Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-25 Thread Graeme Gill
g...@catking.net wrote:

> Some of your comments are valid but your basic premise is wrong. There 
> is nothing for sale, so the is NO VENDOR.

Of course there is a vendor. "To Vend" in the context I use it
means to offer for public consideration. Whether that is for a
price is detail. Use another word if you prefer, but the developers
of Gimp are offering it for public use.

> Applying your marketing terminology and mentality to a FOSS project is 
> wrong . Different motivations are the driving force.  The "customer" is 
> not king. He can be a collaborator.

In general though, a customer/user/whatever-you-want-to-call-them
can't be a collaborator, because they lack the expertise. That
the whole point of the exercise, someone chooses to use the expertise
embodied in something like GIMP because they don't have it themselves.
Even those few with the skill necessary to contribute may choose not
to do so, because they are employing it fully on some other worthwhile
project. (this is division of labor).

> So is complaining. With FOSS you can submit bugs reports if something 
> does not work , request a feature is you have an idea or contribute to 
> the project. The is no channel or reason to deal with "complaints".

It seem to me that far too many FOSS developers are quick to interpret any
sort of feedback or suggestion as a complaint and an affront. If you want
to keep your software just between contributors, then simply don't make
it available to the public. If you make it available to the public,
then be prepared to deal positively with feedback of all sorts.
To do otherwise amounts to bating.

> If you see a homeless person with his hand out and give him burger, you 
> don't expect him to come back and complain about the sauce.

If the burger has gravel in it, they may think you are being unhelpful,
or worse, trying to injure them. Do you expect them to say nothing ?
[ I'm not sure your analogy is helpful, as I suspect it is culturally
   specific.]

Graeme Gill.
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-24 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-23, g...@catking.net  wrote:

> If you see a homeless person with his hand out and give him burger, you 
> don't expect him to come back and complain about the sauce.

Obviously, you never did this.  And one could even think that you
never heard about food allergies (or had friends/relatives dying from
it...).  (OT, of course...)

Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-24 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-22, Alexandre Prokoudine  wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 1:54 AM, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
>
>>> If a particular system service in Windows gets broken and some apps
>>> don't work as expected, would it be their developers fault? :)
>>
>> If they fix the defect - yes, of course.
>
> Yes, of course -- what? ;)

"Yes, it would not be their fault" ;-).  Mea culpa.

   (similar to one of the difference between Russian and English: in
Russian, when you say "Yes", you agree with what the other person
says; in English, you just indicate that the correct statement has
affirmative verb form ["Yes it does" vs "No it does not").

Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-24 Thread Tor Lillqvist
>  In your educated guess, are the GIMP-vs-window-management problems:

>   1) bugs in the port of GTK+, or

>   2) are they inherent limitations of "window properties" model of
>      the interaction between an application and graphic system?

Both;) The exact meaning of what in the X11 world is called "window
manager hints" is not specified. (And that's as such not a serious
problem; they are just "hints" after all, window managers are free to
ignore them, and the principle in X11 has always been to "provide
mechanism, not policy".)

That said, there is a reference environment (the window manager called
"metacity" used in the GNOME desktop environment), and from the GTK+
on Windows point of view, what is desired is to emulate the behaviour
of that. So how the window management GTK+ API should behave is
well-defined, if one just compares the behaviour of some specific
sequence of GTK+ API calls under metacity in GNOME and on Windows.

>  The limitations which may be addressed only by adding specific CODE
>  to application (as opposed to specific DATA on the app-WM interface)...

Yes, everything is just a small matter of programming...

As such the amount of code changes needed to get rid of the most
glaring GIMP problems on Windows (window z-order getting confused and
windows occasionally seeming to refuse activation or focus) is
probably not large. But the code is a bit convoluted. Also one must be
careful not to break something else when fixing one thing, of course.

--tml
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-24 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-21, Tor Lillqvist  wrote:
>> Are you sure that the situation is as you describe it?

> You mean when I said "It is pointless to describe the misbehaviour of
> GIMP windows on Windows to GIMP developers, as they don't use Windows
> themselves." ?

> That depends on who is counted as a GIMP developer, but at least
> currently, the people who understand GIMP best and actively work on
> GIMP don't use Windows. (This means something like two to four people,
> in their spare time, in case you have the unfortunate common
> misconception that there would be a large number of GIMP developers.)

> Personally I do use Windows, and I am to some extent a (or even "the")
> maintainer of GTK+ and GLib on Windows, but currently I am sorry to
> say that I don't really have the resources or inspiration to work much
> on GIMP. I would love to, in principle.

So could you answer what is IMO the key question:

  In your educated guess, are the GIMP-vs-window-management problems:

   1) bugs in the port of GTK+, or

   2) are they inherent limitations of "window properties" model of
  the interaction between an application and graphic system?  The
  limitations which may be addressed only by adding specific CODE
  to application (as opposed to specific DATA on the app-WM interface)...

(This is just a restatement of my question on a "parallel" message in
this thread, with subject "single-window fix and WMs", so it is enough
to answer one of them...)

