Re: [Gimp-gui] Food for thought: the clumsiness of the current layer creation proces

[Jehan]

Hi,

On 2015-12-15 11:26, Ofnuts wrote:

There are too many things to tell when creating a new layer and and
an important one is missing

 In my experience with Gimp, I haven't got that many use cases:

 - Fill: layer is either transparent, or filled with the background
color
 - Size: layer is image sized, or the same size as the current layer
 - Position (missing in current dialog): layer is at 0,0 (image sized)
or overlaps current layer

 IMHO: asking for a size in the layer dialog is pointless, because
usually you cannot tell the size in pixels in advance (and when you
can you also have a position in mind...). In real life you create an
image-sized layer and crop it later using its contents as a reference.


I agree I have never created a new layer different from default size. 
And I don't believe I have ever seen anyone using it either.
Thus I indeed wonder how useful this is. This said, unless we manage to 
remove the whole dialog altogether (which is your goal below, I see), 
removing these specific features in this dialog is useless because it 
does not really slow users down (since most of the time, you are good 
with just hitting Enter to keep your defaults, which is very fast).


So I am not sure to be in favor to remove this.
Maybe there are users who really use this and getting rid of it would be 
a bother to them whereas it is not a problem at all to us.



 If we can skip the dialog then we have shortcuts for instant layer
creation, especially for the three most used:

* image-sized filled with background color
* image-sized and transparent
* copy of the active layer, transparent

You can always fill/crop/name the layer afterwards so no functionality
is lost.


It is already possible to create a layer of the last type you did by 
shift-clicking the New Layer button, and there is a 
layers-new-last-values action which does this too (which you can assign 
a shortcut to).


I am not sure creating shortcut buttons or actions for 3 specific 
combinations is really a good idea.
My personal preference for instance is mostly "image-sized and 
transparent" (even when I want a background, I usually create my 
transparent layer first in 1 click, then drag'n drop the fg color over 
it and tada! Much faster than going through the New Layer dialog). This 
is like 90% of my needs. So for instance if we were to compare my needs 
to your proposition, we would create 2 new buttons which I would 
consider cluttering the UI for not that big a workflow improvement.


So in the end, I'm not sure if you are not taking particular cases and 
putting them in the UI.


Jehan


 A penny for your thoughts

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Re: [Gimp-gui] gimp-gui-list Digest, Vol 3, Issue 8

[Joseph Bupe]

> There are too many things to tell when creating a new layer and and an
> important one is missing
>
> In my experience with Gimp, I haven't got that many use cases:
>
> - Fill: layer is either transparent, or filled with the background color
> - Size: layer is image sized, or the same size as the current layer
> - Position (missing in current dialog): layer is at 0,0 (image sized) or
> overlaps current layer
>
> IMHO: asking for a size in the layer dialog is pointless, because
> usually you cannot tell the size in pixels in advance (and when you can
> you also have a position in mind...). In real life you create an
> image-sized layer and crop it later using its contents as a reference.
>
> If we can skip the dialog then we have shortcuts for instant layer
> creation, especially for the three most used:
>
>   * image-sized filled with background color
>   * image-sized and transparent
>   * copy of the active layer, transparent
>
> You can always fill/crop/name the layer afterwards so no functionality
> is lost.
>
> A penny for your thoughts
>
>
Possibly related to the topic on the following link:

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list/2015-March/msg00075.html

Re: [Gimp-gui] gimp-gui-list Digest, Vol 3, Issue 8

[Jehan]

Hi,

On 2015-12-15 13:51, Joseph Bupe wrote:

There are too many things to tell when creating a new layer and and
an
important one is missing

In my experience with Gimp, I haven't got that many use cases:

- Fill: layer is either transparent, or filled with the background
color
- Size: layer is image sized, or the same size as the current layer
- Position (missing in current dialog): layer is at 0,0 (image
sized) or
overlaps current layer

IMHO: asking for a size in the layer dialog is pointless, because
usually you cannot tell the size in pixels in advance (and when you
can
you also have a position in mind...). In real life you create an
image-sized layer and crop it later using its contents as a
reference.

If we can skip the dialog then we have shortcuts for instant layer
creation, especially for the three most used:

* image-sized filled with background color
* image-sized and transparent
* copy of the active layer, transparent

You can always fill/crop/name the layer afterwards so no
functionality
is lost.

A penny for your thoughts


Possibly related to the topic on the following link:

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list/2015-March/msg00075.html
[1]


That's definitely the same topic. Actually I agree with most of what 
people says, even when they say the opposite of each others! :-)


The facts are this:

1/ I agree that at some point, someone has a workflow where you end up 
always making only 1 or at most 2 kinds of new layers.


2/ The first problem is that they are often not the same, as we can read 
in this thread of the one linked above. I, for one, nearly only use 
transparent layers. I read several people in the above thread, one who 
said mostly using white layers only, another mostly using either white 
layers or the foreground color, and the first email of this new thread 
says mostly using background or transparent.
We ended up in just a few emails showing how diverse the user base and 
habits are, and that all 4 fill types are used. Simply everyone just 
ends up always using the same fill type (cf 1/).


Because of this problem, we can't just decide to create actions or 
buttons for specific combinations because of this point 2/. Because what 
is your usual fill type is not your neighbour's. Or we should create 4 
new buttons/actions, and then the UI will end up at some point cluttered 
with hundreds of buttons.


