On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:36:53 -0500, Adrian Likins <adrian@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Sven mention on irc the issue of choosing what the default setup for 2.4 > should be. So here are some of my thoughts: > > > 1. In the toolbox, the fg/bg color, and brush/patter/gradient boxes > should be on. Maybe. But another option (mentioned in your point 2) would be to make sure that the color selector tab is always included in the default session (even when upgrading from a previous gimp version!) and that it is visible by default (first tab). In this case, I am not sure that we need the separate indicator. We can save some precious desktop space by not having it on by default. > 2. Add color selector and palette dialogs to the default "Layers, > Channels, Paths, Undo | Brushes, Patterns, Gradient" dialog that comes > up currently. Yes, it should be there by default. The default left-side panel should be: Layers, Channels, Paths, Undo | Color, Brushes, Patterns, Gradients. Adding Palettes there by default could also be useful, especially with the new (and very useful) palette color picker in the color selector. > 3. Change the default image size (any particular reason it is 377x233?) > I'd suggest 1024x768 I'd suggest VGA (640x480) or even less, so that it fits on a 1024x768 screen. Web statistics from July 2006 show that only 19% of the users have screens larger than 1024x768. While I expect this percentage to be higher among GIMP users (maybe close to 40% or 50%?), we should still make sure that the default settings work fine on a typical laptop screen (widescreen laptops are not so common yet even if they represent the majority of the new sales in many countries). > 4. Don't show the devices dialog by default. It's a bit redundant with > #1, and only shows one device for most users. Right. > 5. It might be nice to have the stock round/square brushes be dynamic > brushes by default. (If I understand correctly, theres a small > concern that this might break some existing scripts?) This has been discussed before. From my point of view, I am not concerned at all about the scripts but I am more concerned about usability aspects. The current bitmap brushes allow you to quickly switch between different predefined sizes without having to play with the brush size slider. This is not so easy to do with scalable brushes. > 6. A wider selection of basic brushes would be good, especially with the > #5. Agreed. Any proposals? > 7. I'd like to see some high resolution brushes included, especially now > with brush downscaling being easy to get to. Again agreed. Any proposals? ;-) > 8. Maybe some more examples of pixmap/hose brushes. I kind of hate that > green pepper and vine brush (and I made them...). Not sure what > exactly yet, but I have some ideas: > a. something that makes obvious use of the directional pipes > would be good. > b. Maybe a simple tube drawing brush > (aka, a rendered sphere with the spacing set to a low value) > c. Maybe a couple more (bigger) sizes of the Pencil Sketch > brushes > d. a wilber brush? (totally useless, but hey... it's wilber) > e. a series of flipped versions of the "Caligraphic Brush" > series Some time ago, I found some nice examples of directional brushes: one with ants and the other one with feet. Alas I don't have them anymore and I am not sure about their licence terms. But something like that would be nice to include in the default GIMP package. I have seen many PSP brushes showing random water drops, snowflakes or other things similar to the animated "Sparks" brush. Adding one or two of those could also be nice. These may not be very useful for graphics professionals, but it would certainly be nice for the amateur web designers or for those who want to impress their friends by creating cheezy Christmas cards with GIMP. > 9. I'd turn on "Save Tool options on exit" by default. We have a "reset > to default" in the dialogs if someone wants to reset the tools. Hmmm... I'm not sure about that one. I easily forget that I had lowered the brush opacity in my previous gimp session and sometimes it takes me a while to see that something is wrong. I prefer to start in a predictable state. Of course I can turn off the auto-save feature. But I am not sure about what the default should be... > 10. Man, am I ever tired of those default pattern options. (Mostly > my fault unfortunately). They didn't age very well. Not sure > if we can do much about it without breaking scripts. We could add more without breaking scripts. On the other hand, I am not sure if it is worth it. I do not use them much anyway. > 11. Ditto with the gradients, though we should probably add another > example or two of using the dynamic color stuff in gradients Agreed. The first 4 gradients after the FG to BG ones are not so interesting (Abstract 1, 2, 3 and Aneurism). -Raphaël _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