Thanks,
Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-23 Thread Øyvind Kolås
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 9:50 PM,   wrote:
> - a simple static pipeline is a big performance win: a year ago (when
> I last timed GEGL) VIPS was always 10 and sometimes 100 times faster,
> though perhaps I messed up the benchmarking

> - with more than one CPU, large shared caches become a lot less useful
> and can begin to limit scalability
> - you can keep a display cache between pipelines to make panning and
> zooming quick (the VIPS GUI does this)

VIPS has received significant work on performance and refactoring
after it started working (doing what it is meant to do). GEGL has not
gone much beyond reaching the stage of doing what it says on the tin.
Display caches between renderings is essentially what GEGL does as
well, but it also permits doing this at check-point stages, (like for
instance a full layer subgroup, meaning that that subgroup never would
need to be recomposited if it doesnt change, GEGL also tracks all
minor changes.)

The GEGL code is structured in such a manner that the public
application API (the one using nodes) can be kept while replacing all
the internals as well as the plug-in API either as a fork (or later if
such a fork proves itself as an alternative backend). Feel free to
spearhead such an effort, personally I prefer continuing my efforts at
completing the existing GEGL plans.

/Øyvind K.
-- 
«The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed»
 -- William Gibson
http://pippin.gimp.org/http://ffii.org/
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-23 Thread gg
Graeme Gill wrote:
> Sparr wrote:
>> is broken, switch (temporarily)".  Everyone waited for Microsoft to
>> fix the DX problem (which never happened, ATI and nVidia implemented
>> workarounds in their drivers instead).  Expecting Blizzard's
>> developers to fix (or even acknowledge) bugs in Microsoft's code is
>> silly[1].
> 
> Try looking at this type of situation from the user point of
> view - it's all finger pointing, and doesn't actually help solve the
> problem. As soon as you put the user first, then as the vendor
> of a tool you will try to fix the problem if you can (working around it
> if you must), irrespective of who is ultimately "responsible".
> 
> [ It's all about attitude. Saying "It's not my fault" is an unhelpful
>attitude. Saying "Patches welcome" is an unhelpful attitude.
>Saying "Stop complaining, you got it for free!" is an unhelpful
>attitude. Saying "Too bad, it works for me" is an unhelpful
>attitude. Being unhelpful is a confrontational stance that gets
>peoples backs up, and convinces them that you are not to be trusted,
>since you seem to have no empathy for their situation, and seem
>to have no pride in what you do.
> ]
> 
> Graeme Gill.
> 

Some of your comments are valid but your basic premise is wrong. There 
is nothing for sale, so the is NO VENDOR.

neither is a GIMP a "product" in more than the most literal term that it 
is something which is produced.

Applying your marketing terminology and mentality to a FOSS project is 
wrong . Different motivations are the driving force.  The "customer" is 
not king. He can be a collaborator.

 >Saying "Stop complaining, you got it for free!" is an unhelpful
 >attitude.

So is complaining. With FOSS you can submit bugs reports if something 
does not work , request a feature is you have an idea or contribute to 
the project. The is no channel or reason to deal with "complaints".

If you see a homeless person with his hand out and give him burger, you 
don't expect him to come back and complain about the sauce.

But it's also true that suggesting something could be done differently 
is sometimes taken as an affront , that is unhelpful and may hinder 
improvements being made.

Many FOSS projects are refractory to user feedback and ideas coming from 
outside.

/gg






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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-23 Thread Fredrik Alströmer
On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 08:14, Tor Lillqvist  wrote:
>> [ It's all about attitude. Saying "Patches welcome" is an unhelpful attitude.
>
> OK, so what about "Feel free to ask for your money back"? Or "OK, I
> guess you have to use the competing products then"?

Not trying to inflame this more than necessary, but looking at the
philosophical side, I think we can all agree that fixing the root
cause of the problem generally produces a more reliable, maintainable
product, compared to treating the symptoms first. Of course, you could
argue that you should treat the symptoms first, and then cure the root
cause, however, this removes the pressure to fix the root cause
completely, not to mention that the 'fix' of the symptom will probably
never be removed.

This is part of the beauty of volunteer based FOSS software, you don't
have any employers who're only concerned with the quarterly results,
and force you to treat the symptoms. The flip-side is of course that
problems that no one knows how to fix are problem that's gonna take
longer to solve.

Bottom line is, saying 'fix this for me, I don't care how' is the true
unhelpful attitude, because we DO care how the fix is done. Not only
what symptoms it treats. It's not as much you the customer, and we the
developers of a product, it's you as my friend, and I'm lending you
the code I made in my backyard. If there's something you don't like
about it, by all means, help me solve it.

Just my two cents, sorry for the rambling.
Fredrik.
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Tor Lillqvist
> [ It's all about attitude. Saying "Patches welcome" is an unhelpful attitude.

OK, so what about "Feel free to ask for your money back"? Or "OK, I
guess you have to use the competing products then"?

