Re: [Gimp-developer] UI remarks
On Thu, 7 Jun 2001, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: Agreed. Just pick a reasonable default based on the amount of memory in the system. And please use libgtop to figure that out instead of some horrid hack like cat /proc/meminfo. If we're going to depend on Yet Another Library, might I suggest that we at least use it more? For instance, we could make the tile cache dynamically resize itself depending on hom much memory is free. Rockwalrus ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] UI remarks
Branko Collin wrote: A user is _never_ an idiot. If you feel that way, you may indeed as well only develop for yourself. Once you give a copy to a non- programming friend or neighbour for the first time, however, you have (IMHO) some moral obligation to care for the user friendliness of your program. This of course does not mean that you have to cater for those that are too lazy to indulge in some minimal form of self-education. Unfortunately, it is hard to find out if that is the case when receiving a stupid question from a user. I was working on a web site for a good friend, when one day we spatted and I was replaced by that Front Page Maker (or whatever it is). It took her approximately seven months to figure out how to change the background color of her web pages. I had to type it in for her by hand. I get frustrated using Windows apps. They are not set up like I expect them to be. Perhaps, it will be good for the Windows users to get used to linux apps? Ultimately, user ignorance is the issue. It seems to me that the more ignorant the Windows user is, the stronger Micro$oft is. While linux benefits more as the ignorant users get smarter. Perhaps it might be better to compare Gimp to the Windows free software? How about putting one of those little day counters in the gimp start up? So that the user has to acknowledge how many days s/he has used the software for free. I had to wait for that dumb little paint shop pro program to count past 2000 once. And that free thing could not hold a candle to Gimp. ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] UI remarks
On Wed, Jun 06, 2001 at 10:51:26PM +0200, Branko Collin wrote: www.gimp.org mentions the win32 version on the front page. After scrolling. And not on the page where you would expect it, on the download page. Surely, you do not expect a visitor to read the whole web site before downloading the software? Probably not - however, if peopel are downloading the software it's reasonable, I think, to expect them to pay at least a passing visit to the download page. Cheers, Dave. -- .--. / David Neary, \ | E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] | \ Phone +353-1-872-0654 / `--' ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] UI remarks
David Monniaux [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Here are a few observations of mine on the UI, following Chris' mom's observation that Gimp looks terrible. David, this is a wonderful list. The installation process is frightening: 1. The user is presented with a dialog box Welcome to GIMP that is half full of legalese (NO GUARANTEE etc...). Perhaps the first installer screen should simply state that Gimp is a painting, touch up etc... program able to read various image formats etc..., and the legalese should be pushed to a second dialog box ? Leaving the disclaimer of warranty in is, I think, not a problem. I think the bigger problem is that the first thing you see when you start up the GÏMP for the first time is a big ugly BRIGHT ORANGE window. That window, aside from being prettified, should tell you something like The GIMP needs to install some configuration files for you before it can be run for the first time. Click on continue to perform the GIMP user installation or cancel to exit. The GIMP is free software, is distributed under the GNU General Public License, and comes with absolutely no warranty. Please click on the license button to get more information. 2. The current second dialog box shows a full list of files and directories that most users will never care about at first. Maybe we should add an indication that knowing all about this is not necessary to use Gimp? This dialog is completely unnecessary. As a user, I don't care where the GIMP installs its ~/.foo. I just want to be able to run the program. Also, it is bad that you have to know that ~/.gimp exists and that you may need to hand-tweak the stuff in there. Everything should be configurable through a nice graphical interface; if you need to install third-party plug-ins or scripts or gradients then the GIMP should have an install plug-in command. This command can simply copy a binary into your ~/.gimp/plug-ins. 3. The installer runs a script that copies files and asks the user to spot an error in the execution of the scriptx and investiguate in case there is an error. [even worse in the Windows version] Completely agreed. This looks like a case of we are too lazy to think of how our system calls may fail, so we'll run a shell script and have the user figure it out. N.B. I just erased my ~/.gimp-1.2 and re-ran it. I got cp /etc/gimp/1.2/gtkrc_user /home/federico/.gimp-1.2/gtkrc cp: /etc/gimp/1.2/gtkrc_user: No such file or directory (because I have /etc/gimp/1.2/gtkrc instead of gtkrc_user). Still, the GIMP runs just fine. Some poor user who does not know what all those scary files do will tear some hair out wondering why there was an error in the stupid installation script, and he'll be wondering why the GIMP seems to run fine. 4. Adjustment of parameters Another frightening dialog box. We should really convey the idea that the default settings are OK, and that those settings can be changed at any time