First preview of GIMP 2.2

I really don't see what the problem is with GIMP's interface, even the old one was perfectly workable (although I much prefer the flexibility of GIMP2). GIMP basically requires a virtual desktop of its own (or a separate workspace), that way, you can switch to your other applications with one click.

The GIMP developers are doing a wonderful job. Don't you think that you're a bit over the top when you state that "the GIMP interface is the main obstacle to Linux progress"? Care to elaborate on that?

The GIMP is the most prominent Linux application. When people ask, "what do you have there on Linux?", GIMP is one of the first to be mentioned. So it's like the face of Linux for outsiders. And when they try it and, in I'm afraid the majority of cases, find it unusable, they assume that the entire Linux is just like that. So GIMP usability does some very real harm by blocking, instead of luring, the new blood to the Linux land.

Have you noticed that GIMP's Windows port made absolutely no inroads on Windows? About the only people who use it on Windows are those who have long used it on Linux first. Judging by its capabilities, it deserves a lot more. It's the usability, again.

By the way, the way-too-often-heard rebuttal from GIMP devs that "window manager must manage our windows, we don't want to" is especially outrageous if you remember that there exists such thing as Windows which is not likely to change its "window manager" to better suit the GIMP. So by saying this, are you suggesting that the Windows port be abandoned or be forever inferior? If so, don't be surprised when you get some harsh feelings from users.

"Using Windows? Your fault, get away." "Using a wrong window manager on Linux? You loser." "Just prefer a different interface paradigm? Relearn or die." And the king of it all, exemplified by the parent post, "It works for me, so it must be good."

I don't deny that there are people who like GIMP interface; but you also cannot deny that the GIMP is easily one of the most flame-generating topics in Linux communities, and most of these flames focus on its usability.

What do you suggest then?

It's a huge topic, I can go on and on about that. But perhaps the most critically needed change is the switch of the GIMP devs' default response to complaints from

"It's good as is. No change needed." (1)

to

"Please submit a patch for this as an optional feature and we'll see how popular it is with the users." (2)

Even though there are indeed some improvements in the code in the latest versions, there is absolutely no change in attitude. (1) is still the default answer, as the discussion below has again demonstrated. And that is the main problem. GIMP devs are too sure of what is good and what is bad, and have apparently grown too flame-proof for their own good. They need to become more open, and to realize that there are things that people simply like and want and would kill for, even if they seem silly and ugly to you. And that if you are in charge of a widely used open source project, you must eventually allow people do this silly and ugly thing to "your" program - that's what open source means. Only the future will show who was being really silly, OK?

What makes you think that these comments originate from GIMP developers? Being one myself I know that the attitude among us is definitely more (2) than (1). Since you didn't tell us what change you are looking for exactly, I can't comment on that. I can only tell you that we are well aware of the user interface issues and that we are trying to improve the situation. The dockable dialogs we introduced in GIMP 2.0 are a first step. GIMP 2.2 improves things further:

- We reduced the number of popup dialogs such as message and progress
dialogs.
- Keyboard shortcuts now don't only work on the image window but
also work with the focus on the toolbox or one of the dock windows.
- We added an option to keep the toolbox and docks above other
windows.

We think that old-fashioned WiW is not the way to handle an application where you frequently work with multiple documents (images). It would also make it very hard to use GIMP with other applications since it hinders DND. We also believe that WiW cannot be sanely added on the application level. Of course if you can show us a patch that proves us wrong, we could very well be persuaded to accept it. That would have to be discussed on a technical level.

--Sven

Oh, and we would certainly consider a patch for inclusion that implements the make-all-docks-transient-to-active-image-window hack that Inkscape is using for a while now.

The point is just that so far the people who express to have serious problems with the user interface turned out to be whiners. There has never been a patch coming out of these discussions even though we clearly said that we would consider them. The people actively contributing to GIMP obviously see other areas that need improvement and of course the developers focus on scratching their own itches.

--Sven

It hasn't come up in a while and usually it's only one or two people asking for a change and a lot of people who like the current user interface. Also, you obviously ignore that there's quite some improvements in GIMP 2.2 that deal with the window management "problem". Perhaps you should try the new version. It might make you change your mind.

define "real colorspace operations"

Color management almost made it into 2.2 but had to be postponed so that it doesn't delay the 2.2 release any further. I guess that means that it will be added right after 2.2 is out of the door.

Sharpening only the lightness component (in LAB colorspace), doing levels in HSB instead of HSV, and other goofy things...

You do all of the above by using channel decompose and compose afterwards.

You do all of the above by suing channel decompose and compose afterwards.

That has never been planned and is not likely going to happen ever. What was planned was to switch to libgimpprint-5.0 but since that library is still in beta (and undergoing a name change), that also didn't happen for 2.2.

Why in the name of all that is holy is The Gimp still using its own bizarre printing Interface? Gnome-print can use CUPS and expose all of a printer's supported functionality. Goddammit, the Unix world is finally standardizing on a decent, sane printing system, and the one application that could possibly benefit the most is ignoring it.

