Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Thorsten Wilms
On Sat, Jun 25, 2005 at 08:19:16PM -0300, Pedro Kiefer wrote:
 
 I've just made this mockup (attached) of how the locking mechanism
 should appear to the user in the layers tab. But that could be wrong, in
 not really familiar with the GNOME HIG. Clicking in an unlocked lock
 will lock the layer, clicking in a locked lock will unlock it.

I think the lock should be in front of the layer names, right after 
visibility but before chaining, as it will block the later mechanism. 
There should be a third state for chaining, showing the symbol halfway 
faded out or something like that, to indicate it having no effect when 
the layer is locked.

But I'm in doubt if locking is worth the space and additional visual 
complexity. I mean, if you don't want to change the contents of a layer, 
just don't select it. If you manage to draw/edit in the wrong layer, 
there's always undo and you should save frequently anyway.


---
Thorsten Wilms
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Re: [Gimp-developer] About Preferences enrtry in the Edit menu

2005-06-26 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

Nathan Summers [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I used to have a co-worker that would often say that if a user can't
 find a feature, it doesn't exist.  Even after rummaging through the
 code with grep for a few minutes, the only menu I can find that allows
 you to import an SVG is the one that you right-click an existing item
 in the Paths dialog to get.  I'd have to say that since even a casual
 but directed search through the source code can't find the menu that
 you're talking about, the discoverablity of the feature is
 impressively bad.

All dockable have a menu which can be opened by clicking on the little
arrow icon in the upper right corner. The first submenu is always the
one the same menu that is also accessible via right-click on an item.

If you can make the empty list show this menu on right-click, please
send a patch.


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

Simon Budig [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I also think that it will clutter the rows too much if we move it to
 the front. Perhaps consider to add it on the top of the dialog with
 the opacity slider and the Lock Alpha Channel toggle ?

 I don't think this is practical. In Skencil I use locking of layers
 as a method to quickly protect the layers of the objects I am not using.
 However, that means that I iterate over the column of the layer locking
 buttons and decide if I want to change that layer or not.

 Having to individually select the layers and then toggle the button
 somewhere else makes this feature basically useless.

Well, we do that already for the alpha channel lock and it doesn't
seem to work that badly. Sooner or later we will probably want to add
more such toggles.


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Michael Schumacher
Simon Budig wrote:

 Also we should consider making the layers not selectable in the layers
 dialog if they are locked. This removes a source of confusion (why
 doesn't this work) and gives immediate additional feedback about the
 locking. 

I was about to suggest this myself, but then dismissed it because of the
 why can't I select the layer? problem.

 However, it requires the locking button in the layer row itself.

Hm, if you can't select it (e.g. with the cursor keys), how are you
going to change the lock state using the keyboard?


Michael

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Simon Budig
Sven Neumann ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
 Simon Budig [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  I also think that it will clutter the rows too much if we move it to
  the front. Perhaps consider to add it on the top of the dialog with
  the opacity slider and the Lock Alpha Channel toggle ?
 
  I don't think this is practical. In Skencil I use locking of layers
  as a method to quickly protect the layers of the objects I am not using.
  However, that means that I iterate over the column of the layer locking
  buttons and decide if I want to change that layer or not.
 
  Having to individually select the layers and then toggle the button
  somewhere else makes this feature basically useless.
 
 Well, we do that already for the alpha channel lock and it doesn't
 seem to work that badly. Sooner or later we will probably want to add
 more such toggles.

actually the alpha channel lock is a major source of confusion,
sometimes even for me. Huh, painting doesn't work. Also it has a
different use pattern: Your descision if you need to toggle it depends
only on the layer itself. This is - as I explained - very much different
from locking the layer completely: Your attention shifts to a different
group of layers and you want to toggle this on multiple layers
simultaneously. With your proposed solution it would be a major PITA to
do this.

Bye,
Simon
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Simon Budig
Michael Schumacher ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
  Also we should consider making the layers not selectable in the layers
  dialog if they are locked. This removes a source of confusion (why
  doesn't this work) and gives immediate additional feedback about the
  locking. 
 
