[Gimp-user] Text tool: Toolbox vs. on-canvas options

[Richard <strata_ranger hotmail com>]

As much as I love the new on-canvas text editing in GIMP 2.8, I do run into some creative disputes with the 
on-canvas text editor from time to time....

My main issue is that the on-canvas options are used to provide local style overrides (e.g. emphasizing a 
word here or there) and have no connection to the default settings for the text object as a whole.  Local 
style overrides are good and all, but there are some scenarios where you might think (even expect) the 
on-canvas options to change the default for the text object as a whole, and they don't.  And not 
understanding that these are separate settings leads to problems down the road, such as:

1 - If there is no selection inside the text, the on-canvas controls have no immediate (visible) effect; they 
appear to "not work" because there is no selection to affect.  GIMP makes no attempts to divine whether you 
intended to change the default style or specify a new one to start typing with (which is a rightly thorny 
issue by itself).  As an alternative idea - you know how if you double-click it selects the current word, and 
if you triple-click it selects all text in the object?  How about adding an intermediary step where it 
selects all nearby words that share the same style?  E.g. 2 clicks - current word; 3 clicks - current style; 
4 clicks - all text

(Another alternative would be, in the Layers dialog, display a text object like a layer group instead of a 
single layer, similar to the display of an XML tree.  But I'm sure the technical implementation would be 
horribly complex :[  )

2 - Inversely, select all text in the object and then make some adjustment to it (font face/size/color).  
This has the same (visible) effect as changing the default style, but again, technically you are specifying a 
local style that just happens to cover the length of the entire text object and GIMP is making no attempts to 
discern whether that was actually your intent.  The immediate result is - if the cursor is placed at the 
start of the text object then any insertions are typed using the default style, while if the cursor is placed 
at the end, any insertions are typed using the local style.  I don't really see any ideal alternative 
behavior here (word processors in general tend to do the same thing) outside of just "don't do that". 

3 - Related to #2:  When creating a text object, click once to get started, but before the initial typing, 
make some adjustments via on-canvas controls (again, font face/size/color).  Again, whether you 
realize/expect it or not you are typing using a local style override that is not affected by the default 
options in the toolbox.

4 - If you use the on-canvas controls to specify a setting that happens to match as the default (toolbox) 
options, it is actually -not- the same setting but invisibly different.  E.g. type "Lorem Ipsum" at 24px 
size; then change the word "Lorem" to 28; then change it back to 24 (do not Undo this; change it back 
manually). Now adjust the default font size in the toolbox; the word "Lorem" does not change in size because 
it's not actually using the default size, it's using a local size that just -coincidentally matches- the 
default size.  (A similar thing applies with font face and color.)  Here, the on-canvas Font Face and Font 
Size boxes could benefit from an additional entry (labelled "default" or something) to identify when a given 
section of text is using the default face/size or not; there's no easy way to tell at the moment.

5 - Speaking of font sizes, an option/setting/preference to scale local font sizes (on-canvas options) 
relative to changes made in the default size (toolbox options) would be stellar.  Say I'm using 'small caps' 
to emphasize words or phrases in one of my text objects -- which I do by typing the emphasized words in 
ALLCAPS and then shrinking their text size by a notch (e.g. 20 px default style -> 16 px local style).  Some 
time later I want to scale my text object from a default of 20px to 40px and I do -- but my smallcaps words 
are stuck at 16px and I have to resize them manually.  If I was choosing a different form of emphasis 
(bold/italic) this would not be a problem, but as it stands....

6 - And, out of two years' occasional GIMP 2.8 usage I did not even once realize there was a button in the 
on-canvas box labelled "clear style of selected text".  (A.k.a. the 'revert' button.)  How come I never 
noticed it before?  . . . I'm thinking maybe because its icon is a -paintbrush-.  (Y'know, an interior 
decorating paintbrush like you'd buy at a home improvement store instead of an art store.)  See, paintbrushes 
are tools that 'do' stuff, not 'undo' stuff.  Shouldn't the icon be an eraser instead?  Or even that 
arrow-circling-about-back-to-itself like we have on every other reset-to-default button in every toolbox?

I also have some gripes about the placement of the 'clear style' button (now that I'm aware of it) in the 
on-canvas toolbox, but that's eclipsed by it having a counter-intuitive icon.

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