G'Day,
I've been thinking a bit about this recently as I can never
remember where anything is, and
writing script-fu's generally means I have a linear understanding of
what is available.
How to access it:
From some menus, I don't feel strongly about these. Help -> Menu
Browser .. blah.
Anyway, the way I would use it is a shortcut. Ctrl-F would be the most
logical choice.
Once a "tool wheel" is introduced (like in games), there would be a case
to have it included there.
How does it look:
text box at the top, results underneath. It's a popup that appears near
where the cursor was when it was created. (be nice if it was a "light"
popup, but anyway).
The results should just search the name of the menu. See options. It
should do a case insensitive search like pdb (as the user types),
including the regex.
The first item should be selected ready to go. Hit enter to select the item
So an example use for me recently would be, I'm looking for the sparkle
plugin.
Ctrl-F spark <enter> . Hitting enter would close the window and call
the menu.
By default each line would just contain the name of the menu: ie
"Sparkle". But I think it reasonable to add an option to show where the
item is: eg Sparkle (Filters -> Light and Shadow). By default the
actual PDB names would not be searchable (eg plugin-sparkle), but no
doubt that would be a good option, but only if the item appears in a menu.
There is no need to get complicated with tagging, and trees, and sub
categories. I believe a basic implementation will show that it's power
will be in the simplicity.
So what about gegl ops. My feeling is that it's a menu search, so it
wouldn't be included by default. However a simple option to add this
into the search would be reasonable.
Options:
X Show Menu location
X Dev: Include GEGL operations
X Dev: Include PDB (internal) names
thanks for bringing this up, it's been playing on my mind recently...
Cameron
On 08/10/2010 06:51 AM, LightningIsMyName wrote:
Hello,
I recently re-read all the GSoC suggestions for 2010, and I found this
interesting one about making the menus searchable:
https://sites.google.com/site/gimpwiki/long-term-plans/menu-accesibility
As far as I know, menus are searchable and the best example is the
keyboard shortcuts dialog which has a searchbox to find the GIMP
action you'd like to use. So I asked on #gimp and I was told there was
a discussion on IRC about finding a more usable replacement to the
plugin browser.
So, to get a formal record of this discussion, I'm starting it on the
mailing list again.
Here are points which should be considered:
0. How do we want the search to work? A user can bring a search dialog
up? Will the search be based on a string? A tree?
1. GEGL ops should really be integrated in the GIPM menus. As someone
said, it's like the old script-fu menu - it was wrong. We don't have
to force the user to remember what's a GEGL op (which will be accessed
using the GEGL tool) and what's a regular plugin/script.
It's a bit offtopic, but we should find a way to implement gegl
plugins with a custom GUI, and register them like regular plugins in
the menus. Having a search that will once point to a plugin and once
activate the gegl tool, is a very bad idea...
2. We need to define a "usable" plugin browser. One of the features
I'm missing the most, is a preview image. Plugins should have an
option to register a preview image of their effect (probably by having
the image's binary data embedded in them). This also relates to the
feature request of having a logo script browser...
3. Will plugins also have a category (in addition to a menu location)?
How should we organize the plugins? On one hand, it's probably a bad
idea to continue having plugin authors choose their own category (or
as it is now - a menu location). Since then you might find yourself
with dozens of categories (like "my-site" "his-site") and typos
("artisti" and "artistic") or redefinitions ("art" vs. "artistic") may
create more categories.
It's a fact - a bloated category list is good for nothing... So,
should we limit the categories for plugins?
4. Another option, instead of categories and sub-categories, is
tagging - like the brushes work in 2.7 (unlike categories - there are
no sub-levels, and each plugin can be in many places)
Menus in GIMP should become more useful and things should become
easier to find. But how? Please share your thoughts
~LightningIsMyName
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