Hello,

I just noticed a usability issue with the 'Windows' actions related to image displays in SVN... They seem to be attached to specific displays, rather than to the Nth display out of the current displays.

Currently, we can switch quickly between some active images by using dynamic keyboard shortcuts and assigning keys (I like '234567' -- a number key for each of 6 open images) to them as we open them. We can also quickly switch between alternate views of an image (eg 100% with selection, layer borders, guides and rulers visible; or 'final rendering size' (50%) without anything but the image visible. This is quite powerful (try it out!). However.. any keyboard shortcuts assigned only last until you close that image -- because each display number only gets generated once each GIMP session (they are generated sequentially starting from 1). This is why the usage pattern above requires you to use Dynamic Keyboard Shortcuts and assign shortcuts as images are loaded.

My proposal is to have these actions index the available image displays sorted by their display ID -- this amounts to, if you have keys 123456789 assigned as shortcuts for the 1st .. 9th display, and 9 displays open, pressing 1 will raise the oldest display, pressing 9 will raise the newest. If you close some, 8 or 7 could end up being the shortcut for the newest display

I believe that both the current code and the proposed amendment are somewhat surprising : the former because shortcut assignments get 'lost', the latter because shortcuts become assigned to different images when an image is removed from the middle. I am sure that my proposed amendment is both less surprising, and a usability enhancement that anyone who works with more than a few images at once will appreciate.

I plan to make a patch to try this within a week.

As for why I sent this here, I'm interested to know:

Is there a reason for the current behaviour?

Are there better approaches? (i'm thinking here of GIMP-GAP .. when you're using it, display IDs get very high quickly, because each time you switch frames, the display number is incremented. Thus, my proposal could be a little more surprising to GAP users, because changing the frame you're editing will bump an animation so it becomes the 'newest' image.)

David

The attached patch allows you to open several images, assign keyboard shortcuts to them, and these shortcuts will persist, so that if you assigned '1','2','3' to the first, second, and third image, you could continue to switch between the first, second, and third opened image with 1, 2, and 3.
Because of the caveat below, this is currently no better than associating the actions directly with display IDs, rather than associating the actions with indices into the list of displays.

Caveats : *Currently implemented in a hackish way *Does not cope properly with closing images -- it breaks all the actions following and including the closed image.. So say you closed image #3, and you had already opened a 4th and 5th, the actions for 3, 4, and 5 would break.
I'm unclear as to the exact cause of this. Does anyone here know?