 I was about to suggest this myself, but then dismissed it because of the
  why can't I select the layer? problem.
 
  However, it requires the locking button in the layer row itself.
 
 Hm, if you can't select it (e.g. with the cursor keys), how are you
 going to change the lock state using the keyboard?

Good question. Probably we need to grey out the layer somehow instead.
Or decouple focussing from selecting for these layers. Not sure if this
is easily possible.

Bye,
Simon
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Simon Budig
Simon Budig ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
 Sven Neumann ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
  Well, we do that already for the alpha channel lock and it doesn't
  seem to work that badly. Sooner or later we will probably want to add
  more such toggles.
 
 actually the alpha channel lock is a major source of confusion,
 sometimes even for me. Huh, painting doesn't work. Also it has a
 different use pattern: Your descision if you need to toggle it depends
 only on the layer itself. This is - as I explained - very much different
 from locking the layer completely: Your attention shifts to a different
 group of layers and you want to toggle this on multiple layers
 simultaneously. With your proposed solution it would be a major PITA to
 do this.

Maybe a better comparison is the visibility toggle: It would become a
major PITA to use if it were a button on top of the dockable. It has a
similiar meaning: It controls a single property of a single layer, but
is frequently used for multiple different layers at once.

Bye,
Simon
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

Simon Budig [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 With your proposed solution it would be a major PITA to do this.

I didn't propose a solution, I only said that moving the toggle
elsewhere should be considerd.  I am not at all convinced it is a
good idea. But then, IIRC, PS does it this way.

Since we also want to address layer groups at some point. How does
that integrate with locking?


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

for your inspiration, heres a slightly outdated screenshot of the PS
user interface for layer locking:

 http://www.edigitalphoto.com/images/archivesart/0203edp_using_02.jpg

This PDF has a lot more screenshots and shows a more uptodate view of
the Layers dialog on page 23:

 http://www.photoshopsupport.com/ib-pdf-02/vqs-chapter01.pdf


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Simon Budig
Sven Neumann ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
 Simon Budig [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  With your proposed solution it would be a major PITA to do this.
 
 I didn't propose a solution, I only said that moving the toggle
 elsewhere should be considerd.  I am not at all convinced it is a
 good idea. But then, IIRC, PS does it this way.

Ok, replace proposed solution with suggested placement of the button
or whatever. Do you have an example use case where the user would
benefit from that placement?

The Skencil way of doing it definitely has the issue with clutter in the
layer list. I right now have no idea how to avoid this, smaller icons
would only help to a certain extent. But IMHO it is important to be able
to quickly toggle the locking for multiple layers.

 Since we also want to address layer groups at some point. How does
 that integrate with locking?

Currently I think that locking the layer group should also lock its
children, the same way as making a layer group invisible makes its
children invisible.

Bye,
Simon

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Re: [Gimp-developer] pygimp on windows? success!

2005-06-26 Thread Michael Schumacher
lode leroy wrote:

 Ah, now it starts up, and the Python-fu is there... yippee!

It should do so now out of the box, at least in current CVS... maybe
except for the interp file, but we should be able to fix this today.

 And now lets hope some autotools-wizard can deduce from this mail what
 needs to change...

This has been done yesterday by yosh and me. I have to say that I'm
surprised that it did work for you, as we had to change the
gimpinterpreterdb.c file in order to make it work...

Nevertheless, your mail provided some important hints that helped to
finally get pygimp part of the regular win32 build of GIMP. So starting
with GIMP 2.4, we will have Python as an additional scripting language -
one that can probably considered to be more standard than Scheme.

Thanks again for your input!

If you want to continue to work on scripting, and get even more
scripting languages to GIMP on the windows plattform, there is
gimp-perl, some java classes, a ruby binding and iirc even something for
Tcl... :)


Michael

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Alan Horkan

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005, Thorsten Wilms wrote:

 Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 10:17:46 +0200
 From: Thorsten Wilms [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu
 Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

 On Sat, Jun 25, 2005 at 08:19:16PM -0300, Pedro Kiefer wrote:
 
  I've just made this mockup (attached) of how the locking mechanism
  should appear to the user in the layers tab. But that could be wrong, in
  not really familiar with the GNOME HIG. Clicking in an unlocked lock
  will lock the layer, clicking in a locked lock will unlock it.

