Subject: [Gimp-gui] Force Toolbox Widgets To Bottom

From: Andrew Pullins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2015 19:53:12 -0400

Feature Request <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=756601>,
attachment 313345
<https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=313345>

To make the Toolbox look better and more consistent with the rest of
GIMP. I suggest that the "You can drop dockable dialogs here" be
dropped and the Toolbox Widgets be forced to the bottom leaving room
for dialogs to be docked at the bottom of the tool box.

This label is not really needed as when users first start up GIMP
there is already a dialog underneath the toolbox so right off the get
go they know that you can place dialogs here. If the user decides to
take this dialog and place it anywhere else, now there is this ugly
label telling them what they already know they can do. This may even
be insulting to users, as you are saying they need a big banner to
tell them how to use your software.

This is also very inconsistent from the rest of the GIMP. One because
of the label. and two because the entire box that contains this lable
gets lit up when you bring a dialog back to the toolbox. This is a bit
strange when every other place you can place a dialog there is a thin
~5px line that lites up that tells you that you can place it there.

Now that this label is gone what is to be done with the Toolbox
wegits?  Well I think they should be forced to the bottom of bottom of
the Toolbox.

--
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with him.

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---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 13:57:54 +0200

Hi,

On 2015-10-15 01:53, Andrew Pullins wrote:
> Feature Request [1], attachment 313345 [2]
> 

I'm sorry but there are no "insults" in having a label giving 
information to user (what about status bar, tooltip bubbles, or help 
button and doc pages! They all give information on how to use the 
software, hence would be insulting? Seriously?). This is a non-rational 
rhetorical method which one can indeed see in some bug reports saying 
basically "if you don't do this change, then you are insulting users, 
therefore you are assholes; so you have no choices and do what I say". 
And I wish not to see this kind of things on this mailing list, please.

There are perfectly good reasons for removing such a label, and you give 
some of them in this email. Let's stick to them.

> wegits? Well I think they should be forced to the bottom of bottom of

Now this is a good and rational reason. And this is not because the 
label disappeared that the toolbox would grow, but the opposite: why not 
allow the toolbox to grow (which may or not have the consequence to have 
the label disappear)?
We allow resizing of each dock, and this is indeed perfectly sensible 
that some people may want to lose a dock and have a toolbox taking the 
whole vertical size instead.

Actually your 3 messages are a good start to rethink maybe some of our 
UI organization for dock, tools and menus. There have been ideas laying 
around for years about getting an horizontal button bar, and so on.
I think I'll open a wiki page to discuss this topic too.
Thanks.

Jehan

---

From: Alexandre Prokoudine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 19:41:01 +0300

> wegits?  Well I think they should be forced to the bottom of bottom of

If I may suggest, we should work on a complete redesign of the toolbox
and tools' options. The way things are going, we are likely to create
another Frankenstein toolbox.

What we are missing here is cold analysis. A lot of your requests stem
from resizing the toolbox. Frankly, GIMP is probably the only design
software I know of where people resize the toolbox at all. My guess is
that it's because its design sucks. How about we design it right
instead of applying bandaids all around?

Alex

---

From: Andrew Pullins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 12:58:10 -0400

> I'm sorry but there are no "insults" in having a label giving information
> to user (what about status bar, tooltip bubbles, or help button and doc
> pages! They all give information on how to use the software, hence would be
> insulting? Seriously?). This is a non-rational rhetorical method which one
> can indeed see in some bug reports saying basically "if you don't do this
> change, then you are insulting users, therefore you are assholes; so you
> have no choices and do what I say". And I wish not to see this kind of
> things on this mailing list, please.
>

I was not calling anyone an asshole or telling you that you have to do what
I say.  I am merely trying to point out some reasons that GIMP should get
rid of the label.

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 18:58:59 +0200

Hi,

> instead of applying bandaids all around?

I agree. That's what I was trying to say in some of my answers, that 
perhaps we should review completely the UI for tools and docks.
This list is an opportunity to review some of the base concepts, and 
produce a very cool "future" design, even though it may mean that this 
cool design won't see the day before 3.0 or even after.

Jehan

---

From: Andrew Pullins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 13:04:56 -0400

The reason I split it up this way is because I did not want someone to
shoot down the entire thing because they did not like one aspect to my
idea. I think Alexandre has a good point, I can't think of any design app
that lets you resize the toolbox like GIMP does. I think if all the ideas
the I have posted recently we could achieve a toolbox that does not need to
be resized.  Not to say that all of my ideas are the best but looking at
GIMP and comparing it to other apps(not just Photoshop) I believe that they
are good ideas.   But that is up to the community to decide.

