Re: [Gimp-user] Redesign "move selection"?

[Richard <strata_ranger hotmail com>]

________________________________
From: gimp-user-list <gimp-user-list-bounces gnome org> on behalf of Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre 
prokoudine gmail com>
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2016 4:41 PM
To: gimp-user-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [Gimp-user] Redesign "move selection"?

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 2:15 AM, Michael Schumacher wrote:

> Ages ago, click-drags did move the selection content without additional
> modifier keys.
>
> But we got complaints that it is far too easy to accidentally move this
> selected content by minute amounts and not even notice this. So it got
> changed to the current behavior.

And I can't help myself wondering if that was a case of a vocal
minority affecting a design decision that now irritates a vocal
majority :)

Alex
_______________________________________________


Oh, boy, THIS subject.  Where my workflow is concerned this was the BIGGEST breaking change GIMP ever made -- 
yes, even bigger than when 2.8 split Save and Export.  (And we remember all the complaints over that, right?)

I am one of those where when I no-modifier click and drag a selection my preferred action is to pick up those 
pixels and move them around (rather than shifting the mask).  It is ... a minimum of annoying that we have 
zero means of configuring GIMP to match our workflow in this respect.


While the decision to change it was definitely made in good faith, I wonder if it was made largely because 
(1) it was easy to remap how the selection tools handle modifiers, and (2) a lack of proposed alternatives?


The first (and most obvious) alternative is to make this behavior a user configurable option in the GIMP 
preferences -- like we already have for whether the Move tool should default to picking to moving (I prefer 
picking).


A second alternative would be to give the selection tools a sensitivity threshold -- i.e. you must click and 
drag the cursor a minimum # of screen pixels before the tool will start the drag action.  I wonder if this 
could have solved most of those accidental microadjustments people complained about in GIMP 2.2 without 
introducing a breaking change....


-- Stratadrake
strata_ranger hotmail com
--------------------
Numbers may not lie, but neither do they tell the whole truth.