On 02/26/2011 07:40 PM, Michael Grosberg wrote:

I've begun working on GIMP documentation so GIMP is on my mind a lot lately. So, I have a suggestion - remove the pencil tool, and instead, add a checkbox to the brush tool with an "antialiased" label. My reasoning is that for a new user, the difference between "brush" and "pencil" is not evident from their name or icon. They do pretty much the same thing with they only difference being that pencil is not antialiased. The pencil tool is nothing like an actual pencil. So, if we want the UI to reflect the actual workings of the program, it makes sense to do this.

The only objection I can think of is if in real-life situation people actually use the pencil tool in conjunction with the brush tool in such a way that they have a separate settings for each, and the change from one to other a lot. But that is what tool presets are for.

If you have a tablet, you can switch tools by reversing the stylus. It's meant for brush vs eraser, but someone must be using that for brush vs pencil :-)

I've begun working on GIMP documentation so GIMP is on my mind a lot lately. So, I have a suggestion - remove the pencil tool, and instead, add a checkbox to the brush tool with an "antialiased" label.

I'd go even further with that: make “antialiased” one of specific brush settings, not the “tool” itself. That way one would be able to have as much “pencils” predefined as one sees fit. And all that without touching tool tickbox back and forth if needed.

BTW. Is it possible to assign shortcut to a brush type or tool preset? Without it presets are only half-usable IMHO.

My reasoning is that for a new user, the difference between "brush" and "pencil" is not evident from their name or icon. They do pretty much the same thing with they only difference being that pencil is not antialiased. The pencil tool is nothing like an actual pencil. So, if we want the UI to reflect the actual workings of the program, it makes sense to do this.

I agree with that. After all, both these tools are made to scribble on the canvas with some shapes :).

The only objection I can think of is if in real-life situation people actually use the pencil tool in conjunction with the brush tool in such a way that they have a separate settings for each, and the change from one to other a lot. But that is what tool presets are for.

Not a problem, I think, as far as presets are accessible through shortcuts.

Best regards!
thebodzio

On Sat, 2011-02-26 at 19:57 +0100, Ofnuts wrote:

If you have a tablet, you can switch tools by reversing the stylus. It's meant for brush vs eraser, but someone must be using that for brush vs pencil :-)

There's no reason I can see that pencil couldn't just be a predefined tool preset for painting with an icon on the toolbox, and people be able to add their own presets to the toolbox and maybe bind them to keys.

The name is a little misleading - I'd expect a pencil to leave a soft grey stroke that's slightly uneven. Gimp's pencil tool is closer to a rapidograph-style drawing pen, except it doesn't clog up so easily :-)

Liam

On Sat, 2011-02-26 at 20:36 +0100, Bogdan Szczurek wrote:

I've begun working on GIMP documentation so GIMP is on my mind a lot lately. So, I have a suggestion - remove the pencil tool, and instead, add a checkbox to the brush tool with an "antialiased" label.

I'd go even further with that: make “antialiased” one of specific brush settings, not the “tool” itself. That way one would be able to have as much “pencils” predefined as one sees fit. And all that without touching tool tickbox back and forth if needed.

There's a difference between an aliased brush applied with the Brush tool compared to the same brush applied with the Pencil tool. Try it.

The Pencil tool is important for tasks that require pixel-perfect retouching, such as icon drawing, as it doesn't do sub-pixel positioning such as the Brush tool does.

But of course under the hood it's the same paint core with just one setting changed. But that is true for more tools. Paint tools, as the user sees them, are solely a user interface thing. They represent a certain bunch of properties set on the paint core. We could of course expose all these properties to the user and doing so would allow us to merge some tools. But actually I think it would be much better if we would offer more presets to choose from. Instead of merging Pencil and Paintbrush we should rather offer more variants like a "Soft Pencil" that works more like what Liam expects, a "Hard Pencil" for pixel-pefect icon retouching, a "Crayon", ...

Sven

But of course under the hood it's the same paint core with just one setting changed. But that is true for more tools. Paint tools, as the user sees them, are solely a user interface thing. They represent a certain bunch of properties set on the paint core. We could of course expose all these properties to the user and doing so would allow us to merge some tools. But actually I think it would be much better if we would offer more presets to choose from. Instead of merging Pencil and Paintbrush we should rather offer more variants like a "Soft Pencil" that works more like what Liam expects, a "Hard Pencil" for pixel-pefect icon retouching, a "Crayon", ...

It makes me think that maybe it would be good to offer such presets, agrred, but only if there's a way for user to define custom toolsets. So, instead of one fixed palette for everyone, we would have a flexible one. You want to draw or digipaint with GIMP? Fine! Have your own set of brushes for that. Possibly even with some colors preassigned. You want to retouch a photo? Okee! Have your set of smudges, patches, stamps, whatever rows your boat :). Anyway _your_ set of tools for _specific_ need, without a clutter of tools that you'll never use for your task. Maybe it all could be bound in one “perspective”, “workspace” or whatever-to-be-called that could be easily interchangeable between users (e.g. as a sinle file). This, I think, would give us one GIMP core with multitude of faces. Heck! Maybe even GIMP as raw photo editor for that matter ;).

Best regards! thebodzio