On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Sven Neumann wrote: > The point is that the GPL explicitely asks to present the user with You are telling me that most of the programs in Gnome and KDE are wrong and the GIMP is right. I will go and read the GPL again and I will read the GPL FAQ and see if I can figure out where is this explicit requirement to display the license. > this copyright notice on very startup. I think it is good style to do > so at the very first startup at least. Find it annoying, I find it > amusing and it definitely doesn't hurt. > The changes are not in CVS yet. There was no way for me to know what the recent changes you made are, could you please say what they are? > This is a bad example since there are other reasons for this being a > separate menu entry. Bad example, fine I'll try another. The GIMP hides information, the GIMP hides the menus in a context/right click menu instead of up front in Menu (at least until recently, now there is at least an option which I am very thankful for). This is hiding useful information, this is adding one extra click to many operations. Many gimp users swear by hiding this information away and many more swear at it. I believe the standard excuse is screen space, but if screen space is really important to you then you would run the GIMP in fullscreen view (with or without a menubar*) which gets rid of the pixels wasted by the window manager (another recent addition it seems). (* Photoshop allows a menubar in fullscreen mode which really allows you to make the most of the available space and still have the convenience of a menubar. If the GIMP does I have not yet figured out how to keep the menubar turned on in Fullscreen mode) > > Take the example of Red Eye correction, you can do Red Eye correction in > > the GIMP but many programs have a dialog specifically for doing this task > > which makes things easier but does not make the program any less powerful. I thought this might be a better example of how hiding unnecessary detail make an application more useful not less useful. If asking all these questions at startup is such a good idea why not ask the users even more questions, why not get them to set every preference? If this is such a good idea why are no other Gnome or KDE programs doing this? Does the operating system or distribution you use include many programs that ask you many questions before you are allowed to use them for the first time? > just don't see why we should put valuable developers time in removing I am not asking you to do it. I am asking you to let it happen. The attitude I keep encountering is a strong resistance to progress. I know I probably should have fough for these changes earlier in the 1.3.x cycle but most distributions still ship Gimp 1.2.x. The bulk of GIMP users are not using 1.3.x yet. For most users the changes are going to be quite dramatic anyway which is why I dont understand why my suggestions are so contraversial. I want you to accept that changes like these could and should be made and to stop dragging your heels just because that is the way things are now and have been before instead of giving real reasons for things being the way they are. If you were more receptive then I would be able to go off and worry about getting a suitable patch done (by me or with help or whatever). Sincerely Alan Horkan.
