Hi,

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 6:41 AM, Daniel Hornung wrote:

Hi,

in case it's not too late (meaning "a brand-new floating selection replacement is to be implemented soon"), I have a small proposal to make the current behaviour a bit more user-friendly:

While working on a floating selection, clicking outside the floating selection with a modifier key pressed ("Alt" seems to be free for that at the moment), a new layer should be created in the same way as pressing the "new layer" button in the layers dialog.

Current status: When the mouse is outside the floating selection, a single click will anchor the floating selection to its current "parent" layer. This behaviour is also announced in the status bar.

Rationale: Creating a new layer from a floating selection is needed about as often as anchoring it (if not more often). Thus a handy way to do this without moving the mouse across the desktop should be provided. There seems to be a default shortcut for this already (Ctrl+Shit+N), but esp. for tablet users a single click would be faster. Alt+click doesn't seem to be used for anything special at the moment yet.

What do you think?

This is usually effectively the same as pasting (ctrl+V for most people, Insert for me). Is creating a floating selection that does not match the clipboard contents a common use case, or do we just need to document this behaviour better?

David

Hi,

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 2:34 AM, Daniel Hornung wrote:

On Thursday 20 November 2008, David Gowers wrote:

This is usually effectively the same as pasting (ctrl+V for most people, Insert for me). Is creating a floating selection that does not match the clipboard contents a common use case, or do we just need to document this behaviour better?

Sorry, I think there's a misunderstanding here:

I proposed a mouse-driven way to create a new layer from an existing floating selection. (And not to paste the current (floating) selection into the

Okay then, 'New layer' button does this (unless you also want to keep the floating layer around -- that can be done too with a bit of scripting). There is also a 'new layer' action available that you can bind a key to, that does the same thing.

Kind of hinted at here: http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-using-layers.html

being more explicit is better though.

(the above page may also be out of date -- GIMP now preserves the exact shape of the clipboard rather than autocropping to hold the content in a minimal rectangle)

respective layer.)

And yes, that Ctrl-V anchors a copy of the current floating selection was new to me and probably should be better documented. Plus the "Edit" menu entry

To be exact, it anchors any current floating selection before creating a new floating selection.

still says "Paste Ctrl+V" while "Paste Into" (which does the same) does not have a shortcut listed.

Paste Into is markedly different from Paste.

Try this:

1. Open an image. 2. Edit->Copy
3. Make a circular selection
4. Edit->Paste Into

Essentially, 'Paste into' uses the selection mask to mask out parts of the selection, whereas 'Paste' clears the selection beforehand.

http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-edit-paste-into.html

With 'Paste into' it's possible to quickly paste one or more things into a limited area.
(I personally favor layer masking for this; however for speed of use, Paste Into is superior.)

Btw, http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-selection-float.html still seems to be from 2.4 times (or older), I'll crosspost this fact to the gimp-docs mailing list as well.

Older for sure :) Just plain confusing. I think a crossreference to
http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-using-selections.html#gimp-using-selections-moving is also a good thing to include in the floating-selections page.

(I'm pretty sure we are trying to get rid of floating selections, but I suspect we will only be free to find an adequate alternative when the projection system is completely GEGLized.

David

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 6:35 AM, David Gowers wrote:

Hi,

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 2:34 AM, Daniel Hornung wrote:

On Thursday 20 November 2008, David Gowers wrote:

This is usually effectively the same as pasting (ctrl+V for most people, Insert for me). Is creating a floating selection that does not match the clipboard contents a common use case, or do we just need to document this behaviour better?

Sorry, I think there's a misunderstanding here:

I proposed a mouse-driven way to create a new layer from an existing floating selection. (And not to paste the current (floating) selection into the

Okay then, 'New layer' button does this (unless you also want to keep the floating layer around -- that can be done too with a bit of scripting). There is also a 'new layer' action available that you can bind a key to, that does the same thing.

Oops, I see you originally suggested modifier-clicking to create a new layer. Sorry, I do not agree with that proposition, it seems too fiddly to me -- esp. because there is no reliably free modifier key. (Alt is only unused by paint, transform (and color?) tools; All selection tools use Alt.)

Now if we could bind actions to mouse gestures, this kind of thing would come up less often I think.

However, are you aware you could bind Alt+scrollwheel-up to new-layer to achieve a very similar result?
This works properly with all tools, too, since it is genuinely non-conflicting.

David