I first loaded up gimp 1.3.17 not long after my grocer and I split up.
I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk
about, except that is had something to do with the miserably weary
split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.
This was the first chance I've had to spend quality time with gimp in
several years. After this long separation from gimp, I feel that my
eyes are pretty fresh. I hope my fresh perspective can spot some
problems that may be overlooked due to over-familiarity by those who
work on it every day, due to your over-familiarity. Since it would take
far too long to write about all that is right with the new gimp I will
only write about what I find wrong with it.
Preferences->Interface->Tool Options->
Default threshold: Why do we need this here?
Just remember the last value I set in each tool.
recommend removal
Default Interpolation: Same as above.
The transform tools ignore this one anyway.
Perhaps we need to do something to make
the interpolation options stand out more
visually in the scale dialogs?
recommend removal
Brushes Pallet:
It won't let you delete those useless brushes that ship with the
gimp. I know you can edit the brushes path in the preferences
dialog to get red of them, but most beginners will have no idea.
Unfortunately changing the brush path will remove all the brushes
even if there were a few you wanted to keep. (This goes for
gradients and patterns also)
RECOMMENDATION: gimp should copy (or ln -s?) the system brushes into
the users folder when it is launched for the first time. Single
user systems will never miss the meg or two this takes. On
multiuser systems the admins can prune the system brush library.
The round brushes shipped with gimp should be editable.
RECOMMENDATION: recreate the round brushes as .vbr brushes.
When previewing very large brushes the scaled down preview gets
wonky.
RECOMMENDATION: Find and fix bug in code.
In the year 2003 why can't we scale pixmap brushes?
RECOMMENDATION: Keep dreaming.
Making .gbr (or gih) type brushes is non intuitive. It requires
saving as a .gbr file into a hidden directory (how many people
even know how to get into hidden directories in the gtk file
dialog?) and then hitting refresh in the brush dialog. I just now
noticed script-fu->selection->to-brush. Much better, but hard to
find.
RECOMMENDATION: Move aforementioned script-fu to the bottom the
the main select menu. Do the same with to-pattern
and to-image items? (Should probably rewrite the
script-fus as native functions) (should the main
select menu be renamed to selection???)
When painting with large (400pixel+) soft .vbr type brushes
banding can be seen.
RECOMMENDATION: Do error diffusion dithering in brush mask
calculation?
Double check the code vbr code for precision errors.
The banding could be coming from somewhere else,
make sure we don't just cover up deeper problems.
(I'll track this one down myself)
When moving the mouse over an image window with a brush tool
selected, the brush shaped cursor outline seems to jiggle around a
little.
RECOMMENDATION: Bow down and thank mitch for implementing the brush
shaped cursor feature.
Other Stuff
Leopard and Brick patterns do not properly tile.
RECOMMENDATION: get gimp-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to fix them.
It requires two key presses (shift and =/+) to zoom-in which is one
of the most common operations that gets used. (this is on US
keyboards)
RECOMMENDATION: accept '=' and '+' to zoom in. Additionally setup
mouse
button shortcuts for zooming in and out. Perhaps
ctrl-middle for zoom in, and ctrl-shift-middle for
zoom out. This will keep peoples left hand on left
side of the keyboard and their right hand on the mouse
which is exactly where they belong. (is it a pita to
have multiple keyboard shortcuts for the same item?)
Thats enough for now. I'll add the important stuff in here to
bugzilla tomorrow.
Jay Cox
jaycox@xxxxxxxx
PS: I was skeptical at first, but I am happy with a 2.0 designation
for the next release of gimp.
