Hi all.
Please see my previous mail for more context of this problem.
We also discussed some changes to the UI:
The company representative I was talking to was also concerned about the
amount of functionality in the GIMPs UI and fears that it might be
overwhelming to the operators, plus that it also makes it easy to use
functionality that actually is harmful to the task at hand. I explained
that it is possible to reduce the amount of stuff shown on screen
(including making specific tools invisible, possibly even changing XML
files to reduce the number of menu entries), but also mentioned that
we're not too keen on having that, since it possibly increases the
support ballast for our community. It remains to be evaluated how much
changes are actually needed there.
One thing which came up though (and which we already have discussed in
the past IIRC) is the need for a better support for multiple documents
in single window mode. The software they're using currently is using a
classic Windows Multiple Documents Interface (MDI) and they do in fact
make use of it. I tried to explain why I personally consider GIMPs
multiple window interface as quite good, but the not-so-great support
for multiple desktops in windows (and the bad window management) made
this a tough point to sell... :)
I see two options here and I think we've been discussing these in the
past.
a) create multiple side-by-side image views within the single window
mode. We could allow for tiling the image area into multiple
notebooks, each containing its own set of images, allowing for
Drag'n'Drop between them etc. ppp. My gut feeling is that this
should be quite doable. It might be a bit tricky to control the
keyboard focus there and to make it clear to the user, which of the
images will be affected by the next keystroke.
b) (not necessary XOR) it might be feasible to allow for a kind of
hybrid single/multiple window mode, where one can drag out notebook-tabs
into their own image view that then is managed by the window
manager. So we would have one dedicated main window containing the
toolbox and the notebook-area with image views as well as separate
windows containing image views (or a notebook of image views?).
Not sure how much consensus we have on this point and what amount of
effort is needed here.
Another thing related to the UI was to have a dockable, which would
contain a configurable set of buttons referring to specific actions (as
in "menu items"). That might be a handy thing for quickly acessing
frequently used functionality.
Another thing was a histogram for indexed images: Obviously counting the
indexed colors is important to calcuate the amount of color needed for
the carpet. The current histogram dockable could be extended with a more
tabular view for indexed images.
I'd welcome input on that topic.
Bye,
Simon
--
simon@xxxxxxxx http://simon.budig.de/
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