--tml
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Graeme Gill
Sparr wrote:
> is broken, switch (temporarily)".  Everyone waited for Microsoft to
> fix the DX problem (which never happened, ATI and nVidia implemented
> workarounds in their drivers instead).  Expecting Blizzard's
> developers to fix (or even acknowledge) bugs in Microsoft's code is
> silly[1].

Try looking at this type of situation from the user point of
view - it's all finger pointing, and doesn't actually help solve the
problem. As soon as you put the user first, then as the vendor
of a tool you will try to fix the problem if you can (working around it
if you must), irrespective of who is ultimately "responsible".

[ It's all about attitude. Saying "It's not my fault" is an unhelpful
   attitude. Saying "Patches welcome" is an unhelpful attitude.
   Saying "Stop complaining, you got it for free!" is an unhelpful
   attitude. Saying "Too bad, it works for me" is an unhelpful
   attitude. Being unhelpful is a confrontational stance that gets
   peoples backs up, and convinces them that you are not to be trusted,
   since you seem to have no empathy for their situation, and seem
   to have no pride in what you do.
]

Graeme Gill.

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread jcupitt
Hi Martin,

2009/10/22 Martin Nordholts :
> It doesn't seem feasible from a performance perspective to construct
> complex compositing graphs from scratch all the time. For example, can
> caches be reused between VIPS pipeline setups?

That's true, there is a cost there. I would argue:

- VIPS does almost no caching, so there's not actually much to throw away
- you spend much more time rendering pixels through a pipeline than
updating it, so it's the render part that needs to be quick
- a simple static pipeline is a big performance win: a year ago (when
I last timed GEGL) VIPS was always 10 and sometimes 100 times faster,
though perhaps I messed up the benchmarking
- with more than one CPU, large shared caches become a lot less useful
and can begin to limit scalability
- you can keep a display cache between pipelines to make panning and
zooming quick (the VIPS GUI does this)

> Another thing that makes VIPS less attractive is that it is not designed
> using an object oriented approach but is instead written in a
> functional/procedural manner. I have looked briefly at the code a while ago
> and my first impression was that VIPS will hard to extend and adapt to GIMP
> needs.

That's certainly true. VIPS is pretty old and it shows in the ugly API.

I'm trying to fix it up. The more recent chunks of API are built on
top of GObject and the long term plan is to break backwards
compatibility and move the whole thing over.

We had a stab at a "big bang" from scratch rewrite on top of GObject a
few years ago and it petered out (as any experienced programmer could
have predicted, heh), We're now trying to evolve the existing code
instead and reuse stuff from the big bang branch where we can.

John
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 10/22/2009 09:58 PM, jcup...@gmail.com wrote:
> 2009/10/22 Martin Nordholts :
>>> I have the impression that the least painful way to make GEGL fast
>>> SOON may be to build its desired API on top of VIPS.
>>
>> We can't use VIPS in GIMP because we need a dynamic graph.
>> In practice that also rules out implementing GEGL with VIPS.
> 
> You could use VIPS as a backend for GEGL. You could have the dynamic
> graph stuff in a layer over VIPS and on a change, rebuild the VIPS
> pipeline underneath. This is how the VIPS GUI works.

Hi John,

It doesn't seem feasible from a performance perspective to construct
complex compositing graphs from scratch all the time. For example, can
caches be reused between VIPS pipeline setups?

Another thing that makes VIPS less attractive is that it is not designed
using an object oriented approach but is instead written in a
functional/procedural manner. I have looked briefly at the code a while ago
and my first impression was that VIPS will hard to extend and adapt to GIMP
needs.

BR,
Martin


-- 

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http://www.chromecode.com/

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread jcupitt
2009/10/22 Martin Nordholts :
>> I have the impression that the least painful way to make GEGL fast
>> SOON may be to build its desired API on top of VIPS.
>
> We can't use VIPS in GIMP because we need a dynamic graph.
> In practice that also rules out implementing GEGL with VIPS.

You could use VIPS as a backend for GEGL. You could have the dynamic
graph stuff in a layer over VIPS and on a change, rebuild the VIPS
pipeline underneath. This is how the VIPS GUI works.

Though I've not looked in detail and I'm not volunteering to do the
work :-( But it seems possible to me anyway.

John
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Sparr
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Ilya Zakharevich
 wrote:
>> I can see how a John Do can blame GIMP for GTK+ issues, but I don't
>> see why GIMP developers should bother about John Do's misconceptions
>> about software development.
>
> These are not misconceptions.  Software does not modularize; at least
> not in the sense of dilution of responsibility.  If you use a library,
> its bugs BUG YOU.

Of course software responsibility modularizes.  When World of Warcraft
had graphics glitches on DirectX but not on OpenGL, whose fault was
that?  If your answer was "Microsoft", move to the head of the class.
WoW users complained to Blizzard, who responded "Microsoft's library
is broken, switch (temporarily)".  Everyone waited for Microsoft to
fix the DX problem (which never happened, ATI and nVidia implemented
workarounds in their drivers instead).  Expecting Blizzard's
developers to fix (or even acknowledge) bugs in Microsoft's code is
silly[1].