 I think the lock should be in front of the layer names, right after
 visibility but before chaining, as it will block the later mechanism.
 There should be a third state for chaining, showing the symbol halfway
 faded out or something like that, to indicate it having no effect when
 the layer is locked.


 But I'm in doubt if locking is worth the space and additional visual
 complexity.

I believe locking is a necessary feature and I would not like to
discourage a developer who is willing to make the effort required to add
it.  It is better to include the feature then work out how to improve the
user interface as needed.

If people are concerned about the use of space and visual complexity of
the Layers dialog I'd like to suggest a string change (I may have
suggested it before though).  I'd like to see New Layer shortened to
just Layer (once you've created it, aint new no more) and the numbering
format changed to simply use  N which is more aethetically pleasing to
me than the pound/hash/sharp # symbol which I find a little distracting.

Turning the Layer label into a Text Area instead of one line Text Entry
might also help.  Side scrolling can be annoying and if you have Layer
preview thumbnails enabled (especially larger ones) there is quite a bit
of dead space.


Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape http://inkscape.org
Abiword http://www.abisource.com
Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/
Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/


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Re: [Gimp-developer] Missing layer features

2005-06-26 Thread Daniel Egger

On 25.06.2005, at 11:53, Sven Neumann wrote:


You could start by making a nice proposal, perhaps including a mockup
of how the user interface for this should look like and how it should
behave.


I guess Pedro has seen the Photoshop interface which does pretty
much that (and more).

Servus,
  Daniel



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Description: This is a digitally signed message part


[Gimp-developer] Re: Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread GSR - FR
Hi,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (2005-06-26 at 1517.52 +0200):
 This PDF has a lot more screenshots and shows a more uptodate view of
 the Layers dialog on page 23:
 
  http://www.photoshopsupport.com/ib-pdf-02/vqs-chapter01.pdf

Interesting, it shows things on both sides, and one of the front is
multipurpose (chain or paintbrush icon). So I wonder how that works,
cos the view one can be toggle there, even doing a drag can toggle
multiple layers (gimp can not do it, only click click a lot)... but
the multipurpose... and what happens in case of multiple modes?

So if this is for inspiration, is there someone with access to the
program that could do a description of how it looks _and_ how it
behaves (showing states, avaliable actions over the controls, etc)? To
get the full idea.

GSR
 
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Pedro Kiefer
Sven,
I did look at the PS user interface for layers before doing the mockup.
In the other message you've said: 
I am sorry, but you can't put the lock at the end of the row. It would
become invisible as soon as one layer has a longer name.
Couldn't that be solved by ellipsizing the layer name? I really dislike
extremeally long layer names, they clutter the interface. I think that we
could have both, a check box together with the opacity slider and as a visual
aid an small lock that would only disable the lock in the left of the layer 
list.
That way is easy to know which layers are locked, and they are easly unlocked.

On Sun, 2005-06-26 at 15:17 +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:
 Hi,
 
 for your inspiration, heres a slightly outdated screenshot of the PS
 user interface for layer locking:
 
  http://www.edigitalphoto.com/images/archivesart/0203edp_using_02.jpg
 
 This PDF has a lot more screenshots and shows a more uptodate view of
 the Layers dialog on page 23:
 
  http://www.photoshopsupport.com/ib-pdf-02/vqs-chapter01.pdf
 
 
 Sven
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-- 
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

Pedro Kiefer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I did look at the PS user interface for layers before doing the
 mockup.  In the other message you've said: I am sorry, but you
 can't put the lock at the end of the row. It would become invisible
 as soon as one layer has a longer name.  Couldn't that be solved by
 ellipsizing the layer name? I really dislike extremeally long layer
 names, they clutter the interface.

Well, it is up to the user to name the layers and I don't think we
should make it harder to use long names. In general it is better to
allow list views to scroll horizontally instead of trying to shorten
the content to make it fit into the dialog.

