Re: [Gimp-user] Suggestions for the GIMP

[Steve Kinney <admin pilobilus net>]

On 02/06/2013 08:16 PM, WhoCares wrote:
> Hi Whomever is listening,
>
> I don't use The GIMP very much, but today I pulled out 2.8.2 (Ubuntu + MATE) so
> I could put some screenies together. 2 things hit me immediately:
>
> - Firstly, I can't really use the toolbox anymore. This could be more specific
> to my system, but the top of the toolbox slides under my top panel. This is a
> more general problem with my system and certain applications after switching to
> MATE, so like I said .. it might be system specific. What may or may not be
> system specific is the bottom of the toolbox sliding off the bottom of the
> screen (768). The end result is .. I can only resize the toolbox horizontally,
> so the thing is just .. in the way of the whole screen height.

That does sound system specific.  What I would try is, reset the
screen resolution to a higher resolution, i.e. 1280x1024, open the
GIMP, and make the toolbox a lot shorter by dragging the top edge
down.  Then when you reset your screen resolution to normal, the
GIMP's toolbox should be short enough that you will be able to
adjust its size freely.

> - Secondly (and more importantly) it would seem that The GIMP is now enforcing
> that I use Ctrl + E to save my images, else it tries to get me to use XCF
> format. The problem with XCF format (for me at least) is that not everyone I
> work with uses The GIMP, hence I never use the XCF format. My instant reaction
> with any program while working is to frequently use Ctrl + S to save my current
> file to it's current location without further intervention. So essentially this
> functionality is .. well, not consistent with any other piece of software I've
> seen in the last 25 years.

Example:  Save a word processor document in progress as .doc or
.docx, export the finished document as PDF to assure that it's
equally readable and properly formatted on other users' machines.
If you need to edit it later, you still have your .doc or .docx
draft to work with.

Doing likewise with, for instance, GIMP .xcf files and generic .png
or .jpg files may take some getting used to.  But there is a certain
logic to it.

> That's sort of my beef. I'm just a boring user of the software, so no doubt
> there are experts here that understand all of the advantages of the XCF and what
> wonderful things it can do for me. There's probably even some sort of config
> file I can change to set the application hotkeys to what I want! Unfortunately,
> I couldn't be bothered trying to figure out software, I just want to use it and
> have it work.

You might be able to get settings that suit you better by going to
Menu > Keyboard Shortcuts, and changing the settings under File.
You might still have to do Control+d or click a button on screen
when closing a file that has not been saved as .xcf.

:o)

Steve