On Mon, 4 Apr 2005, Sven Neumann wrote:
> Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 10:27:38 +0200
> From: Sven Neumann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: Jonathan D Gibbons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, gimp-user@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu
> Subject: Re: [Gimp-user] Re: GimpShop
>
> Hi,
>
> Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > That is a whole lot of maintainance work, way more than you might
> > think. I would hope optimistically that things could be adjusted to
> > work well for all kinds of users and I think it would be better to
> > make efforts to improve the defaults first (but developers will
> > spend time on whatever they are most interested in).
>
> AFAIK, a bunch of people are already working on improving the menu
> hierarchy. Anyone who feels that he/she can contribute, should join
> this effort. This is definitely not something that should be done by
> developers, at least not by developers only. The developers have done
I use the term developer in a much broader sense than perhaps you do (I
would include all kinds of contributors). I'm aware of the menu
reoganisation plan but I lost interest due to the wiki downtime and I dont
expect to have time to contribute to it again anytime soon.
> their job already, the menu structure is easily editable since GIMP
> 2.2. Now it's up to the users to discuss menu structure and to come up
> with a reasonable proposal for changes. Implementing these changes is
> the trivial part.
Sure, I dont disagree with that.
> Of course it should be kept in mind that the user manual as well as
> the translations need updating as well.
Very true, this is part of what I was getting at with point about the
amount of maintaince work that would be needed.
> For this reason I don't think that the menu labels and/or their order
> should be themeable. That would break translation and the documentation.
> Good defaults is what we should try to achieve.
> > I think the point about finding menu items is worth considering but
> > we already deal with users in various langauges (and therefore
> > different lables for the same things) and I think this problem could
> > be reduced if the PDB Browser could be improved to allow users to
> > search for things more easily.
>
> I don't see how the Procedure Browser is relevent here since it is a
You probably know the GNU Image manipulation program like the back of your
hand but I think using the Procedure Browser/Plugin Database it to search
for things is a massively useful and underrated feature. It encourages
users to more easily find things for themselves rather than needing to ask
questions or trawl through the documentation.
> tool for script and plug-in authors and doesn't deal at all with menus
> or the user interface in general.
Even though it doesn't cover the whole user interface it is still useful
and if it did cover the whole user interface and even allow me to Apply a
filter once I've found it it would make a very useful tool (maybe
something like the effects browser found in Jasc Paint Shop Pro).
> > I have a custom version of PDB Browser that allows me to search by
> > Name, Summary ('cause "blurb" is too much common slang), Description
> > and a bunch of other fields too. (I'm not sure if I ever asked for
> > the built in version to be improved, for some reason I have a
> > feeling I might have.)
> I don't think you did and you know very well how to do this
> properly. Please open a bug report and attach a diff to it.
It was just a comment. If I had time I was going to check it later and
perhaps file a request, no need to jump down my throat. I did mention the
ideas before and suggest improvements before but they were superceded by
changes Yosh made. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=156340
The custom code I had was in Python (very easy for me to prototype and
test) and making a new patch against the PDB browser/Plugin database and
properly testing it is quite a different matter. Providing a properly
tested diff against the current codebase is another question entirely.
Also the tradeoff of simply adding all the extra search buttons to the
user interface is that it makes it look really ugly and cluttered
(although buttons for just Summary and Description could be added
relatively easily) and I never had time to think up a good way to present
the other functionality.
I'll try and find time to file a new request but I have other work to do
for now. Gotta go.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
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