There were propositions of inverting the click and shift-click (click 
would create directly a layer of your last type and shift-click open the 
dialog), like in the linked dialog. As an advanced user (well, more than 
many, but much less than many others too), I would not mind and actually 
would find it better for my workflow. Simon Budig explained that it was 
actually done this way for a while, since the shift-click is not easily 
discoverable: 
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list/2015-March/msg00100.html


As a consequence, we could say that for many users, the capacity to 
create new layers of different fills became more complicated. Of course, 
you can always add/remove an alpha channel afterwards and fill the whole 
layer with some color, but this is a little usability loss to being able 
to do it at layer creation.


It makes sense that the most discoverable UI should be the one to do the 
more, and later users learn progressively optimized UI logics to improve 
their workflow. For all theses reasons, the *default* UI seems 
acceptable.


For me, that's actually a good example of a need to be able to tweak the 
UI with plugins, which is not possible right now. That's something I'd 
like to implement (or see implemented) at some point. Our plugin API 
should allow people to have optimized UI, like for instance remapping 
the new layer button to create in one click a layer of your preferred 
fill type.

But the default UI should be a discoverable one.

Jehan

Re: [Gimp-gui] gimp-gui-list Digest, Vol 3, Issue 8

[Joseph Bupe]

On 15 December 2015 at 16:52, Jehan  wrote:

>
> There were propositions of inverting the click and shift-click (click
> would create directly a layer of your last type and shift-click open the
> dialog),
>

This would be more logical.

Re: [Gimp-gui] gimp-gui-list Digest, Vol 3, Issue 8

[Jehan]

Hi,

On 2015-12-15 16:02, Joseph Bupe wrote:

On 15 December 2015 at 16:52, Jehan  wrote:


There were propositions of inverting the click and shift-click
(click would create directly a layer of your last type and
shift-click open the dialog),


This would be more logical.


Have you read my email? This is not "logical", this is only simpler for 
*you*. If we want to go this way, the most "logical" way is likely for a 
button to not choose anything by default, *NOT* to choose particular 
settings on the user behalf. Thus basically the logical thing is what 
GIMP does.


I don't say this is the best UI at all. But I say that your proposition 
(having the settings choice done on the user behalf by default) is not 
the right change, in my opinion. The fact that we had as many different 
preferences (written down in the linked thread) as available option 
shows that the choice proposed by this dialog is not meaningless.
If someone has a better default UI to propose, we are happy to read 
propositions, but I don't think that just inverting the button behavior 
is the right thing to do here.


Jehan

Re: [Gimp-gui] Food for thought: the clumsiness of the current layer creation proces

[Ofnuts]

On 15/12/15 15:07, Jehan wrote:



I am not sure creating shortcut buttons or actions for 3 specific 
combinations is really a good idea.
My personal preference for instance is mostly "image-sized and 
transparent" (even when I want a background, I usually create my 
transparent layer first in 1 click, then drag'n drop the fg color over 
it and tada! Much faster than going through the New Layer dialog). 
This is like 90% of my needs. So for instance if we were to compare my 
needs to your proposition, we would create 2 new buttons which I would 
consider cluttering the UI for not that big a workflow improvement.


So in the end, I'm not sure if you are not taking particular cases and 
putting them in the UI.




I'm not talking about buttons, I'm talking about direct-action keyboard 
shortcuts. But I agree that the filled version isn't necessary. So that 
leaves us with two.

Re: [Gimp-gui] Food for thought: the clumsiness of the current layer creation proces

[Jehan]

Hi,

On 2015-12-15 22:03, Ofnuts wrote:

On 15/12/15 15:07, Jehan wrote:



I am not sure creating shortcut buttons or actions for 3 specific 
combinations is really a good idea.
My personal preference for instance is mostly "image-sized and 
transparent" (even when I want a background, I usually create my 
transparent layer first in 1 click, then drag'n drop the fg color over 
it and tada! Much faster than going through the New Layer dialog). 
This is like 90% of my needs. So for instance if we were to compare my 
needs to your proposition, we would create 2 new buttons which I would 
consider cluttering the UI for not that big a workflow improvement.


So in the end, I'm not sure if you are not taking particular cases and 
putting them in the UI.




I'm not talking about buttons, I'm talking about direct-action
keyboard shortcuts. But I agree that the filled version isn't
necessary. So that leaves us with two.


I have already said it but since you keep only a small part of my email: 
if you read the thread that Joseph Buppe linked earlier, you will see 
that some people always use the white, others used the foreground fill, 
etc. Nothing seems to indicate that making transparent layers are more a 
more common action. You and I are not representative of the whole 
userbase.


The more I think about it, the less I think we should make default 
action for every particular create-a-layer case. Now custom actions are 
very easy to create in a plugin. If all you need is an action, why don't 
you simply make yourself a few-line plugin? This is why the plugin 
system was created: to handle specific use cases.
I myself have made several of these (plugins of a few lines which just 
add simple actions — which I need — to map to a shortcut) and that fits 
perfectly my needs.


Our plugin API is far from perfect and it cannot do some things (like 
updating the default UI); but creating actions, this is no problem.


Jehan

Re: [Gimp-gui] Food for thought: the clumsiness of the current layer creation proces

[Ofnuts]

On 15/12/15 22:39, Jehan wrote:


The more I think about it, the less I think we should make default 
action for every particular create-a-layer case. Now custom actions 
are very easy to create in a plugin. If all you need is an action, why 
don't you simply make yourself a few-line plugin? This is why the 
plugin system was created: to handle specific use cases.
I myself have made several of these (plugins of a few lines which just 
add simple actions — which I need — to map to a shortcut) and that 
fits perfectly my needs.


Our plugin API is far from perfect and it cannot do some things (like 
updating the default UI); but creating actions, this is no problem.




We can both write plugins, but plenty of users can't, and for them 
locating a plugin (assuming they even think that a plugin for this could 
exist) isn't always easy...