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 19:05:47 +0200

Hi,

On 2015-10-15 18:58, Andrew Pullins wrote:
>> software, hence would be insulting? Seriously?). This is a
>> non-rational rhetorical method which one can indeed see in some bug
>> reports saying basically "if you don't do this change, then you are
>> insulting users, therefore you are assholes; so you have no choices
>> and do what I say". And I wish not to see this kind of things on
>> this mailing list, please.
> 
> I was not calling anyone an asshole or telling you that you have to do
> what I say.  I am merely trying to point out some reasons that GIMP
> should get rid of the label.

No problem there. Probably I should not have reacted myself, I was 
merely trying to make a point there about choosing some words wisely, 
because we see all kind of not very cool remarks in bug reports and 
saying that a help message can be seen as insulting users is one of 
these. A message can be useless, annoying, badly designed, or whatever 
like this. But "insulting" was just far fetched.

This said, you also make interesting remarks, so that's all good for me.

Jehan

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 13:14:57 -0400

> instead of applying bandaids all around?

Am I the only person who likes the Toolbox just the way it is?

Yes, I resize the Toolbox from time to time, and I find the ability to 
resize the Toolbox very handy, depending on whether I want more room for 
the image, or more room to read the layer names (I end up with large 
layer stacks, and so I label all the layers to keep track of what layer 
does what).

I love being able to drop the dialogs that I want into the Toolbox, and 
the ability to rearrange them as seems convenient for the task at hand.

I've used a lot of different image editing programs, including 
PhotoShop, and I've never understood all the complaints that GIMP should 
look more like PhotoShop, because to me it already looks pretty much the 
same, except I like the GIMP layout better.

I put the Toolbox in a long narrow strip along the left edge of the 
screen, leaving a large square area for the image. The screen is 
1600x1200, and yes, that's not a small screen.

Here's a screenshot showing the left edge of the screen, showing the 
Toolbox and an image window, in which I free up some vertical real 
estate by hiding the menu bar: 
http://ninedegreesbelow.com/bug-reports/gimp29/gimp-toolbox.png

I'm having a difficult time imagining a more efficient layout for Tools 
than GIMP already has. (I don't mean Single-Window Mode, which seems to 
me to be completely unuseable, but different strokes for different folks).

Best,
Elle

---

From: Andrew Pullins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 13:23:56 -0400

>
> No problem there. Probably I should not have reacted myself, I was merely
> trying to make a point there about choosing some words wisely, because we
> see all kind of not very cool remarks in bug reports and saying that a help
> message can be seen as insulting users is one of these. A message can be
> useless, annoying, badly designed, or whatever like this. But "insulting"
> was just far fetched.

It is not a very good argument but these all compound and make me wonder if
it should be there.

> the image, or more room to read the layer names (I end up with large layer
> stacks, and so I label all the layers to keep track of what layer does
> what).
>
> I've used a lot of different image editing programs, including PhotoShop,
> and I've never understood all the complaints that GIMP should look more
> like PhotoShop, because to me it already looks pretty much the same, except
> I like the GIMP layout better.
>
> screen, leaving a large square area for the image. The screen is 1600x1200,
> and yes, that's not a small screen.
>
> Toolbox and an image window, in which I free up some vertical real estate
> by hiding the menu bar:
> than GIMP already has. (I don't mean Single-Window Mode, which seems to me
> to be completely unuseable, but different strokes for different folks).
>

The point of this feature is not to take a way your ability to add dialog
to the toolbox, nether bottom, left, or right.  On the contrary, the point
is when you have users like me who do not like the dialogs in the toolbox.
When you take away the dialog the toolbox looks bad and there are things I
believe could help make it look better.  It is also not about looking like
Photoshop although that is not a bad thing.  We should not do things just
because Photoshop does it that way.  But we should also not
immediately reject ideas because Photoshop does it that way either.

---

From: Alexandre Prokoudine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 20:29:37 +0300

> layer stacks, and so I label all the layers to keep track of what layer

Again, this is an example of things that are wrong with current GIMP's UI :)

You should not have to resize the toolbox just to see layer names.
Long names should be ellipsized, with full names being displayed in
tooltips when you hover. This is how it works pretty much everywhere.
I had a patch on that in the works, but it broke a few things that I
could not immediately figure out.

