Alan Horkan (horkana@maths.tcd.ie) wrote:

I suggested that the old Toys be removed from the Gimp for version 2.2. To my surprise Mitch rejected the idea (without much explanation),

I definitely want these things to stay too. These toys have historically been easter eggs in the Gimp and - as Adam pointed out - are hard to port to make useful plugins.

However, these things are useless for practical purposes but they are fun. And fortunately we don't have to make GIMP a streamlined application where everything has to be optimized for maximum profit.

The "Toys" submenu IMO is such a point where fun prevails usability. The Submenu is clearly labeled, nobody should expect something usable in it and thats it. Since it does not conflict with the overall usabiltiy there is no point in killing these nifty toys.

Bye, Simon

Hi,

Alan Horkan writes:

If you still reject the idea I would ask you to keep the toys in mind when it comes to menu reorganisation. (Wiki is still down otherwise I'd add this to the menu reorganisation document we had there). The Gnome HIG recommends:

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/menus.html#menu-type-submenu Do not create submenus with fewer than three items, unless the items are added dynamically (for example the File->New Tab submenu in gnome-terminal).

Looks as if we need a third Toy then. Any volunteers?

Sven

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Alan Horkan wrote:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=148027

Given that some less used file formats have been removed in recently releases on the basis of less code to maintain and less general clutter I suggested that the old Toys be removed from the Gimp for version 2.2. To my surprise Mitch rejected the idea (without much explanation), Adam who wrote the toys didn't seem to think it was a terrible idea so I'm asking onlist to try and get a second opinion.

If Excel had a flight simulator, Gimp can have a few toys. :)

If toys like Gee-Zoom were built on top of a useful plugin (eg some sort of a kaleidescope plugin for example) I wouldn't even be asking but they toy are not useful at all sso users are just presented with eye-candy and left wondering how they can get that effect on their actual image but they cannot.

I guess it wouldn't be impossible to have Gee-Zoom render individual frames as layers, but that ignores the real question, which is why we don't have some cool effect like gee-slime on the splash screen.

If you still reject the idea I would ask you to keep the toys in mind when it comes to menu reorganisation. (Wiki is still down otherwise I'd add this to the menu reorganisation document we had there).

The Gnome HIG recommends:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/menus.html#menu-type-submenu Do not create submenus with fewer than three items, unless the items are added dynamically (for example the File->New Tab submenu in gnome-terminal).

Fortunately, this is only a recommendation. Since the toys are rarely used, I think the uniformity of the Filters menu having just submenus and the usefullness of having the Toys being explicitly labeled as such is better overall. If we broke out all the menus that have only two items, I don't think the menu would fit on the screen. :)

Besides, the best solution is to add another toy.

Rockwalrus