Ilya Zakharevich wrote: > On 2009-10-21, yahvuu <yahvuu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> The analogy was given to show why the the current interface to blending >> (i.e. choosing among a discrete set of layer modes) is a poor one: > > And my message was intended to show why the current interface is a > very good one... > >> it is both limited and mostly non-intuitive. > > IMO, "non-intuitive" is 100% fault of GIMP developers. The current > documentation is plain insulting... Ilya, if you're aiming for any other goal besides insulting the developers you should thoroughly adjust your posting habits. In case you're not fully aware of the situation: improving a program ultimatively means patching the code. Just talking about how things should be instead of doing things is thus already dangerously close to telling others what to do. Talking is cheap, they say. Also do note that suggesting improvements is likely to implicitely criticize other people's prior work. There's more than enough reason to be as polite as possible. In general, the best channel to suggest UI improvements is the UI brainstorm: http://gimp-brainstorm.blogspot.com/ > Layer modes is a very simple and intuitive concept. The only thing > missing is documentation well, if layer modes and their usage were as simple and intuitive as you claim: why then is documentation necessary at all? People's intuition seems to differ widely. > (I'm going to address it in more details when > the waves from my previous posts would subdue...). This mailing list is not about making waves. Sad you have to be told. Documentation improvements, however are shurely welcome over at gimp-docs. Feel free to use the following template at will: # hi gimp-documenters, # # i'd like to do the following changes to the layer modes section of the manual: # 1. xxxxxxx # 2. yyyyyyy # # To me, this seems like a big improvement. # What you do think? A patch is welcome? # ... > Hope this helps, your strewn-in insults are anything but helpful. > P.S. WRT "limited": what *exactly* do you want to do which follows > the semantic of layer modes ("a function of two variables" > applied to pixels), and you cannot do now (AND would not be able > to do when "decent groupsing" is allowed)? what i consider as the 'intuitive' part of the current layer mode interface is using the scrollwheel to select a different mode within the current group. For example, if the current mode is 'screen' you can scroll up and down to adjust for more or less brightening (for some sense of brightening). The current interface is quite limited with regards to the number of layer modes it can host. Currently, there are 15 'RGB' modes (the 'f(a,b)' type) and it is already a cognitive burden to memorize their names. Now for more fine-grained control of blending characteristics even more blend modes are necessary. However, a drop-down list of 50 blend modes to choose from would not be acceptable. So in effect, the current interface is limited to rather coarse adjustments of blending characteristics. greetings, yahvuu _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