> http://ninedegreesbelow.com/bug-reports/gimp29/gimp-toolbox.png

Let's just say that the tools' options dialog should never be that
wide in the first place, and it's something on mitch's roadmap since,
like, dawn of times.

Alex

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 19:32:43 +0200

Hi,

> Am I the only person who likes the Toolbox just the way it is?

Note that I don't say I dislike it, but that it can definitely be 
improved.

> resize the Toolbox very handy, depending on whether I want more room
> for the image, or more room to read the layer names (I end up with
> large layer stacks, and so I label all the layers to keep track of
> what layer does what).
> 
> I love being able to drop the dialogs that I want into the Toolbox,
> and the ability to rearrange them as seems convenient for the task at
> hand.
> 
> PhotoShop, and I've never understood all the complaints that GIMP
> should look more like PhotoShop, because to me it already looks pretty
> much the same, except I like the GIMP layout better.

Note that the goal of the GIMP team is certainly not to be a clone of 
Photoshop and none of our decisions shall be led by the fact Photoshop 
has or not a given feature or behavior.

For my own personal case, I don't even use Photoshop (I just stumble 
upon it from time to time on people's computer, and have not actually 
used it for real for maybe a dozen of years).

> I'm having a difficult time imagining a more efficient layout for
> Tools than GIMP already has. (I don't mean Single-Window Mode, which
> seems to me to be completely unuseable, but different strokes for
> different folks).

This is actually refreshing to get comments from multi-window users. We 
have a lot more remarks from SWM leading us to think that they are more 
numerous (which may or may not be the case), even though I know that 
many multi-windows users of GIMP exist. They should manifest themselves 
more often for their workflows to be heard (so thanks for this message, 
by the way).

Jehan

> Best,
> Elle
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gimp-gui-list mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-gui-list

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 13:37:24 -0400

On 10/15/2015 01:23 PM, Andrew Pullins wrote:
> The point of this feature is not to take a way your ability to add
> dialog to the toolbox, nether bottom, left, or right.  On the contrary,
> the point is when you have users like me who do not like the dialogs in
> the toolbox. When you take away the dialog the toolbox looks bad and
> there are things I believe could help make it look better.  It is also
> not about looking like Photoshop although that is not a bad thing.  We
> should not do things just because Photoshop does it that way.  But we
> should also not immediately reject ideas because Photoshop does it that
> way either.

The discussion started with a request to remove the verbiage about 
dropping dialogs in the box, when there aren't any dialogs in the 
toolbox (a great idea, I do get tired of the "belt and suspenders" 
approach to the UI).

And now the discussion has reached the point where the suggestion was 
made to "work on a complete redesign of the toolbox and tools' options".

So hopefully that complete redesign doesn't produce a Frankenstein out 
of the current tidy little "tools and dialogs in one place" Toolbox.

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 13:52:54 -0400

> could not immediately figure out.

Hmm, automatic tooltips on hover - if you go that route PLEASE allow the 
user the option to disable that tooltip to keep it from popping up every 
time the user hovers over the layers in the layers dialog. I have not so 
good eyesight, and I use my mouse arrow to focus my eyes on the layers. 
If the UI starts popping up tooltips on hover, I won't be able to use 
the mouse to focus my eyes, and then I'll end up filing a bug report.

Krita has a different sort of popup on hover for the layers, and 
thankfully they put in a user option to disable it - it was very 
distracting.

> wide in the first place, and it's something on mitch's roadmap since,

Why should the tools options dialogs not be as wide as they are, and 
also user-adjustable? How will you fit the required options in a 
narrower box? Are you planning on forcing users to not put layer dialogs 
in the tool box? How will it be possible to take screenshots to 
illustrate workflows, and show the layer names, if the layer dialog 
can't be resized at will?

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 19:50:52 +0200

Hi,

> made to "work on a complete redesign of the toolbox and tools'

Well because some of us probably believed that just removing a 
problematic label was not removing the problem but only a consequence of 
it.
Even though I agree that GIMP UI is not the worst, it can still be 
improved. And this is the place to discuss how.

> of the current tidy little "tools and dialogs in one place" Toolbox.

Frankenstein is actually when you patch small improvements here and 
there. If we can rethink the UI cleanly with a spec that we can agree on 
which could later be followed for implementation, this would be all but 
Frankenstein.

This said, the goal is not about forgetting the past experiences, 
redoing all the mistakes and breaking working stuff. We should build 
upon existing UI successes and keep all the good things.

Also I expect whatever comes out of our current discussions will take 
time to make its way to GIMP actual code. This is likely not 2.10 
material for most of these, and maybe not even 3.0.

