Re: [Gimp-user] gimp users matter

[Daniel Hauck <daniel yacg com>]

Actually there is a crucial point of workflows that you are missing.  In 
order to make workflows work well for everyone, everything should be 
done in approximately the same way.  Each function in a GUI should use 
similar hotkeys, similar menu functions and all that.  This was a well 
established reality of what we call "intuitive" meaning "we already know 
what to expect."  "Save" in every program should behave like "Save" in 
most other programs.  "Save As..." enhances save to enable someone to 
make changes in the name, location or format... just like in all other 
programs.  This is the idea behind a unified GUI design and has been key 
to the success and adoption and usability of almost every program out there.

To make a car analogy, there is a reason why they are laid out the way 
they are.  For example, every car has a steering wheel and not a yoke 
and not a lever.  There was a time when that wasn't the case.  Care to 
guess why that changed?  There's a reason the manual (standard?) 
transmission was set up the way it was as well.  There were any number 
of ways it could have been done and different car makers actually did 
lay their pedals out in different layouts.  Many of them argued that one 
layout was better than another.  But at the end of the day, "standard 
layout, design and behavior" won out for the very same reasons GUI 
layout, design and behavior does.

What's more?  You probably use a standard keyboard layout even though 
there are more efficient ways to lay your keys out.  Why is that?  And 
why shouldn't your keyboard be changed out for each program you use 
while we're at it?

And here's the real issue why it's still a real issue.  When one program 
does something so very differently from all the others in your 
workflows, that one program represents a requirement to stop and think 
which is, in fact, an interruption... of workflows.

Now it's not an interruption if you ONLY use GiMP.  But since you're 
running an email program or a browser right now, chances are pretty good 
you do more than GiMP.  So you probably already know what I'm talking 
about.  So instead of letting you choose how to respond, let's just cut 
to the core purpose of this splinter in the fingers of so many users:

What is it that GiMP is attempting to accomplish with this departure 
from standard behavior?  What was broken before that is fixed with this 
change?  It's my understanding that it's so a lot of work on a project 
isn't lost through an accidental save... an accident which happens 
because of standard, default behaviors such as Ctrl+S saving in the 
format of the original file, overwriting the original file.  Frankly, 
this is what I would consider to be an "Amateur mistake" to 
make...something professionals learn not to do -- usually the hard way.


To Joao:

As for being warned that data may be lost?  That part of normal behavior 
for quite a few programs and this is completely acceptable behavior.  If 
GiMP did that, it would also be acceptable but only if there were 
advanced features of the editing that might need to be saved such as 
multiple layers or a mask or alpha channel.  And you skipped right past 
my point so I will ask it as direct and simple questions:

Do you believe most uses of GiMP is a full blown project?  You know, 
with hours of work going into them?

Do you think most users of GiMP are more casual users who just want to 
crop, resize or otherwise make simple changes to their images?  (It 
would be pointless to say 'then they should use something else because 
GiMP is far more powerful, blah blah blah' because even Photoshop users 
use it casually despite its bloated size and enormous capability.)

So it really comes back to what's broken about the normal way of doing 
things?


On 01/02/2014 07:45 PM, Steve Kinney wrote:
> On 01/02/2014 06:17 PM, akovia wrote:
>
> > I've watched these threads come an go and I must be missing something.
> > When this new behavior first arrived, like everyone else I was used to
> > the old way and having to learn a new work-flow is never fun. Regardless
> > I just figured this was the way it was going to be so I adopted it
> > immediately. At this point I can't even remember exactly how things used
> > to work as the new way is now ingrained in my work-flow. What is so hard
> > about Ctrl+o to overwrite, or Shift-Ctrl+e to export?
> B-B-B-But, control-e just isn't the same!  They say it's the same
> but it isn't.
>
> If I do control-e to save my image as a JPEG, then try to close the
> file...
>
> I have to, to, to.... discard the state of the image in the editor!
>
> They make me alt-d to close the image!
>
> THEY MAKE ME PRESS ALT-D TO CLOSE THE IMAGE!
>
> WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!! 
>
> WHY, WHY, WHY in the name of God have they done this to me?
>
> WHY did they have to RUIN my LIFE?!
>
> /rant
>
> :o)
>
> Steve
>
>
>
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