On Sun, May 28, 2017 at 10:52 PM, Scott Jacobs via gimp-user-list < gimp-user-list@gnome.org> wrote:

It used to be that when a guide is grabbed from the rulers, the tool would change from whatever to the move tool.

That no longer happens. I filed this bug report: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765023

I miss the old behavior very much. I am undoing many unintentional paint strokes now.

I console myself thinking that the developers have been pestered to this unreasonable end by some nefarious and wrong thinking people.

I am sorry for being one of those "many" (as stated by Michael Natterer

[GIMP developer]

from above-referenced Bug-report ) users who complained about the feature

you liked.

I would like to explain why I, personally, was desirous of having the

behaviour change.

Many times, I would be using the Free Select tool to select an odd shaped

region, part of

which was near the edge of the image (or at least the edge of the window,

if zoomed in).

So often, I would be in the middle of entering many, many points to bound

the selection,

and having spent much time doing so, would accidentally place a point too

close to

the edge of the window, and instead of placing another point in the Free

Select tool,

I was suddenly dragging a guide out from the ruler, and had just lost ALL

of my

already-entered points, and ALL of the time spent in selecting the

placement of the points.

I have even had that happen, started all over, and AGAIN got too close to

the window edge,

and AGAIN lost all the points entered, and time spent entering them.... It was extremely frustrating.

It just seemed to me to be un-intuitive, that a user would be using one

tool, and suddenly to

be switched to another tool without his intending to select it.

The "intuitive" side of this is that when you purposely grab a guide from the ruler, the move tool
is automatically engaged for refining the guide's position.

I am unsure if this was something that gimp-1.0.2 did, but certainly gimp-1.2 had this enabled.
And all gimp versions since for +15 years.

Perhaps as gimp's nefarious and wrong-thinking users (the numbers which are many) are
also aging and cannot keep the mouse pointer on the canvas, this and other features will just
need to go away. :)

carol

On 05/29/2017 10:32 AM, Carol Spears wrote:

[ ... ]

It just seemed to me to be un-intuitive, that a user would be using one

tool, and suddenly to

be switched to another tool without his intending to select it.

The "intuitive" side of this is that when you purposely grab a guide from the ruler, the move tool
is automatically engaged for refining the guide's position.

It seems to me that people often call what they are used to doing from long habit "intuitive." For instance, when a long time user of one photo editor tries out another one, nothing is "intuitive" and everything about the unfamiliar one just seems wrong.

I am unsure if this was something that gimp-1.0.2 did, but certainly gimp-1.2 had this enabled.
And all gimp versions since for +15 years.

Not sure if it's a bug, a feature, or an oversight taken for granted as "normal" by users and developers just because that's the way it always worked and they're used to it.

Perhaps as gimp's nefarious and wrong-thinking users (the numbers which are many) are
also aging and cannot keep the mouse pointer on the canvas, this and other features will just
need to go away. :)

When using Inkscape, I take it for granted that guides "just work" and placing one doesn't turn off the tool I wanted to "guide" with a guide. I don't mind that at all, in fact I rather like it now that I have been prompted to ask myself whether or not. If asked, I would say "Don't be switching on the Move tool whenever someone adds a guide, that's silly."

In Inkscape, guides turn red (after a momentary delay) when the cursor is placed more or less exactly over them - unless the cursor is dragging a selected object or node, drawing a line, or etc. at the time. When red, the guide can be removed by pressing the Delete key, or clicked and dragged to a new position (or off the canvas). I like that behavior. I have also found Inkscape's diagonal guides (45 degrees) very handy; they are created by clicking the ruler and dragging diagonally.

I am usually very skeptical of UI changes in the GIMP, but more Inkscape-like behavior for guides would be a Good Thing IMO. This is not a huge issue for me - I have taken the "old" behavior for granted for nearly 20 years. It's "intuitive" because it's familiar - along with all the other annoyances inherent in editing photos and such.

:o)