I have been ill for a bit, but I am looking through the "straight line"
tutorial.

http://docs.gimp.org/2.6/en/gimp-tutorial-straight-lines.html

I am very near the beginning so I do not yet have any serious comments.
That said, a lot of time is spent describing what a mouse looks like and
where to find it. There is also time spent describing the shift keys.

I usually expect that if the user is able to run GIMP, that should be able to find the mouse and the shift keys.

Sorry, I just wanted to vent!

Guess you have never sat behind a help desk?

Them's the questions you get

It is actually a good tutorial, and introduces paint tools and brushes as well the nitty gritty of starting things off.

Too easy for you? great, go on and do other things.

Andrew Douglas Pitonyak (apitonya@columbus.rr.com) wrote (in part) (on 2009-07-21 at 22:43):
....

http://docs.gimp.org/2.6/en/gimp-tutorial-straight-lines.html

...

It is actually a good tutorial, and introduces paint tools and

brushes
> as well the nitty gritty of starting things off. >
> Too easy for you? great, go on and do other things I agree that it is a very good tutorial. I learned a lot (now that I have finished it). I was just surprised because it is not easy to even start GIMP if you cannot find the mouse.

I am just finishing bringing it, and the screen shots, up to the latest version of GIMP.

The tutorial begins with an entire paragraph and pictures to show the SHIFT key and the mouse. At the end, it skips over the details on how to create the example images. Well, it did, anyway. It took me a bit to figure out some of them, but after I validated, built, visually verified, and spell checked, I create and submitted a patch.

I thought the description of the shift-key and mouse had a nice tongue in cheek feel to it.

Since you've been working on it and this seems to be an introductory tutorial - one point - where the tutorial says:

After you click the paintbrush tool, you can click the image. A single dot will appear on the screen. The size of this dot represents the current brush size, which you can change in the Brush Dialog (see Section 3.2, ""Brushes" Dialog"
). Now, lets start
drawing a line. Hold down the *Shift* button, and keep it down.

maybe you could add "Hitting the "[" or "]" key will increase or decrease the size of the dot (and the line we are going to draw).

I've just looked at section 3.3 and it doesn't actually show you how to increase/decrease size. In fact you have to "see the Brushes section for
basic information" to find:

Now, all brushes have a variable size. In fact, in the option box of all painting tools there is a slider to enlarge or reduce the size of the active brush. You can do this directly in the image window if you have set correctly your mouse wheel; see Varying brush size .

And on that link it *still* doesn't tell you those two handy short-cuts ... after Googling and looking through Preferences and Keyboard Shortcuts I *STILL* can't find anywhere that tells me that they exist and/or how to change them.

Googling: [site:docs.gimp.org "square bracket"] gets no hits though [gimp "square bracket"] *DOES* find a couple but only if you already know what keystroke you are looking for.

Hmmm ... how many other keystrokes are there that I don't know about - and where do I find them?

Alec Burgess (buralex@gmail.com) wrote (in part) (on 2009-07-22 at 04:40):

And on that link it *still* doesn't tell you those two handy short-cuts ... after Googling and looking through Preferences and Keyboard Shortcuts I *STILL* can't find anywhere that tells me that they exist and/or how to change them.

Googling: [site:docs.gimp.org "square bracket"] gets no hits though [gimp "square bracket"] *DOES* find a couple but only if you already know what keystroke you are looking for.

Hmmm ... how many other keystrokes are there that I don't know about - and where do I find them?

Never mind ... found them in menurc and then backtracked that to Keyboard Shortcuts and found them and others at the towards the bottom of the Tools section. Reading the names:

* /tools/tools-value-2-decrease" "bracketleft") * /tools/tools-value-2-increase" "bracketright")

and ditto for tools-value-1 decrease/increase makes me realize that these probably apply to other tools than just the brush tools - something I hadn't realized.

Definitely though, not the first thing a newbie to GIMP is going to stumble upon.

Hi,

On Wed, 2009-07-22 at 06:22 -0400, Alec Burgess wrote:

Never mind ... found them in menurc and then backtracked that to Keyboard Shortcuts and found them and others at the towards the bottom of the Tools section. Reading the names: * /tools/tools-value-2-decrease" "bracketleft") * /tools/tools-value-2-increase" "bracketright") and ditto for tools-value-1 decrease/increase makes me realize that these probably apply to other tools than just the brush tools - something I hadn't realized.

Right, 'tools-value-1' is interpreted as opacity by pretty much all tools. 'tools-value-2' refers to the size of the tip. This is different than using 'tools-paint-brush-scale' as it also works for tools such as the foreground-selection tool.

Sven

Hi Andrew,

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 08:52:53PM -0400, Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:

Good tips.... I will see if I can easily integrate them. I have already submitted my patch to Roman Joost. I will wait until it is integrated before I revisit that specific file. If I do not, I am more likely to have merge conflicts.

Pushed it today. Sorry for keep you waiting and thanks for the good work!

Cheers,