From: Alan Horkan <horkana@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: Phil Harper <philharper@xxxxxxxxxxx> CC: gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] A fresh pair of eyes. Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2003 03:02:57 +0100 (BST) MIME-Version: 1.0
On Sat, 2 Aug 2003, Phil Harper wrote:
> >Alan Horkan <horkana@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > > > so how do you scroll sideways (using the wheel)? > > > is this the same keybinding as Photoshop? > > > >Dunno what PS uses but GIMP uses Ctrl.
> is there some plan that everything in GIMP should fall inline with
> Photo$hop? those who already use the old ways of doing things probably wont
> like having their workflow messed with further.
Not officially. In fact there seem to be people actively resisting it who insist on being differnt just for the sake of being differnt.
Clone first and innovate later.
Follow standards, even defacto standards unless there is a damned good reason to do otherwise.
make every window manager and desktop just like windows, and every graphics app just like photoshop, every vector app just like illustrator...
i personally see more importance in following a defacto standard in an app like Gnumeric or Abiword than in something like GIMP, but that's probably just me.
The GIMP itself is a defacto standard, ask the average Linux/BSD user about image editing and they will recommend the GIMP for just about everything, not many know well enough to recommend Image Magic for batch proccessing. I know there are a few simpler image editing programs but users end up getting thrown in at the deep end and told to just learn to use the GIMP.
or sometimes people offer to help them in their learning and suggest that they might want to read a book to help, i supose this is a good chance for the second edition of Grokking the GIMP though(any plans anyone know?) :)
I am increasingly noticing that quite a few applictions copy the GIMP and if I ever want to get them to change I am unfortunately going to have try and change the GIMP first or at the very least get people to admit that they have absolutely know idea why things are done a certain way except that the are already that way.
The "old ways" aaah, you may notice the GIMP has changed quite a bit since 1.2 and needs to keep on changing. The old keybindings could and should be put in a "old ways" menurc so that we can get on with making a powerful image editor that caters to a wide audience with user friendly defaults (see Ctrl+Shift+Z for details). The older users are also the people most easily able to change and adapt to new but reasonable defaults.
This may seem like a bit of a rant but really ... I dont even know myself anymore but it is things like this that annoy me so much that I had no choice but to stick my nose in and keep making my opinions known.
i still don't understand why the keybindings would need to fall inline with P$ simply to make the sofware apeal to a wider audience, there are lots of die hard adobe users who will never even try GIMP, and then there are the win32 GIMP users, a lot of who know little about configuring their GIMP, but, have learned the old way of doing things, and would like to continue working in that way, there is already an optional set of P$menurc settings isn't there, so if people want that they can have it, but i personally don't much like the idea of thrusting it upon them as a default, i will adapt to the new settings with time, and the phasing out of 1.2, but really, i don't think there's a need to.
and if other software copies the GIMP's way of doing things then surely it can't be that bad a way, changing GIMP 2.0 won't neceseraly make all those apps which do so fall inline with the new stup, in fact it may introduce yet another set of keybindings for those poor linux users to contend with.
anyway, this is very much a ranty and emotive issue, but probably not an important one, they've changed, we must just accept that i guess.
Phil.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
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