[1] plenty of WoW players are also silly, and thus continued to blame
Blizzard, as you are blaming GIMP now for bugs in GTK+.  Yes, I am
calling you silly.
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 10/22/2009 04:15 PM, Nicolas Robidoux wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 1:50 PM, peter sikking wrote:
> 
>> another 'external' area where we really can use some help is gegl,
>> to get that from its bumbling experimentation speed to production
>> speeds that are same or even better that current GIMP (I read between
>> the lines in irc that not everything in GIMP it profiled to the bone).
> 
> (Warning: Foot in mouth ahead.)
> 
> I have the impression that the least painful way to make GEGL fast
> SOON may be to build its desired API on top of VIPS.

We can't use VIPS in GIMP because we need a dynamic graph.
In practice that also rules out implementing GEGL with VIPS.

Regarding GEGL's performance issues: It's not that GEGL still is slow
because we don't know how to make it faster, there many identified
areas that we know could be improved, it's just no one have had time
to improve GEGL's performance further yet.

Once GIMP 2.8 is out that will change. At least I plan on hacking
a lot on GEGL once 2.8 is out...

 / Martin


-- 

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Nicolas Robidoux

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 1:50 PM, peter sikking wrote:

> another 'external' area where we really can use some help is gegl,
> to get that from its bumbling experimentation speed to production
> speeds that are same or even better that current GIMP (I read between
> the lines in irc that not everything in GIMP it profiled to the bone).

(Warning: Foot in mouth ahead.)

I have the impression that the least painful way to make GEGL fast
SOON may be to build its desired API on top of VIPS.

Nicolas Robidoux
Universite Laurentienne

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Fredrik Alströmer
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 15:57, Alexandre Prokoudine
 wrote:
>> another 'external' area where we really can use some help is gegl,
>> to get that from its bumbling experimentation speed to production
>> speeds that are same or even better that current GIMP (I read between
>> the lines in irc that not everything in GIMP it profiled to the bone).
>
> +2^32 :)

I hope that's not a 32-bit signed integer...

Sorry for the OT-spam, couldn't resist the urge. I'll crawl back under
my rock now... :)
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 1:50 PM, peter sikking wrote:

> "GIMP is looking for an experienced windows XYZ developer who
> can really make a difference to our user experience on windows."
>
> I do not want this to be a high-maintenance thing like the SoC.
> The effort for the current contributors should be limited to:
> - coming up with a coherent package of work and requirements
>  for the new contributor ("has to know XYZ libs and ABC algos")
> - write the help wanted add (if you do one a month, it may become
>  NEWS on all those GIMP tracking sites)
> - help the new contributor with the bug numbers and where to start
>  in the source ("oh, that is in gtk")
> - be really clear in what we want to achieve (I can help with that)
> - no further hand-holding

+1

> another 'external' area where we really can use some help is gegl,
> to get that from its bumbling experimentation speed to production
> speeds that are same or even better that current GIMP (I read between
> the lines in irc that not everything in GIMP it profiled to the bone).

+2^32 :)

Alexandre
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 1:54 AM, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:

>> If a particular system service in Windows gets broken and some apps
>> don't work as expected, would it be their developers fault? :)
>
> If they fix the defect - yes, of course.

Yes, of course -- what? ;)

>> I can see how a John Do can blame GIMP for GTK+ issues, but I don't
>> see why GIMP developers should bother about John Do's misconceptions
>> about software development.
>
> These are not misconceptions.  Software does not modularize; at least
> not in the sense of dilution of responsibility.

Wow! :D

Alexandre
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread Alexia Death
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 12:50 PM, peter sikking  wrote:
> what we can do is be much more concrete on www.gimp.org and
> say on the home page: "Help wanted". This is eerily close
> to job openings at companies, but that is what we have.


I actually like this idea. It would be awesome if we could link this
from bugzilla somehow. Since we share it with GNOME project, being
able to this is unlikely but a bug tracker is the best place to have
contact with someone who would be willing, due to need and able by
merit of having found the bugzilla in first place to contribute.




-- 
--Alexia
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread peter sikking

OK guys,

the tone of this discussion is distracting from the real problems
we have and a possible solution.

and we do have problems that are in gtk (mainly on windows) and with
a load of window managers that do not even implement the window hint
that we are apparently the bleeding-edge users of for our docks.

insight: I met with the openPrinting guys on tuesday and was telling
them how this gtk+windows situation looked like a mini version of
linux printing (_nobody_ can be bothered to work on print dialogs).
the impression of one of the guys was that when it comes to gtk+windows,
what you are talking about is GIMP and inkscape.
these two seem to be the only clients (more than one way) that matter.

what is not helping us is that outsiders expect this big application
to have a big and active development team. to my surprise even the
official commit stats come to that conclusion. meanwhile everyone
who hangs around here knows that we have very limited resources.
piecing all the contributions together I say we got about 3.7
full developers worth going on a at any given time.

