Re: [Gimp-developer] Smooth Zoom

[Bot Obi <botobi gmail com>]

Adding a new "custom zoom" mode with adjustable zoom steps in the presets wouldn't remove anything that anybody got used to.

I don't think the programmatic complexity would increase dramatically as everything that's needed for the feature is already implemented (already by now the zoom level can be set to any value using the edit box in the status bar - it's just very inconvenient).

The main complexity will be the rendering when zooming very quickly with very fine zoom steps. But I think problems like this are common in GUI applications and could easily be handled (if not already done) by updating the view on a timely basis (e.g. ten times per second) instead of redrawing the whole view on every "zoom changed" event that might occur much more often.

 

2012/10/28 Jason Simanek <jsimanek gmail com>

On Sun 28 Oct 2012 08:04:08 AM CDT, Bot Obi wrote:

IMHO they could easily be as small as one
hundredth of the current zoom level (e.g. 1%-steps at 100%).

That would be too fine of increment for me.

For me the super-duper solution was to have two configurable zoom
steps in the presets: 1) a "fine zoom" step and 2) a "standard zoom"
step.

Agreed. It would be great to have a "fine" and "coarse" zoom keyboard shortcut. But – in reference to your 1% steps – it might be better to have two modes: "standard" and "custom". Standard mode would keep the pre-defined steps. Custom would allow you to set a percentage in the preferences.

Inkscape allows you to set a custom zoom step as a percentage, but this affects all zooming. It seems to work well, if only Inkscape could get GPU-handled rendering, it would be a very smooth experience.

The trick of course to changing something like this – before we've even determined the programmatic complexity of making it work – is to make sure the new feature doesn't replace a feature that certain users have grown to love. I personally can't see how anyone would prefer the preset steps to a customizable percentage step, but you never know.

Jason Simanek