Re: [Gimp-developer] Plug-ins, menus and user interface
On 22 May 2001 02:09:00 +0200, Branko Collin wrote: On 21 May 2001, at 17:47, Raphael Quinet wrote: So in parallel with the discussion about the distribution of plug-ins, there should be a discussion about how to organize the menus. One idea that was proposed on this list some time ago was to be able to limit the number of things that are included in the menus. Some M$ applications offer reduced menus for beginners, What the menus in MS Word do is show the most important items plus those items you use the most. There is one big problem with this: tutorials. People are already having big problems following the tutorials that are written for gimp-before-the-menu-reorganization, now I think it could be just horribly hard if the tutorial says Select Image - Colors - Filter Pack and if that was considered Advanced while our user chose Beginner when starting Gimp for the first time. So it would not be in the menus at all. Tuomas -- .. | Tuomas Kuosmanen | Ximian | Art Director | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | www.ximian.com | `' ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Plug-ins, menus and user interface
Tuomas Kuosmanen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: And these menus are the most annoying things ever to use. Since it makes using them really slow, because every time when the menu is adjusted and new things get hidden or shown, the positions of the menu items change, and thus Gaussian blur is not the second item from the top on the second submenu anymore. So you actually need to read the menu texts every time very carefully, which makes things very icky to use. While I see your point - we have a big problem with our menus - especially for new users. They are huge and despite our efforts not really intuitive. (why are there two gaussian blur plugins?) I am an experienced Gimp user, but sometimes I am just lost in the menus. I am not sure if a MS-Word scheme would help there, but we need a way to sort menu-entries by importance. Hmm - maybe Shift-Rightclick brings up the complete menu or vice versa? Oh well - this will be hard. Bye, Simon -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/ ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Plug-ins, menus and user interface
Raphael Quinet said... |This would be nice to have, but I think that it would be too |ambitious. What I had in mind is something simpler. Basically, |hiding the menus that are seldom used by unexperienced users. The |toolbox could also be made simpler, but this is not really necessary. If you mean something like Windows 2000, that would be OK. My only concern is that these not morph like W2K menus based on the selections du jour. You get a set to start with, with little arrows to indicate more. Clicking on the arrows would expand the menus and, perhaps, open a popup explaining that they can set expanded menu mode in the preferences. Is this like what you were thinking? |I do not think that the keyboard shortcuts should be changed because a Absolutely. If this were to happen, I would vote to take whoever implemented changing the way the shortscuts worked, and checking *them* into CVS! |What would we gain from that? Except for the coolness factor, not |much... It would even become more difficult for the users to follow a |Gimp tutorial because they would have a hard time finding where each |feature is located if they use a different theme than the one that was |used for the tutorial. Agreed. -Miles ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
[Gimp-developer] Plug-ins, menus and user interface
One of the things that has been mentioned several times while discussing the distribution of plug-ins is the fact that the menus are too crowded, and new users can easily get lost. The user interface is indeed a significant problem, but I think that it should be handled separately from the packaging issues. Distributing fewer plug-ins in the core package would not solve the user interface problems. Having less plug-ins could help a bit on a single-user system, but not on multi-user systems because the administrator would sooner or later install most of the plug-ins anyway. So the users who start the Gimp after all plug-ins are installed would still be faced with the same problems as today (probably even worse because more plug-ins will be included in the additional packages). So in parallel with the discussion about the distribution of plug-ins, there should be a discussion about how to organize the menus. One idea that was proposed on this list some time ago was to be able to limit the number of things that are included in the menus. Some M$ applications offer reduced menus for beginners, and some GNOME applications allow you to select different levels of details (from novice to advanced user). Maybe we need something similar for the Gimp? I can think of four different levels of details for the menu: - Dumb user (oops, I mean beginner): only some basic operations are visible in the menus and in the toolbox, and the Gimp allows you to do as much as the venerable XPaint (or Windows Paint). - Apprentice: all core operations are visible, and only the plug-ins distributed in the core package are available. - Normal: all plug-ins are available. - Expert: some additional entries become available, such as the PDB browser, parasite editor and other things that are more interesting for a developer than for a normal user. Unfortunately, I do not know how this could be implemented. I am not so keen on the idea of overloading the menu strings with some characters that have a special meaning, but maybe this is the easiest solution (example: %2 at the end of the string would mean that it should be displayed if the menus are configured for the apprentice level or more). Other suggestions are welcome... -Raphael ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Plug-ins, menus and user interface
On Mon, May 21, 2001 at 05:47:33PM +0200, Raphael Quinet wrote: One of the things that has been mentioned several times while discussing the distribution of plug-ins is the fact that the menus are too crowded, and new users can easily get lost. The user interface is indeed a significant problem, but I think that it should be handled separately from the packaging issues. Yup. How about we provide a user-friendly Gimp Themes (don't call it that if you don't want to) feature At install time the user can pick from whatever themes came with Gimp and with any auxiliary plug-in packages or whatever Potato Shop convert Expert pixel hacker Web wrangler Just the basics Ms Finger Paint Themes define the keyboard shortcuts (possible today) the menu layout (probably not too hard) and the toolbox icons (maybe harder). The menu-path built into a plug-in would become only a recommendation. We might like to consider whether themes can be added together (which would make it easier for 3rd parties) or not. Users would be able to edit all the features of the theme they're using, and remove or change (nearly) everything put into the menus by the PDB in Gimp 1.2, plus adding one-click toolbox icons for scripts, filters etc. basically customising Gimp until it's almost unrecognisable. BUT by providing a half dozen or so themes which cover the most common types of user coming to Gimp, all but the most demanding would never need to tweak themes at all. (Except those of us creating themes) e.g. Ms Finger Paint could have very little functionality hidden in sub-menus, and a lot of useless tools like draw-a-filled-circle which mimic the features available in a similarly package. Nick. ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