I am sure that the 1 million users who download GIMP for windows
every month somehow expect that is was developed on windows.

so the solution is not to ask the people who (and I am grateful
for it) do their best to contribute now. the solution is to
stop potential contributors having to find out by osmosis how
they can help us.

what we can do is be much more concrete on www.gimp.org and
say on the home page: "Help wanted". This is eerily close
to job openings at companies, but that is what we have.

and similar to companies we have to 'sell' our needs a bit.
show that new developers can work on a coherent package of
work where they can make an impact, pretty soon. I think
for instance Martin and Alexia discovered that over the
last years and they have carved out their niche(s) where
they are having a large impact.

"GIMP is looking for an experienced windows XYZ developer who
can really make a difference to our user experience on windows."

I do not want this to be a high-maintenance thing like the SoC.
The effort for the current contributors should be limited to:
- coming up with a coherent package of work and requirements
  for the new contributor ("has to know XYZ libs and ABC algos")
- write the help wanted add (if you do one a month, it may become
  NEWS on all those GIMP tracking sites)
- help the new contributor with the bug numbers and where to start
  in the source ("oh, that is in gtk")
- be really clear in what we want to achieve (I can help with that)
- no further hand-holding

another 'external' area where we really can use some help is gegl,
to get that from its bumbling experimentation speed to production
speeds that are same or even better that current GIMP (I read between
the lines in irc that not everything in GIMP it profiled to the bone).

--ps

founder + principal interaction architect
man + machine interface works

http://mmiworks.net/blog : on interaction architecture





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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-22 Thread David Gowers
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Alexia Death  wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 12:54 AM, Ilya Zakharevich
>  wrote:
>>> I can see how a John Do can blame GIMP for GTK+ issues, but I don't
>>> see why GIMP developers should bother about John Do's misconceptions
>>> about software development.
>>
>> These are not misconceptions.  Software does not modularize; at least
>> not in the sense of dilution of responsibility.  If you use a library,
>> its bugs BUG YOU.
>
> I think that it is one of the STRENGTHS of FOSS that if there's a bug
> in a component users of that component do not try to hack round it,
> but expect the bug to be fixed at the source benefiting everyone.
>
> I'm sorry to say this, but your attitude is starting to piss me off.
> Your attack mentality and complaining are not helping. Perhaps you
> should stop that and do something that would actually help, like
> contribute some code.
>
> We work on gimp for FUN. Most of us do not use Windows(I don't have
> one for my personal use) and those that do are not skilled enough to
> do GTK development on that platform. We do what we can. I personally
> got involved in the project by hunting a bug that ended up being in
> GTK. It got fixed. True, the bug was specific for Linux, but that's
> the platform I do my development on. I done have neither the will nor
> skills to do that. You can do it on windows if you want.


This :).

You said all the things I wanted to say but didn't figure out how to express.

I won't say anything else to avoid being inflammatory.
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-21 Thread Alexia Death
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 12:54 AM, Ilya Zakharevich
 wrote:
>> I can see how a John Do can blame GIMP for GTK+ issues, but I don't
>> see why GIMP developers should bother about John Do's misconceptions
>> about software development.
>
> These are not misconceptions.  Software does not modularize; at least
> not in the sense of dilution of responsibility.  If you use a library,
> its bugs BUG YOU.

I think that it is one of the STRENGTHS of FOSS that if there's a bug
in a component users of that component do not try to hack round it,
but expect the bug to be fixed at the source benefiting everyone.

I'm sorry to say this, but your attitude is starting to piss me off.
Your attack mentality and complaining are not helping. Perhaps you
should stop that and do something that would actually help, like
contribute some code.

We work on gimp for FUN. Most of us do not use Windows(I don't have
one for my personal use) and those that do are not skilled enough to
do GTK development on that platform. We do what we can. I personally
got involved in the project by hunting a bug that ended up being in
GTK. It got fixed. True, the bug was specific for Linux, but that's
the platform I do my development on. I done have neither the will nor
skills to do that. You can do it on windows if you want.

-- 
--Alexia
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-21 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-21, Alexandre Prokoudine  wrote:
>>> The particular 'communications breakdown' is between GTK+ and the
>>> Windows window manager, GIMP is not involved in the problem, only a
>>> casualty of it.

>> Wrong.  And even if it were true, the problem is *with GIMP*,

> If a particular system service in Windows gets broken and some apps
> don't work as expected, would it be their developers fault? :)

If they fix the defect - yes, of course.  If not - of course it is
their developers fault.  Why do you ask, is not the answer obvious
("most obvious" if the problem happens on ALL windows systems)?

The situation with free software is *slightly* more delicate.  But
"only slightly"; remember what fox explained to the little prince...

> I can see how a John Do can blame GIMP for GTK+ issues, but I don't
> see why GIMP developers should bother about John Do's misconceptions
> about software development.

These are not misconceptions.  Software does not modularize; at least
not in the sense of dilution of responsibility.  If you use a library,
its bugs BUG YOU.

Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-21 Thread yahvuu
Hi all,

Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> I can see how a John Do can blame GIMP for GTK+ issues, but I don't
> see why GIMP developers should bother about John Do's misconceptions
> about software development.

perhaps the Windows version should wear a 'beta port of GTK+'
disclaimer as a nag-screen. Seriously. The most annoying buggy
software is buggy software which you expected to work flawlessly.

As Ilya points out, it's legitimate that users blame the GIMP project.
So i think a warning upfront can reduce the frustration, and
also communicate the responsibilities a bit.


regards,
yahvuu


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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-21 Thread Tor Lillqvist
> Let me restate it:
>
>  it is pointless to fix bugs/problems on windows, since they do not
>  happen (and if they happen, developers do not want to see reports).

No, not at all. Bug reports (in the proper place, i.e.
bugzilla.gnome.org) are always welcome, especially if they describe
specific error scenarios, that have not been reported earlier, that
can be easily reproduced even with some relatively simple app like
gtk-demo without requiring running a complex one like GIMP.

Sure, I certainly am well aware that the maintainers of GTK+ on
Windows (i.e. myself and a couple of others, in our "copious spare
time") are not as responsive to bug reports as some users seem to
expect. That doesn't mean we would ignore the reports, though.

> Are you sure that the situation is as you describe it?

You mean when I said "It is pointless to describe the misbehaviour of
GIMP windows on Windows to GIMP developers, as they don't use Windows
themselves." ?

That depends on who is counted as a GIMP developer, but at least
currently, the people who understand GIMP best and actively work on
GIMP don't use Windows. (This means something like two to four people,
in their spare time, in case you have the unfortunate common
misconception that there would be a large number of GIMP developers.)

Personally I do use Windows, and I am to some extent a (or even "the")
maintainer of GTK+ and GLib on Windows, but currently I am sorry to
say that I don't really have the resources or inspiration to work much
on GIMP. I would love to, in principle.

> Sorry, but I find this attitude as misplaced as one in the previous
> paragraph...

I am just stating what I see being the factual situation. It's not a
question of "attitude". You mean the (de-facto active) GIMP developers
have "an attitude" when they don't bother to use Windows?

--tml
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-21 Thread Karl Günter Wünsch
On Wednesday 21 October 2009, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
> Good to know; so let me refine: is there ANYTHING in the move to
> single window which would not be achieved by
> 
>   a) restricting the maximal size of image window to the gap between
>  two toolboxes; and
> 
>   b) making z-order changes syncronized between the main window and
>  toolboxes?
> 
IMHO the move to a single image window with dockables would solve quite a lot 
of interoperability problems. For example there are plenty of broken window 
managers out there. Relying on them (WM developers) getting it right in the end 
for the GIMP is proving to be a long wait. As desktop environments go the 
window managers that work with the GIMP as intended tend OTOH to be the ones 
that don't play well with KDE for example (if you even have the choice, which 
you haven't really in KDE4). Oh and windows is a beast that isn't handled 
easily as well - the window manager there sucks at managing applications that 
consist of multiple single windows that don't have a proper native inheritance 
structure - which places the problem either into the GTK+ ballpark (a vital 
library once created to suit GIMP but which now is driven by people with their 
own development goals which don't necessarily match the GIMP requirements any 
longer) or forces the GIMP developers to avoid this area in the long run. 
Besides that there are things like split layer views that I'd like to see - for 
example editing a layer mask side by side the image area it belongs to which 
IMHO are next to impossible with the current multi window arrangement.
-- 
mfg
Karl Günter
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-21 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:

> It was "GIMP's decision" to use GTK+

You made my day :)

>> The particular 'communications breakdown' is between GTK+ and the
>> Windows window manager, GIMP is not involved in the problem, only a
>> casualty of it.
>
> Wrong.  And even if it were true, the problem is *with GIMP*,

If a particular system service in Windows gets broken and some apps
don't work as expected, would it be their developers fault? :)

I can see how a John Do can blame GIMP for GTK+ issues, but I don't
see why GIMP developers should bother about John Do's misconceptions
about software development.

Alexandre
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-21 Thread Tor Lillqvist
> It was "GIMP's decision" to use GTK+,

Well, d'oh! I wonder if you know what the "G" in GTK+ means?

Yeah, they should have stayed with Motif, would have prevented the
port to Windows and all the clueless whining that causes.

--tml
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-21 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-21, Alexandre Prokoudine  wrote:
>> Good to know; so let me refine: is there ANYTHING in the move to
>> single window which would not be achieved by

>>  a) restricting the maximal size of image window to the gap between
>>     two toolboxes; and

>>  b) making z-order changes syncronized between the main window and
>>     toolboxes?

> As mentioned before, synchronized panning in tiled image windows, for 
> instance.

Great!  So "ANYTHING"-question is answered.  How about a complete
list?  ;-)

Thanks,
Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-21 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-21, David Gowers <00a...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>  it is pointless to fix bugs/problems on windows, since they do not
>>  happen (and if they happen, developers do not want to see reports).

> No, it means the bugs are in GTK+, not GIMP,

It was "GIMP's decision" to use GTK+, so any bug in GTK is
automatically a bug in GIMP - and a responsibility of GIMP maintainers.