If we want to have all the lock types that PS offers, we would have to
add three new toggles to the layer row. Is that feasible?


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

Simon Budig [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Ok, replace proposed solution with suggested placement of the button
 or whatever. Do you have an example use case where the user would
 benefit from that placement?

Alice and Bob are looking for the layer named Foobar.

Due to the introduction of three new toggles in each row of the layer
list and the inclusion of the opacity slider (after all it belongs
there, doesn't it?), Alice needs to scroll the view horizontally in
order to see the layer names.  Alternatively she could make the layers
dialog a lot wider.

Bob uses a different layout. Only the visibility and linked toggles
are in the row. The controls for opacity and state of the different
locks are placed above the layer list. Bob can easily identify the
layer he's looking for w/o having to scroll horizontally.

 But IMHO it is important to be able to quickly toggle the locking
 for multiple layers.

How is it important? Do you have an example use case?


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread jernej
On Sunday, June 26, 2005, 15:17:52, Sven Neumann wrote:

 for your inspiration, heres a slightly outdated screenshot of the PS
 user interface for layer locking:

Here's how PaintShopPro handles the layers dialog:
http://deeperthought.ena.si/misc/psplayers.png

The buttons at top are for new raster, vector, art media, mask and layer
group, then Delete layer and Edit selection (lets you manipulate selection
with drawing tools).

The buttons in right dialog pane are: show/hide layer, transparency, blend
mode, link (linked layers will be moved together), lock transparency (row
2), group link toggle (row 3), mask overlay toggle (row 4).

-- 
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When a problem goes away, the people working to solve it do not.
   -- Law of Bureaucracy

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Re: [Gimp-developer] pygimp on windows? success!

2005-06-26 Thread Joao S. O. Bueno Calligaris
On Sunday 26 June 2005 11:19, Michael Schumacher wrote:
 lode leroy wrote:
  Ah, now it starts up, and the Python-fu is there... yippee!

 It should do so now out of the box, at least in current CVS...
 maybe except for the interp file, but we should be able to fix this
 today.


Horraayy!!!  :-)

(...)
 Thanks again for your input!

 If you want to continue to work on scripting, and get even more
 scripting languages to GIMP on the windows plattform, there is
 gimp-perl, some java classes, a ruby binding and iirc even
 something for Tcl... :)

And there was the guy asking for a Lua interpreter, and I rememeber 
someone was working on GIMP-C# 




 Michael
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Pedro Kiefer
On Sun, 2005-06-26 at 12:59 -0300, Pedro Kiefer wrote:
 Sven,
 I did look at the PS user interface for layers before doing the mockup.
 In the other message you've said: 
 I am sorry, but you can't put the lock at the end of the row. It would
 become invisible as soon as one layer has a longer name.
 Couldn't that be solved by ellipsizing the layer name? I really dislike
 extremeally long layer names, they clutter the interface. I think that we
 could have both, a check box together with the opacity slider and as a visual
 aid an small lock that would only disable the lock in the left of the layer 
 list.
 That way is easy to know which layers are locked, and they are easly unlocked.
 

As a follow up to my own message, here is another mockup. The lock on
the far right of the list would disable the lock for the given layer, so
you don't have to change to that particular layer to change it's status.
The checkboxs under the opacity slider toggles the different locking
mechanisms supported, hence the weird question mark, which should reads
as insert_your_own_locking_here.

-- 
Pedro Kiefer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
attachment: layer_locking_mockup_2.jpg
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Re: [Gimp-developer] pygimp on windows? success!

2005-06-26 Thread Michael Schumacher
Joao S. O. Bueno Calligaris wrote:
 On Sunday 26 June 2005 11:19, Michael Schumacher wrote:

If you want to continue to work on scripting, and get even more
scripting languages to GIMP on the windows plattform, there is
gimp-perl, some java classes, a ruby binding and iirc even
something for Tcl... :)
 
 And there was the guy asking for a Lua interpreter, and I rememeber 
 someone was working on GIMP-C# 

Gimp# is actively maintained: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-sharp/

The Lua interpreter is handled in this bug report:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171831
Apparently, there is already some code, see comment #12 - yes, I know
that's my comment, but I don't have the code.


