Hi all, Sven Neumann wrote: > [..] JPEG should not be offered as a save format. Saving > to a JPEG file is clearly an export. this is totally true. The problem is that this violates widely accepted UI standards. Usability shows it's ugly side here by demanding conformance to users' expectations even if those were formed by broken standards. In fact, the whole concept of 'Save to Harddisk' is fundamentally broken from a pure UI perspective [1]. Despite of that, the GIMP will have to support the Open->Edit->Save cycle for quite some years. This hints at providing different UIs: one that emphasises on technical soundness and a standard one which potentially jumps through hoops to meet users' expectations. While beeing an ugly thought at first, this opens up a lot of possibilies. Looking from outside, i've gotten the impression that the GIMP project has been beaten by similar issues before. I feel like too many GUI changes got discussed to death, because no one managed to come up with solutions which fit all user groups (let alone the coding perspective). At times, the project gets partially paralyzed by the lack of usability input. Sven's unanswered calls for specs are strewn throughout the archives. Quite paradoxically, splitting UI development into GIMP-Pro and GIMP-Standard could be beneficial for the GIMP as a project. This is not saying that such a split is desirable or unavoidable, the point is that it may speed up UI development by not hunting for the one unified GUI anymore. In case of the Export/Save logic such a solution may even be impossible due to problem roots outside the GIMP. I see the current state of Export/Save as the result of a not-untangled development process. The Pro users, in utter need of Export workflow automation features, get thwarted by useless dialogs (from their perspective), while Standard users are confused and usability measures are shurely subterraneous. No one is happy with that. The corresponding arguments in turn have been ping-ponged for years. Every now and then, someone new comes by and restarts the whole cycle, like myself. If all this energy could be freed for speccing & coding less universal UIs, i guess GIMP would make quick advances towards both an efficient Pro interface and a reasonably conforming Standard UI. The golden way, of course, would be to follow the Firefox path and allow new UIs to ripen as plug-ins [2]. This requires an omnipotent plug-in API, thus putting even more burden on the coders (as far as i can see). Dreaming of "Adam's Pupus Pipeline"[3] for nearly a decade now, i doubt the upcoming GEGL goodness will fill in that role anytime soon. Is it imaginable to have multiple GUIs for the GIMP? peter -- Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal für Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