> and it requires GTK+ developers who run Windows to fix these bugs
> (or a GIMP developer who runs Windows and has some knowledge of GTK+
> and an inclination to fix these bugs). Do you seriously think a
> person running Linux is going to be able to reliably fix a bug that
> only shows up on Windows?

Now you know that your question was very misdirected, right?  [Judging
by your other post.]

> Your expectations that GIMP will exert such extreme control over the
> window management are also unreasonable.

No.  Expectations of a user that things work the way they are
documented are NEVER unreasonable.  They may be
unconvenient/embarassing to developers, but this is a different topic...

> Your window manager manages your windows, GTK+ communicates to the
> window manager what window behaviour GIMP is asking for, GIMP
> communicates to GTK+ what window behaviour it wants.

You write as if I care how things are implemented (and as if I do not
know this ;-).

> The particular 'communications breakdown' is between GTK+ and the
> Windows window manager, GIMP is not involved in the problem, only a
> casualty of it.

Wrong.  And even if it were true, the problem is *with GIMP*, not with
some intermediaries.  WMs differ; this is a fact of life.  When
developers hide their heads in sand ("it just works with my WM"), it
is nothing to be proud of...

Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-20 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 4:52 AM, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:

> Good to know; so let me refine: is there ANYTHING in the move to
> single window which would not be achieved by
>
>  a) restricting the maximal size of image window to the gap between
>     two toolboxes; and
>
>  b) making z-order changes syncronized between the main window and
>     toolboxes?

As mentioned before, synchronized panning in tiled image windows, for instance.

Alexandre
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-20 Thread David Gowers
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 11:22 AM, Ilya Zakharevich
 wrote:
> On 2009-10-02, peter sikking  wrote:
>>> However, I do not see how much this would affect the (AFAIK) main
>>> complaint about multi-window GIMP: that having several windows with
>>> several possibilities of what is focused requires many extraneous
>>> mouse clicks and/or keypresses.
>
>> the introduction of a single window mode is in no way related to that.
>
> Good to know; so let me refine: is there ANYTHING in the move to
> single window which would not be achieved by
>
>  a) restricting the maximal size of image window to the gap between
>     two toolboxes; and
>
>  b) making z-order changes syncronized between the main window and
>     toolboxes?
>
> (I mean: whenever z-order of main GIMP window changes *wrt non-GIMP
> windows*, the z-order of "dependent" windows changes accordingly.
> Same for toolboxes: similar changes in THEIR z-order should be
> reflected in the z-order of the "current" image window)
>
>>> When the windows are merged into one, STILL only one of subwindows has
>>> a focus?  So how does this improves the current nightmares (e.g.,
>>> keyboard shortcuts not working - especially when most needed ;-)?
>>
>> that is a serious bug.
>>
>> in what version(s) of GIMP does this happen?
>
> 2.6.6.  Tested on Windows.  Examples:
>
> a) Press TAB (toolboxes disappear);
>   Press TAB (toolboxes  reappear, focus on "Layers");
>   Press TAB - now you navigate "Layers" toolbox.

I can reproduce this very annoying behaviour. I have to refocus the
image window in order to get TAB to work again, and basically gave up
on using TAB at all. Platform: Arch Linux (i686), GTK 2.16.5, Window
Manager: AwesomeWM 3.3

I believe my WM always focuses the newly shown window, which may
reflect on this behaviour.

>
> b) Focus to Layers.  Press F11.  Nothing.  Press o.  Nothing.  Press 4
>   (user configured to "1:4 zoom").  Nothing.

I can't reproduce this; all keyboard shortcuts work as expected,
except where they conflict (for example, when a text-entry field like
palette or color name is in focus, you have to be able to type o as an
ordinary letter). May be Windows-only.
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-20 Thread David Gowers
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Ilya Zakharevich
 wrote:
> On 2009-10-21, Tor Lillqvist  wrote:
>> It is pointless to describe the misbehaviour of GIMP windows on
>> Windows to GIMP developers, as they don't use Windows themselves.
>
> Let me restate it:
>
>  it is pointless to fix bugs/problems on windows, since they do not
>  happen (and if they happen, developers do not want to see reports).

No, it means the bugs are in GTK+, not GIMP, and it requires GTK+
developers who run Windows to fix these bugs (or a GIMP developer who
runs Windows and has some knowledge of GTK+ and an inclination to fix
these bugs). Do you seriously think a person running Linux is going to
be able to reliably fix a bug that only shows up on Windows?

>
> Are you sure that the situation is as you describe it?
>
>> To see GIMP behave as it is supposed to, you need to use it on Linux.
>> The reference window manager is metacity, as far as I know, but also
>> other window managers might work well enough.
>
> Sorry, but I find this attitude as misplaced as one in the previous
> paragraph...