Jehan

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 19:54:30 +0200

Hi,

On 2015-10-15 19:52, Elle Stone wrote:
>>> for
> Hmm, automatic tooltips on hover - if you go that route PLEASE allow
> the user the option to disable that tooltip to keep it from popping up
> every time the user hovers over the layers in the layers dialog. I
> have not so good eyesight, and I use my mouse arrow to focus my eyes
> on the layers. If the UI starts popping up tooltips on hover, I won't
> be able to use the mouse to focus my eyes, and then I'll end up filing
> a bug report.
> 
> narrower box? Are you planning on forcing users to not put layer
> dialogs in the tool box? How will it be possible to take screenshots
> to illustrate workflows, and show the layer names, if the layer dialog

I agree with you. I don't believe in a "all-automatic" approach. Things 
like resizing by mouse are good features in my opinion, because they are 
easily discoverable and very common. Every user (well the ones who spend 
time on computers at least) know about resizing widgets by draging their 
sides.

Jehan

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 14:27:13 -0400

> wide in the first place, and it's something on mitch's roadmap since,

In case it wasn't clear in the screenshot - the available screen real 
estate extends considerably to the right of the screenshot. The theme is 
the small icon theme, the "toolbox plus dialogs" usually only takes up 
200-250 pixels in width, and the total screen is 1600px wide. But the 
option to make the toolbox wider when desired - to show brush tips, to 
get the whole tool dialog showing without scrollbars, to see pixel 
readouts on the pointer and sample points dialog, etc, etc, is something 
I find very useful.

Best,
Elle

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 14:54:34 -0400

> more often for their workflows to be heard (so thanks for this message,

Another thing about Multiple Window Mode that I really like and use a 
lot, is the ability to go full screen with the image (F11), and then put 
the Toolbox-with-dialogs on top of the image to get another tool, move a 
layer, change a tool setting, see a readout, etc.

Being able to easily move the Toolbox around the screen, especially in 
full screen mode, depending on the part of the image I'm working on, is 
also a feature I use a lot, and something I don't think you can do in 
when in whatever it is that passes for full screen in SWM.

I know a lot of people like SWM, and I'm glad it's there for people who 
like it. But to me, SWM doesn't seem like a good use of screen real 
estate, there's too much "stuff" around the image itself.

Elle

---

From: Andrew Pullins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 15:14:36 -0400

> dropping dialogs in the box, when there aren't any dialogs in the toolbox
> (a great idea, I do get tired of the "belt and suspenders" approach to the
> UI).

> And now the discussion has reached the point where the suggestion was made
> to "work on a complete redesign of the toolbox and tools' options".

> So hopefully that complete redesign doesn't produce a Frankenstein out of
> the current tidy little "tools and dialogs in one place" Toolbox.

Sorry if I worried you.  I tried to to make it apparent that I was not
perposing that dialogs should not be able to be placed here. I spicifically
said "when there aren't any dialogs in the toolbox". I also said this "
This is a bit strange when every other place you can place a dialog there
is a thin ~5px line that lites up that tells you that you can place it
there." I guess my draft must not have saved because I meant to indicate
that this ~5px line should still be there to place dialogs in.

Basically this feature request is to drop the label and add space between
the tools and the toolbox widgets. This way the toolbox looks better when
there are not dialogs in the toolbox. Not to remove the ability to place
dialogs here.

> good eyesight, and I use my mouse arrow to focus my eyes on the layers. If
> the UI starts popping up tooltips on hover, I won't be able to use the
> mouse to focus my eyes, and then I'll end up filing a bug report.

> thankfully they put in a user option to disable it - it was very

Doesn't GIMP have the option to disable tooltips?

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 2:27 PM, Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> option to make the toolbox wider when desired - to show brush tips, to get
> the whole tool dialog showing without scrollbars, to see pixel readouts on
> the pointer and sample points dialog, etc, etc, is something I find very
> useful.
>
> Best,
> Elle
>

---

From: Akkana Peck <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 13:27:10 -0600

Elle Stone writes:
> Another thing about Multiple Window Mode that I really like and use a lot,
> is the ability to go full screen with the image (F11), and then put the
> Toolbox-with-dialogs on top of the image to get another tool, move a layer,
> change a tool setting, see a readout, etc.
> 
> Being able to easily move the Toolbox around the screen, especially in full
> screen mode, depending on the part of the image I'm working on, is also a
> feature I use a lot, and something I don't think you can do in when in
> whatever it is that passes for full screen in SWM.
> 
> I know a lot of people like SWM, and I'm glad it's there for people who like
> it. But to me, SWM doesn't seem like a good use of screen real estate,
> there's too much "stuff" around the image itself.

