[Gimp-user] Inconsistent Behaviour of New View Windows

[programmer_ceds <forums gimpusers com>]

To quote from the V2.8 on-line documentation for the New View menu command:

"Any change, other than viewing changes, which you make in one window also
appear in the other displays which show the same image. The new views are not
separate image files; they are simply different aspects of the same image. You
might use multiple views, for example, if you were working on individual pixels
at a high zoom factor. You could then see the effects your changes would have on
the image at a normal size."

At the moment I think that this really only applies to the airbrush and the
colour tools (Levels, Curves, Brightness etc).

The paintbrush type tools (pencil, eraser etc) do reflect the changes but only
when the mouse button is released (whereas the airbrush shows the line in all of
the views as it is being drawn).

More importantly the additional views are not updated during transform
operations. In fact with the later versions of 2.9.5, in which the active layer
is made transparent when the transform tool is activated, the additional views
of an image with only one layer all change to the chequerboard pattern - which
looks a bit odd and may be the cause of a number of questions/bug reports.

Displaying the transform preview in the additional views would conform to the
aim stated in the documentation of allowing views of the changes at different
magnifications to that used for the active view. In particular it would allow a
higher magnification to be used for an additional view to see the effects of the
Unified Transform tool - where you can't zoom the active view otherwise the
control handles are not visible and all you can do is rotate or move the image.
Obviously this isn't a problem for the perspective, shear etc tools as the
actions still accessible when zoomed in.

Changing the paint tools so that they reflect the changes 'in real time' is
trivial - in functions gimp_paint_tool_button_press() and
gimp_paint_tool_motion() use the existing gimp_display_flush_now (display) call
when the image has only one display (this makes the program more responsive),
otherwise use gimp_image_flush(image).

Unfortunately, however, I don't have the experience to suggest changes to make
the transform preview appear in the additional views - this being by far the
more useful change.

-- 
programmer_ceds (via www.gimpusers.com/forums)