Your expectations that GIMP will exert such extreme control over the
window management are also unreasonable. Your window manager manages
your windows, GTK+ communicates to the window manager what window
behaviour GIMP is asking for, GIMP communicates to GTK+ what window
behaviour it wants. The particular 'communications breakdown' is
between GTK+ and the Windows window manager, GIMP is not involved in
the problem, only a casualty of it.
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-20 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-21, Tor Lillqvist  wrote:
> It is pointless to describe the misbehaviour of GIMP windows on
> Windows to GIMP developers, as they don't use Windows themselves.

Let me restate it:

  it is pointless to fix bugs/problems on windows, since they do not
  happen (and if they happen, developers do not want to see reports).

Are you sure that the situation is as you describe it? 

> To see GIMP behave as it is supposed to, you need to use it on Linux.
> The reference window manager is metacity, as far as I know, but also
> other window managers might work well enough.

Sorry, but I find this attitude as misplaced as one in the previous
paragraph...

Yours,
Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-20 Thread Tor Lillqvist
> 2.6.6.  Tested on Windows.

As has been said before, one should not think that the way GIMP's
windows behave on Windows is how they are supposed to behave. There
are bugs in GTK+ on Windows that affect GIMP.

It is pointless to describe the misbehaviour of GIMP windows on
Windows to GIMP developers, as they don't use Windows themselves.

To see GIMP behave as it is supposed to, you need to use it on Linux.
The reference window manager is metacity, as far as I know, but also
other window managers might work well enough.

--tml
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-20 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-02, peter sikking  wrote:
>> However, I do not see how much this would affect the (AFAIK) main
>> complaint about multi-window GIMP: that having several windows with
>> several possibilities of what is focused requires many extraneous
>> mouse clicks and/or keypresses.

> the introduction of a single window mode is in no way related to that.

Good to know; so let me refine: is there ANYTHING in the move to
single window which would not be achieved by

  a) restricting the maximal size of image window to the gap between
 two toolboxes; and

  b) making z-order changes syncronized between the main window and
 toolboxes?

(I mean: whenever z-order of main GIMP window changes *wrt non-GIMP
windows*, the z-order of "dependent" windows changes accordingly.
Same for toolboxes: similar changes in THEIR z-order should be
reflected in the z-order of the "current" image window)

>> When the windows are merged into one, STILL only one of subwindows has
>> a focus?  So how does this improves the current nightmares (e.g.,
>> keyboard shortcuts not working - especially when most needed ;-)?
>
> that is a serious bug.
>
> in what version(s) of GIMP does this happen?

2.6.6.  Tested on Windows.  Examples:

a) Press TAB (toolboxes disappear);
   Press TAB (toolboxes  reappear, focus on "Layers");
   Press TAB - now you navigate "Layers" toolbox.

b) Focus to Layers.  Press F11.  Nothing.  Press o.  Nothing.  Press 4
   (user configured to "1:4 zoom").  Nothing.

Thanks,
Ilya


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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-02 Thread peter sikking

Ilya Zakharevich wrote:


However, I do not see how much this would affect the (AFAIK) main
complaint about multi-window GIMP: that having several windows with
several possibilities of what is focused requires many extraneous
mouse clicks and/or keypresses.


the introduction of a single window mode is in no way related to that.


When the windows are merged into one, STILL only one of subwindows has
a focus?  So how does this improves the current nightmares (e.g.,
keyboard shortcuts not working - especially when most needed ;-)?


that is a serious bug.

in what version(s) of GIMP does this happen?

--ps

founder + principal interaction architect
man + machine interface works

http://mmiworks.net/blog : on interaction architecture





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Re: [Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-01 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:

> a focus?  So how does this improves the current nightmares (e.g.,
> keyboard shortcuts not working - especially when most needed ;-)?

Lemme guess - you are on WIndows? :)

Alexandre
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[Gimp-developer] Would single-window fix usability nightmares?

2009-10-01 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
  [Repost after a list resurrection]

I've read through the discussion of (a possibility of) a single-window
GIMP interface.  Both on the mailing list, and on
  http://www.mmiworks.net/eng/publications/2009/09/gimp-single-mode.html

However, I do not see how much this would affect the (AFAIK) main
complaint about multi-window GIMP: that having several windows with
several possibilities of what is focused requires many extraneous
mouse clicks and/or keypresses.

When the windows are merged into one, STILL only one of subwindows has
a focus?  So how does this improves the current nightmares (e.g.,
keyboard shortcuts not working - especially when most needed ;-)?

  [Myself, I do not use PhotoShop, but what I saw is people who use
   both PS and GIMP say that PS allows about 3x times quickier UI
   interaction - in large respect due to no need to "fix mis-focus".]

   I mean here the [rare?] cases when GIMP caught up with
   particular features of PS, so one can compare not feature sets,
   but how convenient is it to perform the operations...

And if a solution to this problem is found, why would not it "work"
with multi-window interface too?

Or is the improvement ONLY in the fact that utility windows will never
obscure the image?

===

BTW, if one considers single-window interface as "just a fix for UI
interaction slowness", I see no problem with editing multiple files:
just have a "single-window interface" open for each of them.

If this turns out to be important: to make things take less screen
space, one could allow utility docks to "shrink" on unfocussed
windows...

Yours,
Ilya

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