On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 1:37 AM, Jehan wrote: > Is there anyone who like the on-canvas GUIs?
I'm sorry, but I will have to disrupt this line of questioning :) Let me rephrase that: Is there anyone who is satisfied with on-canvas GUIs in their present state? Because, personally, while I like them, I am not satisfied with them (nor am I satisfied with the whole idea of tool's settings in a sidebar with a vertical scroll, or with our current elephant-sized cumbersome slider widget, but that's another story). The whole idea of having widgets on the canvas was to give users controls right where they need them, when they need them. Frankly, the rotation dialog before 2.9 was PITA. I'll speak for myself, but every time I switched to that tool and clicked the drawable, the first thing I did was moving the bloody dialog away so that I could see my image. The dialog was getting in the way of understanding what I was doing. My guess is that mitch had more or less same reasoning to do away with it. However now this dialog is just elsewhere on the canvas. Not exactly right where you need it and not exactly when you need it. And once you detach it, you can't attach it again until you switch to another tool and back (which autoconfirms whatever change you made). Moreover, closing the attached on-canvas dialog makes no sense whatsoever: it just reappears as soon as you start rotating again. So the only use case for that close button in the on-canvas version of the dialog is when you want to view all of the image in the viewport to immediately confirm your change by pressing Enter next. So let me be clear: having controls on the canvas away from where you need them is no better than having them in a sidebar. At least in the sidebar they won't overlay part of the image. But we don't need all that stuff in the sidebar either: 1) We seem to have a convention that a double click to confirm works for both mouse and tablet stylus. That loses us the Rotate button. 2) Pressing Esc resets rotation angle, so we need something for tablet users there (Jehan?). Although, to be honest, I don't see how resetting angle fits any workflow. Origin -- yes, there may be a reason to reset it. But angle is something you either know exactly or tweak visually until you are happy with the outcome. Of course, just my POV. 3) Slider for angle --- again, what use case does it fit? It doesn't help with small rotation step, and for large steps we have all the canvas in the world :) That leaves us Angle, Origin X, Origin Y and maybe a small reset button for the origin. Fits the rest of Settings dialog nicely. What I _would_ add to the canvas is a small on-screen display item that would follow the mouse pointer at an offset and display current angle as long as you drag and disappear as soon as you stop. That way you know the current angle exactly _and_ you don't have to change your point of eye focus _and_ you can evaluate the result without visual obstacles (just stop dragging). The same logic applies to other transformation tools: be there when you are needed, go away when you are disrupting the workflow. It also applies to the much maligned Text tool :) Here is one of the things that is wrong with it. There can be 3 (THREE) simultaneously available text setting areas on display: on-canvas toolbar, text editor dialog, and settings in the sidebar. All three have a feature overlap. Isn't that a little crazy? I get why software like InDesign and Scribus have Story Editors: those help with editing long text that crosses pages and flows from text frame to another. We don't have that kind of stuff. So I;m not sure why we keep the text editor. Personally, I like the on-canvas toolbar despite having to know exactly the name of a typeface I will need (and I totally get why this makes other people's blood boil). But again, I see some ways to make it better (same for the settings in the sidebar). And above all, it kinda sucks that we are having this conversation right when 2.10 is looming upon us. Sorry about that. Alex _______________________________________________ gimp-gui-list mailing list gimp-gui-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-gui-list
