On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 10:32:50AM -0600, Scott wrote:

Using the 2.2 version, the interface of the crop tool was very handy for me. Typing Shift-c brings up the tool; a quick move of the mouse creates a selection area; over to the tool-option menu that automatically pops up, type in 300 and 200 for the dimensions; now grab the lower-left handle and move the selection as desired, click and it's done.

The old crop tools was ok if you have a fixed target size. The dialog always got in the way for the cases where you crop the image to find the right aspect.

I recently upgraded to Mandrivel 2007, which includes the 2.3. Did my first crop this morning. No tool-option. Okay, clicked on the tools, or view, or some danged thing, found the tool option. Hmmm, a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't really relate to what I am doing. Finally I find some hidden dimensioning menu and enter in the 300 and 200.

The new place of the dimensions saves me from having to move a dialog out of my way every time. I'm less happy about the expander, though.

Grab the lower left corner - whoops! All the corners resize the selection! Handy.... not.

Resizing and finding the right cutout has become way easier now.

Instead of automatically confining itself to the image as before, I can move the selection outside of the image. Now that's *really* handy - like I would ever want to select a certain size and then have part of it outside the image.....

Sometimes I need to crop extending to outside the current image. But there should be an option for confining to current size. On by default, as it's the right choice in most cases, I think.

How can a tool so simple in concept and so frequently used as "crop" have been bollixed up so badly?

To me it seems it's just that you see only a single use case ;)

-- Thorsten Wilms

Scott wrote:

How can a tool so simple in concept and so frequently used as "crop" have been bollixed up so badly?

By working on it.

If you are interested in the progress and want to influence future development, you should try to get GIMP built directly from CVS. Even current 2.3 releases (right now 2.3.12) get outdated pretty soon because they are tested by a larger user group and thus trigger changes due to reported bugs.

Bugs are reported in Bugzilla. http://bugs.gimp.org is a redirect to the overview for GIMP, this is where someone who wants to report a bug should start to search for similiar reports.

P.S. GIMP 2.3 is not supposed to replace GIMP 2.2. It is recommended to have 2.2 installed and use it for production work. It's also useful to have it around when testing 2.3, because you may be asked or may want to compare its behaviour to the previous version.

HTH, Michael

From: Scott

[...lots of stuff...]

I don't know if this is the proper place to post this sort of thing, but I do hope that you developers will consider listening to some of us casual users, as the interface has gotten way too overloaded and user-unfriendly. I seriously am thinking of going back to 2.2, and I shudder to even think of what a mess 2.4 is going to be if this is any indication of "progress". How can a tool so simple in concept and so frequently used as "crop" have been bollixed up so badly?

Scott, thanks for the feedback, although you could try to be a bit less emotional about it, since this is after all a development version. Several of the things you complain about have already been changed in the most recent builds, motivated by feedback similar to yours. Others simply reflect that you haven't learned yet how to use the new features. For example, if you always want a 300x200 crop region, you can set the width and height in the options, *and activate the checkboxes next to them*. If you do that, then the width and height will stay fixed no matter what you do with any of the corners.

Best wishes,

-- Bill

______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Sent via the CNPRC Email system at primate.ucdavis.edu

------- Forwarded message ------- From: gg@catking.net
To: Scott
Cc:
Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] More interface rantings Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 00:23:37 +0200

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 22:29:31 +0200, Scott wrote:

Can someone point me to a hint on how to get the newest CVS version? I don't have lots of time, but I guess if I have further comments I ought to be looking at the newest bleeding edge.

I define an alias to make life easier:

alias gncvs='cd /svn && cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome '

create yourself a directory with lots of free space, cd to it.

bash# gncvs login password:
bash# gncvs co gimp
bash# cd gimp
bash# ./autogen.sh
bash# make && make install

bash# gimp

HTH

gg@catking.net wrote:

I define an alias to make life easier:

alias gncvs='cd /svn && cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome '

You do know that you have to do this step only once, don't you? Afterwards it's just cvs up.

And the release notes (http://gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.3.html) recommend to use something like --prefix=/opt/gimp-2.3 as parameters for autogen.sh.

HTH,
Michael

On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 02:29:31PM -0600, Scott wrote:

I also completely fail to see
any reason why areas outside the image should be selectable by a crop tool. If I lay a paper photograph on a table and take an xacto knife to it, do I reasonably expect to cut out part of the table along with what I cut out of the photograph? It is nonsensical.

You're quick with a word like 'nonsensical', when in fact you just have a narrow view on this.

You could for example have a photo and now you want to add a border around it. The canvas size dialog doesn't the same direct manipulation.

The GIMP is also a nice tool for drawing. Here it can always happen that you want to change the composition. Perhaps the foreground asks for more space on the left. Easy to do with the crop tool, especialy now it has guides (center, golden cut ...).

-- Thorsten Wilms

On Sat, 21 Oct 2006 01:18:58 +0200, Michael Schumacher wrote:

gg@catking.net wrote:

I define an alias to make life easier:

alias gncvs='cd /svn && cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome '

You do know that you have to do this step only once, don't you? Afterwards it's just cvs up.

And the release notes (http://gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.3.html) recommend to use something like --prefix=/opt/gimp-2.3 as parameters for autogen.sh.

HTH,
Michael

AFAIK it is necessary to supply -d arg to each command unless you set up env variables to dedicate all further use of cvs to gnome . The link to the release notes will certainly be helpuful for getting 2.3 to cohabit with 2.2.

Distribution of binary packages of the development version is discouraged unless it is made clear that this >>is an early development snapshot.

Maybe the OP would like to bring that to the attn. of Mandrivel 2010 devs !