$#%^@$!!!

The gimp-print people are the ones who are building the framework for printing on UNIX these days. The plan for GIMP 2.2 was actually to update the print plug-in to support the greatest and latest gimp-print. Unfortunately noone volunteered to do this job even though the GIMP developers asked for help several times. So it seems like there isn't that much interest. Perhaps you would want to contribute instead of ranting?

Who's they?

people

Who's standardising on gnome-print? There's a whole world outside (think KDE). Many people would not appreciate dragging in a whole bunch of gnome libraries just for the gimp.

> Who's standardising on gnome-print? There's a whole world outside (think KDE). Many people would not appreciate dragging in a whole bunch of gnome libraries just for the gimp.

n.b. gimp-print now known as guten-print is completely different from gnome-print

gnome-print has virtually no Gnome specific dependancies anymore, it only has one Gnome specific dependancy on the GnomeCanvas and that is only if you use gnome-print-ui.

the gimp doesn't have any Gnome specific dependancies either, it uses only GTK.
The gimp developers have loudly made it clear that the gimp is not a Gnome application.

I'm pretty sure he meant CUPS, not gnome-print.

Personally believe what Gimp 2 es better than Photoshop 7.x and 8. Photoshop is great, but is a monster and not human firendly or maybe "so square" in the options.
Photoshop was the firs graphic software that I use, (5.0) but after taste gimp...wow... another world opened for me. And specially gimp2..uff... excellent in features and performance.

Ethan

(Sorry for my Spanglish)

Different features from photoshop
(like SVG support, just one example)

YES

More features than Photoshop?

NO.

More built-in features than Photoshop

Probably still no.

More features than Photoshop?

GIMP 3, this is only Gimp 2.2, who knows what the future will bring.

What version of Photoshop 6, 7, CS etc have many obscure features.

Do you actually need the gimp to have all the featuers of Photoshop like a built in thumbnail browser? (probably not)

Will Gimp ever adopt a single window interface ? At least add it as an option, i may be wrong but i don't think it would be such a hard thing to do.

Why can't GIMP use the interface of Inkscape? IMHO it is so much easier to use.

GIMP is extremely irritating for me because of the multiple windows which are virtually all over the desktop. When I work with the APP, I want it to take all of my workspace (I don't need the desktop icons to edit an image), and I want the windows of that application to behave in a convenient fashion. Right now any time I click the image in order do something with it, the toolbar and other windows hide to the back and i need to click to bring all of them back to the front again. It's VERY frustrating and the "keep on top" options from some WMs don't to the job.

To sum things up: I hate GIMP and I don't use it. Yes, it's because of the interface. What's the problem for programmers to impelement a choice? So many people are asking for it, why not just give it to them? I'm positive it's not a lot of work and the only negative side of such a solution might be someone's hurt philosophy. It's a matter of habits and convenience, not something being better or worse.

Mind you, not everything Bill Gates did is wrong, I think you have a problem with that. The Nile isn't only a river in Egypt, you know.

Problem mostly solved, no software engineering needed.

I've hated MDI since MS-Windows 3.1 (note, not even 3.11 or WFW) and wouldn't want to see it return. You can simulate it well enough on VDs and the like anyway.

Don't you get it? It IS a lot of work, and none of the developers seems to want it. It won't be implemented by it self you know, so either do it yourself or find and perhaps pay someone to do it! It's that simple.

Perhaps ask the devs if they'll even accept such patches first would be a good idea.

I personally hate apps that behave like you want (window-in-window), but thats just my opinion.

I read (a while ago) that somone wrote a patch for it. It was a background window. This solves the problem. The only thing they have to do is to include this patch and make it an option.

Maybe MDI is a diseased idea, but I don't think that there is one windowing-UI that will fit each and every application. You can rewrite your windowmanager so that it will work perfectly with the GIMP (dock windows towards the border of the screen, prevent imagewindows from overlapping them, maximize imagewindows between the docked windows, have a dynamic menubar+toolbar on top of the screen...), but that'll only work if all the other apps are changed too, because else it'll be at least uncomfortable to work with those apps. (but on the other hand, I'd love to see the OpenOffice.org apps working that way. I hate the navigator and stylist hanging around on my screen above the document, and Mozilla's sidebar could profit from this idea too).

So you're right if you say that MDI sucks, but I think that the current layout of the GIMP (using a windowing system that isn't made for this kind of apps at all) sucks even more, and I don't think there's a real alternative that's easy to implement without nagging the rest of your apps. Of course in a perfect world you have control over the way the desktop works, but you don't, especcially if the GIMP becomes more and more multi-platform. And then an MDI gives the users the same feeling to the GIMP under each and every OS or windowmanager they use.

