that they have to make a decision to be 
able to do anything else. We gave university classes with GIMP and the 
"GIMP is stuck!" issue is quite a common one (when the student shows the 
screen, we directly see it, but beginners seem to miss even the big 
flashy green and red buttons on the Layers dockable).

Yet even advanced users who are used to it seem to think it is 
bothersome. Indeed if a paste were just creating a new layer by default, 
then we'd spare one click if that was what you wanted to do (and if you 
wanted to merge, you could still do it in one click, so not better not 
worse). Also as its own layer, the data can be independently edited 
anyway. Finally no beginner confusion anymore. It seems like a total win.

## The only advantage of floating selection (at least only found so far)

When you paste to a mask, there is no concept of multiple mask per layer 
(so far), so the only direct action would be merge/anchoring. But then 
it means you cannot edit the pasted data before merging.

Indeed if you test pasting into a mask (click on a layer mask, then 
paste), your floating selection now acts as a mask itself and you get a 
preview of it. It's like the only time where a layer can somehow have 2 
masks. So you can actually edit this pasted mask independently, move it, 
rotate it, paint in it, and finally merge it.

That's indeed a big advantage here, and maybe the only reason I see for 
floating selections so far.

# Proposition

So our idea (at ZeMarmot project) would be:

- When pasting on a layer, just create a new layer over the selected 
ones. Done. No floating selection anymore.

- When pasting on a layer mask, still make a floating selection (but 
probably name it "Floating mask" because the name "Floating *selection*" 
is weird anyway).

# Feedback

So the questions are:

- what do you all think?

- did we miss anything? Are there some use cases where floating 
selections over a layer are meaningful too? Are there other use cases of 
floating selection we miss at all?

- is there any reason why we'd want to leave a "Paste as floating 
selection" action (even if not default anymore)? I mean if there are no 
actual use case (other than pasting over mask which keeps the floating 
selection anyway), I don't see why we would. It only makes more 
maintenance burden with more code paths to take care of.

But if we missed something, we obviously don't want to lose any ability 
of GIMP which was only possible (or much easier) because of floating 
selections.

Thanks all!

Jehan
GIMP team

--
ZeMarmot open animation film
http://film.zemarmot.net
Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/ZeMarmot/
Patreon: https://patreon.com/zemarmot
Tipeee: https://www.tipeee.com/zemarmot