What Elle said. I move windows around a lot, and resize them,
according to what part of the image I'm working on and how magnified
I need it to be. Most of the time I have no need to see anything in
the Toolbox or various dialogs, so having them showing all the time
isn't a good use of screen real estate.

I also use the preferences "Resize window on zoom" and "Resize window
on image size change". I know these are unpopular with the core
developers, and it's forever being threatened that they'll disappear,
but they make sense to me: most of the time I want the window to
show as much of the image as possible, but I don't want to waste
real estate on showing empty space around the image.

In programs like LibreOffice and Inkscape that insist on showing a
lot of empty space outside the document I'm working on, I'm forever
resorting to silly workarounds like making the window bigger than I
actually want, then moving the wasted-space part of it off the screen.

        ...Akkana

---

From: Ofnuts <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 14:50:45 +0200

> wide in the first place, and it's something on mitch's roadmap since,

Wasn't it supposed to be replaced by an on-canvas display? Docking it 
more or less requires a "portrait" shape and makes it too narrow to 
display comfortably sliders and option names (brushes, gradients, fonts, 
dynamics).

---

From: Andrew Pullins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 21:04:47 -0400

> actually want, then moving the wasted-space part of it off the screen.

 1. Tell us about your screen (text)
    What's the screen diameter
    What is the aspect ratio
    Number of pixels

2. Is the screen (select multiple)
    Freestanding
    Attached to a laptop
    A tablet
    A drawing tablet
    One screen
    Multiple screens

3. Which do you prefer? (pick one)
    Single Window Mode
    Multi Window Mode

4. Why?

5. What editing tasks do you most often use GIMP for? (pick multiple)
    Photo editing
    Drawing / Painting
    Other (please specify)

6. What tools from the toolbox do you use most often, and which ones do you
seldom or never use? (From use all the time to never use or did not know
that existed)
    Rectangle Select Tool
    Ellipse Select Tool
    Free Select Tool
    Fuzzy Select Tool
    Select By Color Tool
    Scissors Select Tool
    Foreground Select Tool
    Vector Tool
    Color Picker Tool
    Zoom Tool
    Measure Tool
    Move Tool
    Alignment Tool
    Crop Tool
    Rotate Tool
    Scale Tool
    Shear Tool
    Perspective Tool
    Flip Tool
    Cage Tool
    Text Tool
    Bucket Fill Tool
    Blend Tool
    Pencil Tool
    Paintbrush Tool
    Eraser Tool
    Airbrush Tool
    Ink Tool
    Clone Tool
    Healing Tool
    Perspective Clone Tool
    Blur/Sharpen Tool
    Smudge Tool
    Dodge Burn Tool
    Desaturate Tool
    Color Balance Tool
    Hue-Saturation Tool
    Colorize Tool
    Brightness/Contrast Tool
    Threshold Tool
    Levels Tool
    Curves Tool
    Posterize Tool
    GEGL Tool

7. Which dialogs do you regularly keep open, and which ones do you seldom
or never use? (From use all the time to never use or did not know that
existed)
    Tool Options
    Device Status
    Layers
    Channels
    Paths
    Colormap
    Histogram
    Selection Editor
    Navigation
    Undo History
    Point
    Sample Point
    Colors
    Brushes
    Paint Dynamics
    Pattern
    Gradients
    Palettes
    Fonts
    Tool Preset
    Buffer
    Image
    Document History
    Templates
    Error Console

8. Which operations do you access through the drop-down/right-click menus,
and which ones via shortcuts?"
    Need options

9. Do you rearrange the dialogs? (Yes / No)

10. How?

11. Do you rearrange the Toolbox? (Yes / No)

12. How?

13. Would you submit a screen shot of your work flow? (not required)

What questions do you think might be good to ask in a survey, if the goal
is to more efficiently and effectively accommodate various work flows on
various display screens? Hopefully without accidentally throwing out what
currently works well for at least some users (maybe the users least likely
to subscribe to a mailing list about the GIMP UI are the users who like the
current UI).

---

From: Alexandre Prokoudine <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2015 16:48:58 +0300

> actually want, then moving the wasted-space part of it off the screen.

You mean you don't use handy features like zoom to page/selection in
Inkscape? Why?

Alex