I wouldn't want MDI, but I do want the ability to layer multiple images into a single window using tabs. Would be great if I could drag images around between windows similar to how the tools are currently dragged between palettes.

i like it!
other consideration:

one of the may problems is that if you choose a tool, let's say gradient, you have to re-focus the window you want to work on... i think its stupid.
that is why one-single-window approach is better for gim IMO.
having tabs could be useful, but does not solve this... ok you can set metacity to give focuf following the mouse, but this is not good for every apps, so changimg settings when you use gimp is not a good way to come out of this situation.

i think also that when you use a tool like "hue/saturation" or similar it has no sense that after you close the dialog anc click again on a window you re-do "hue-saturation"... most of the time it is a mistake and i have to close again the dialog and choose another tool...

i have oter ideas about that but i know i cannot explain them in undestandable english... so for now let's stop here... and say thenks to gimp coders :))

one of the may problems is that if you choose a tool, let's say gradient, you have to re-focus the window you want to work on... i think its stupid.

You think it's stupid and noone will disagree with that. In GIMP 2.2 this is however not any longer the case and there's no stupid single window-that-embeds-them-all needed to fix this issue.

A long time ago I found a containter program for the gimp on kde-look.org. I never tried it, because I don't feel a need for it, so I don't know how well it works, but looking at the comments, it's far from flawless. Anyway, here it is:

http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=6255&xexpand=all

I also don't know if the application will need any KDE or QT stuff.

Just thought I would point it out...

I like to just load Gimp into one of my six workspaces. Makes it nice any easy to use, and one click and it's gone, or reappears!

--Farrell F.

First, you are wrong, it is a hard thing to do ;)

Second, the main reason why the Window in Window concept is not implemented in Gimp is that it is a broken concept. Look at MacOS (any version). There is no need to use a single window there. Same for any unices. What you need is a properly configured window management. In unices and MacOS, you can have this. The Window in Window concept was only introduced because MS Windows interface was not well designed, so when porting their software (Photoshop) to Windows from MacOS, Adobe had to workaround this lack of functionality.

So if you are using a unix (or GNU), what you should do is either configure your interface better, or change window manager to one that can be configured properly (E, fluxbox, Sawfish, and many others I am sure). You can also group many tool windows in the docks.

You can try to convince the Gimp developers to stop working of the things they find important and interesting, and to implement a broken concept that will most likely break the gimp and bring months of bugs to work on. But I don't think you will succeed. :)

How exactly is nesting windows a broken concept other than "just because I say it". You don't make a single point here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the concept of nested windows. Tabs would be just as fine for me. My concern here is that you are shooting at Windows' lack of functionality with an unloaded weapon - especially when considering that the most conclusive reason why Gimp does not use nested windows or tabs is that those widgets or the neccessary support simply weren't available at that point in time.

It is a classical example of users wanting a specific implementation, even though there's a better way to achieve the same thing.

Why do people want window-in-window?
- They hate taskbar clutter.
- They can't minimize all Gimp windows in one click.

So uhm... just improve the window manager and task bar?
Actually, most problem are already solved by using virtual desktops. I find it much easier to switch between virtual desktops than to minimize a window. With one click, you can switch between entirely different window states.

Window-in-window is a broken concept because it was originally meant as a workaround for MS Windows's window management limitations. MacOS had a global menu, MS Windows did not. So what did MS do? They put a window inside a window, and use the main window's menu instead.
I *hate* window-in-window MDI. Especially because there's no easy way to switch between document windows. Alt+Tab doesn't work. Alt+F6 can only "go forward" in the window list.

Window-in-window is a broken concept because it was originally meant as a workaround for MS Windows's window management limitations. MacOS had a global menu, MS Windows did not. So what did MS do? They put a window inside a window, and use the main window's menu instead.

The menu on top is a very unintuitive concept. Usually all parts of an application are contained within the application's windows. It's the window to the application. Using a global menu breaks this concept which might have been the reason why it is not used in MS OSses. (In any case, if it was just for lack of functionality, it would have been easier to add a global menu than to add MDI support).
Especially for new users, it's a great help to know that whatever they want to do with application X, it has to be done using any of the controls within that application's window.

Especially because there's no easy way to switch between document windows.

If I remember correctly it's CTRL+TAB in windows... In Gnome however I don't think there is a standard key to switch tabs.

Having a menu on top only seems strange if you're not used to it. For old Amiga users and Mac users it seems perfectly normal, and it would take Windows users a whole of a few minutes to get comfortable with it, just as they've gotten used to context menus and the task bar.

Compared to trying to get users comfortable with MDI it's trivial.

Vidar

I would add that the top menu is very intuitive because it is a metaphor of the desktop (the hard wooden one): The windows present the data (paper sheet, book, folder) while the top menu presents the tools, the actions (pens, cisors, glue, ruler).
The tools and actions are shared within the documents. Noone would ever find logical/intuitive to store a pen in a folder/document and use one pen for each document.

The logical separation between data and tools acting on data can also be found in programming (data vs. procedures, attributes vs. methods). It is a very natural one.

But you can already group all GIMP windows together and have them take a single taskbar entry. And, if you really like that behaviour, you can minimize all windows in one click. It's just a matter of configuring your window manager. Sawfish comes with a nice user interface to configure such things.