HTH,
Michael

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Joao S. O. Bueno Calligaris
On Sunday 26 June 2005 13:48, Sven Neumann wrote:
 Hi,

 Well, it is up to the user to name the layers and I don't think we
 should make it harder to use long names. In general it is better to
 allow list views to scroll horizontally instead of trying to
 shorten the content to make it fit into the dialog.

 If we want to have all the lock types that PS offers, we would have
 to add three new toggles to the layer row. Is that feasible?

kkk...
I thought of three  different  states for the lock Icon (and a nice 
tooltip, of course).

JS
--





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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

Joao S. O. Bueno Calligaris [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 If we want to have all the lock types that PS offers, we would have
 to add three new toggles to the layer row. Is that feasible?

 kkk...
 I thought of three  different  states for the lock Icon (and a nice 
 tooltip, of course).

Three lock types make up for 2^3 states. Not sure if all of them are
useful but it could become difficult to display all useful states in a
single icon.


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

Pedro Kiefer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 As a follow up to my own message, here is another mockup. The lock on
 the far right of the list would disable the lock for the given layer, so
 you don't have to change to that particular layer to change it's status.
 The checkboxs under the opacity slider toggles the different locking
 mechanisms supported, hence the weird question mark, which should reads
 as insert_your_own_locking_here.

I think I don't understand this mockup. So the icon in the layer row
(which should really not be at the end for the reason given already)
doubles the functionality of the toggles above the list?


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Layer locking proposal

2005-06-26 Thread Simon Budig
Sven Neumann ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
 Simon Budig [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Ok, replace proposed solution with suggested placement of the button
  or whatever. Do you have an example use case where the user would
  benefit from that placement?
 
 Alice and Bob are looking for the layer named Foobar.
 
 Due to the introduction of three new toggles in each row of the layer
 list and the inclusion of the opacity slider (after all it belongs
 there, doesn't it?), Alice needs to scroll the view horizontally in
 order to see the layer names.  Alternatively she could make the layers
 dialog a lot wider.

Actually I pondered about moving the opacity slider and yes, there are
good reasons to move it more closely to the layer representation in the
layers dockable. The major drawback of course is the necessary screen
estate, and I don't think it'd be worth it. The same holds for the mode
button.

 Bob uses a different layout. Only the visibility and linked toggles
 are in the row. The controls for opacity and state of the different
 locks are placed above the layer list. Bob can easily identify the
 layer he's looking for w/o having to scroll horizontally.

Sure, if you'd naively extend the layers dialog with more columns it
would become wide very quickly.

A way to overcome this is to have e.g. two lines per layer. A sample
mockup is available at
  http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/files/layer-dialog-many-properties.png

When looking at this mockup the icons are awfully small, they probably
need to become bigger, maybe making the layer entry higher. They also
interfere with the readability of the layer names which probably can be
remedied by sprinkling some design on them.

There probably are better ways to layout the additional buttons without
making the layer dockable wider. An advantage of these small
indicators/toggles is, that we could get rid of the weird indicator for
the existance of an alpha channel. Bold vs. Normal Text for the layer
name is not very discoverable, a small icon could help (if we don't
manage to get rid of the need for this indicator anyway).

  But IMHO it is important to be able to quickly toggle the locking
  for multiple layers.
 
 How is it important? Do you have an example use case?

Actually I already described how I frequently use that feature in
Skencil. To protect myself from working accidentially on the wrong layer
I tend to lock a lot of layers there. Since my objects of interest
usually are distributed among multiple layers I need to lock/unlock
multiple layers at once. It were quite painful if I had to move the
mouse between two different locations in the dialog instead of moving it
from row to row in a sequential manner.

There is an important difference between Gimp and Skencil though, which
makes it less of an issue for Gimp. In Skencil you by default can
operate on all objects in an image, regardless of their association to a
layer. So yes, it is more important for Skencil than for Gimp to lock
layers.

Bye,
Simon

-- 
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://simon.budig.de/
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