On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 02:29:31PM -0600, Scott wrote:

So two more mouse clicks. I'll learn, I'll learn.... But the deal with the lower-left/upper-right handles being movers and the other two being stretchers has been a feature of gimp for a long time.

I haven't played with the latest CVS version of the Gimp, but I too am a long-standing user of the crop tool and that's a feature I've despised for a long time. I'm glad to hear it's going away.

From: Thorsten Wilms

The old crop tools was ok if you have a fixed target size. The dialog always got in the way for the cases where you crop the image to find the right aspect.

Your text gives an impression that the old crop tool is not anymore there. Is that the case?

The fact is that people have different ways of working and therefore having two (or more) versions of the tools would be perfectly ok. It would be annoying if you are trying to squeeze people to one mold.

Juhana

On 10/27/06, Juhana Sadeharju wrote:

Your text gives an impression that the old crop tool is not anymore there. Is that the case?

Yes, it is

The fact is that people have different ways of working and therefore having two (or more) versions of the tools would be perfectly ok.

Can you provide examples of real first-class applications where two or more versions of tools are used and users are perfectly ok with it?

Can you provide results of a usability research for any application out there that would prove that "having two (or more) versions of the tools would be perfectly ok"?

Alexandre

On Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:01:13 +0100, Scott wrote:

Again, a tool which will remember what I want it to do will be appreciated as a wise tool.

I'll second that, I find it very time consuming having to reassert my jpeg/png options, compression ratio etc. every time I save an image.

There is a whole fleet of this sort of thing right across gimp, many of which I have already posted about.

I sometimes get the feeling it's always "the first time" with gimp.

/gg

On 10/31/06, gg@catking.net wrote:

On Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:01:13 +0100, Scott wrote:

Again, a tool which will remember what I want it to do will be appreciated as a wise tool.

I'll second that, I find it very time consuming having to reassert my jpeg/png options, compression ratio etc. every time I save an image.

There we go :)

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75459

Alexandre

Hi Scott

Scott wrote:

And directory paths. Probably a gtk issue, but why? A case in point is the gtkam application, which has been "updated" to use the gtk stuff. In the previous version, I would always save my digicam photos to, eg, ~/photos/2006/10. And it would remember between instances, so I'd only have to worry about changing anything when the next month rolled around, and then the next year. Now, it defaults *every stupid time* to my home directory and I have to waste numerous key/mouse strokes to get to where I want to be. The Gimp has been similar in its forgetfullness forever. Again, a tool which will remember what I want it to do will be appreciated as a wise tool. Take a look at the way Gqview does directories. Then wonder why most users use it as a front-end to get their pictures into the gimp to edit. Then ponder why the gimp couldn't do that itself....

You can use bookmarks in the Open Image dialog to quickly flip to directories. Not that this is exactly what you want, but it's more convenient than having to browse to a particular directory from scratch.

Kind regards,

Mukund

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 06:48:47 +0100, Mukund wrote:

Hi Scott

You can use bookmarks in the Open Image dialog to quickly flip to directories. Not that this is exactly what you want, but it's more convenient than having to browse to a particular directory from scratch.

Kind regards,

Mukund

All this is inherited from GTK+ so critisms/comments should go there.

Several bugs are already open about how restrictive the so-called filechooser interface is. Please dont hesistate to add your comments to those bugs.
eg
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=331404

As Mukund suggests, bootmarks are you best workaround for now. If you cant find bookmarks I think they're called something stupid like "places" now. Depends how new your gtk+ is.

gg@catking.net wrote:

Several bugs are already open about how restrictive the so-called filechooser interface is. Please dont hesistate to add your comments to those bugs.

One should hesitate at least as long as reading all existing comments takes, though.

HTH,
Michael

Scott wrote:

Hm... don't you think that sticking to the current problem - crop tool - would make this thread more useful than expanding it into a generic rant once again?

HTH,
Michael

Hi,

On Mon, 2006-10-30 at 15:01 -0700, Scott wrote:

I have yet to hear any feedback regarding my idea of allowing the options for a tool like the current "crop" to be customised by the user to make it do what s/he wants it to do as a normal case.

GIMP allows you to configure the default values for all tool options. It even allows you to save them as named settings so you can have several settings per tool.

Just a small case in point: The Save As menu as applied to jpeg images. I personally am always saving these for use on the web. Do I want to save the "thumbnail" and "exif" information to bloat my images? Of course not. Do I always have to click the "advanced options" button to turn these off? Yes, I do. Why? Why can't I set these to the defaults that make sense to *me*?

Because noone has implemented this yet. There's a long-standing bug report for it. This holds true for almost everything that you are ranting about. A little search on Bugzilla would have shown that we are aware of all these issues and plan to improve them as time permits.

Sven

Scott schreef:

Okay, I'm ashamed to admit that I don't even know what a bugzilla is. I guess I always thought a "bug" was something that actually made a program non-functional, rather than the things that make it only function at a sub-par level, so I wouldn't have even thought to look in a "bug report" for interface details. Sorry to have wasted anyone's time. Keep up the good work.

In a sense you were right.

Projects need to track bugs (in the narrow sense of the word, like what you think of as a bug) but also feature requests, interface improvements and other issues. The way to track all those things turns out to be exactly the same, so it makes sense to put all of them in the same issue tracker instead of having a bug tracker and a feature request tracker etc. Because of that, all these issues are often called bugs, even if that is not 100% technically correct.

Gimp's bug tracker is Bugzilla and can be found at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=GIMP. Bugzilla is used in many open source projects (and presumably many other projects as well) and was first created for the Mozilla project; it has its own website at http://www.bugzilla.org/.