Re: [Usability] GIMP - CSDI and Toolbox

[Marek Peteraj <marpet naex sk>]

> Yeah that happens too.
> Did i mention how much I hate the GIMP at the moment?
> Care to troll the list by suggesting they copy Inkscape?  (and by
> extension Adobe Photoshop)
> I really think they dont want to improve the GIMP for anyone except
> themselves.

Well, to be honest, i don't share your opinion at all. :)

I think that gimp has one of the most well designed UIs.

There are a few sections in HiG that are absolute unusable crap and of
those few is the CSDI section. The HiG has 2 major misconceptions:

1. it suggest to not use CSDI for apps like Gimp
2. it suggests to organize tools in groups (like sodipodi does)

The philosophy of the Gimp UI is to have all tools and their options
immidiatelly at hand. Click on tool, click your option.

Inkscape can't provide this, and you'd probably notice if you opened up
all option windows at once - no way to organize them.

The dock/tab UI is also superior to photoshop to be honest. But there
that clutter problem everyone is talking about.

What everyone hates about the Gimp is that cluttered feel you get with
multiple windows. But *that* is a *responsibility* of the WM, not Gimp!

You can perfectly threat CSDI interfaces with a WM so that they give you
a very comfortable feel.

One major misconception in current WMs is that they threat each window
of a CSDI as a separate window. They don't threat them as a group of
windows, which belong to one application. For SDI, a separate window
means a separate application. For MDI, each window represents *both* the
document and tools, almost like a separate app, let's call it another
instance of the same app. So the dumb WM model fits perfectly for the
purposes of SDI/MDI. Not so for CSDI where the tools/options and
documents are separate entities. 

If each WM would threat CSDI as a group of windows that belong to one
application and that have a certain behaviour with respect to each
other(clicking in the window list brings all docks on top, always on top
option for all docks, tab moves them to fore/background etc), you'd end
up with a perfect Gimp - UI wise. A Gimp people would love to use.

Note that Photoshop is a typical Window-inwindow environment where the
parent window manages the child windows. No such thing in CSDI therefore
the *WM* has to take care of all that. 
 
So suggesting that we should scrap CSDI isn't at all a good idea and i
doubt that Seth is using gimp professionally.
Scrapping CSDI would be the worst thing that could happen to the HiG.

What i would scrap is the horrible sodipodi like toolbox, which the HiG
suggests. For professional work there's no need to categorize the tools.
Each tool although it might have similar properties with another tools,
represents a *separate* tool that is easy to learn and work with and
should stay at the same place no matter what.

1. The toolbox should offer *only* drawing tools or tools closely
related to drawing. You end up with 2 kinds of buttons - tools and
nodes. Clutter.
2. The purpose of hiding the tools should be to save some extra space
and to organize tools in a logical way. More nodes will introduce even
more space consumption so it's not a win at all to use it for that
purpose, and there are lots of tools that are not related to each other
so what happens is that you make a node called 'miscelaneous' and put
all those unrelated tools in there. This doesn't solve the 'break into
categories' issue at all. There won't be many enough tools to have a
separate category.
3. Gimp 1.3.x has introduced a somewhat shuffled toolbox(new tools added
etc), and i had some hard time getting used at that. Node-like
organizing introduces continuous 'shuffling' in that you always end-up
having different nodes opened and closed, the toolbox changes it's size
each time you expand/collaps a node. So the purpose of organizing into
categories gets totally broken. The aim should be to have a toolbox
which if you resize according to your needs(as a part of overall
customization of your gimp copy) should stay that way - easy to
remember, so that in a pro environment you don't even have to look at
the toolbox to click the tool you just need. So to summarize in 4 - 
4. In a professional environment, where you need to work fast and
reliable, a static toolbox is the most efficient thing you'd find.
Once you learn it, it never changes.

That said, i'm pretty said the Inkscape devs aren't following the Gimp
path. 

Marek