On Thu, 16 Jan 2003 06:02:11 -0600, "Kevin Myers" <KevinMyers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Thanks a lot for the great tip regarding the "1" key. I wasn't aware of > that. That will certainly be a significant help to me, assuming that my > initial scaling proposal will not be accepted. Just goes to show you learn > something new every day! Wish I had noticed that one in the docs or someone > had told me about it months ago... I am glad that this hint can help you. Note that you could have found this shortcut by looking at the menu <Image>->View->Zoom. You can also assign some shortcut keys to the other pre-defined zoom factors, if this is useful for you: just type the corresponding key while the menu entry is selected. > I do still have one question for you guys who are against my proposal > though: Have any of you ever actually used the GIMP with images of the size > and aspect ratio that I'm routinely working with??? I'm betting not. Well, you lost your bet. ;-) I had to work once on a ridiculously large timeline. Also, I did several tests with large images using unusual aspect ratios while trying to reproduce some previous bug reports, but the latter probably doesn't count as real work. I know that the images with an extreme aspect ratio (very small or very large) are not so easy to work with, when they exceed the size of your screen by at least one order of magnitude. > Perhaps you might consider putting more weight on someone's opinion who is > ACTUALLY using the gimp with these types of images. However, please take > that comment with a grain of salt. I'm not all that stuck up on my own > opinions, even though I am stubborn as hell :-) But I am just a little > frustrated right now, because I've put in a fair amount of time and effort > into getting this issue resolved with a fix that will save me some time, and > all of the negatives that folks are bringing up seem to be hypothetical, > theoretical, and philosophical arguments rather than something that helps me > to get real work done! I understand your frustration. I felt the same when some of my patches were rejected, although I was convinced that they were the best solution to the problem they were addressing (and that was true in some cases, but they were introducing other problems that caused the patch to be rejected and replaced by a different solution). But for the problem described here, I think that it is better for the GIMP to set the initial scaling factor in a way that is easy to understand, so that the GIMP's behavior can be predicted easily by the users. For most images, this rule is simple: try to fit the image on the screen; if it doesn't fit, scale it down until it does. So in the end, the user sees the whole image with the correct aspect ratio. The main argument here is that the GIMP should try to follow the "principle of least surprise" whenever possible. -Raphaël