afterwards (otherwise the users may spend time pondering what to say here). a) The default tile cache size should be adjusted with respect to the installed RAM size. This should fulfill the need of most users (PCs with one console user). In the case of multi-user systems, the system administrator should be able to set other default values (maybe depending on the machine). Agreed. Just pick a reasonable default based on the amount of memory in the system. And please use libgtop to figure that out instead of some horrid hack like cat /proc/meminfo. If you want to get really fancy and somewhat scarier for the user, you could have a wizard-type dialog where you ask The GIMP may need large amounts of memory to manipulate its images. To avoid using all the memory in your system, you can configure how much memory the GIMP will be able to use. [ ] Let the GIMP configure this by itself. [ ] Let me customize the size of the tile cache. If you pick the first option, the GIMP should see if the sysadmin pre-configured stuff (i.e. you are on a multiuser machine and the sysadmin is smarter than you). If there are no sysadmin-set values, you take the available amount of RAM and multiply it by some sane factor and use that. If you pick the second option, you explain what the tile cache is, you explain what would be some reasonable values for different scenarios (single-user machine, multi-user machine, l33t haxx0r graphic designer). b) The setting of the swap file in .gimp-x.y/tmp is a problem on NFS-mounted accounts (universities, for instance). Why not /tmp by default? I have no comment on this. I do agree that $TMPDIR would be better. 5. The resolution thing is OK. Mostly. It would be better if it were something like The GIMP needs to know the resolution of your monitor so that
Re: [Gimp-developer] UI remarks
Hi, David Monniaux [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The installation process is frightening: 1. The user is presented with a dialog box Welcome to GIMP that is half full of legalese (NO GUARANTEE etc...). actually our first version had an Accept button at the bottom ;-) The GPL wants you to put a visible notification about the license into your program. This notice should be seen whenever you start Gimp. We only show it on user installation and one day RMS will come and get us for this lazyness. I think the license part should stay and we should add an additional note about the GPL to the About dialog. Perhaps the first installer screen should simply state that Gimp is a painting, touch up etc... program able to read various image formats etc..., and the legalese should be pushed to a second dialog box ? if you think adding a useless advertisement page to the user installation will help, I wouldn't object adding it even though I don't see the point. 2. The current second dialog box shows a full list of files and directories that most users will never care about at first. Maybe we should add an indication that knowing all about this is not necessary to use Gimp? I think it is very nice that we don't quietly install a bunch of dirs and files in the users home directory without telling him. Perhaps we should indeed change the accompaigning words. Patches are welcome. 3. The installer runs a script that copies files and asks the user to spot an error in the execution of the scriptx and investiguate in case there is an error. [even worse in the Windows version] Come on. Users do not know about scripts, and they do not know what an error looks like [*]. The installation process should see by itself if an error has happened, and display a meaningful error message in that case. It's not that easy. Don't think we didn't try it. Again, patches are welcome. 4. Adjustment of parameters Another frightening dialog box. We should really convey the idea that the default settings are OK, and that those settings can be changed at any time afterwards (otherwise the users may spend time pondering what to say here). It is indeed possible to change this later, but we moved it into the user installation since experience shows that these values will never be adjusted later. Setting the tile cache correctly is viable for a good user experience so I expect the user to spend some time here pondering what values to choose. a) The default tile cache size should be adjusted with respect to the installed RAM size. This should fulfill the need of most users (PCs with one console user). In the case of multi-user systems, the system administrator should be able to set other default values (maybe depending on the machine). Yeah, we had that discussion before quite often and everyone agreed that it should be as you say here, but until today noone found it important enough to change the code. Many people just leave the default of 32M, open a big image and claim that Gimp is s much slower than PhotoShop. If those people knew better, they'd heard their hard drive churning and understand that Gimp is swapping, but this should not be expected from most users - how do you think that computer resellers sold boxes with fast CPUs and only 32M of RAM ? That's exactly why we've put the tile cache size setting into the user installation process. Furthermore, we should add the precision that the value there should not be the total amount of RAM in the machine, but the size of the portion of that full RAM that should be used for Gimp images. Here's what is written: GIMP uses a limited amount of memory to store image data, the so-called Tile Cache. You should adjust its size to fit into memory. Consider the amount of memory used by other running processes. Well, not the best description propably. Please send a patch for a better one. b) The setting of the swap file in .gimp-x.y/tmp is a problem on NFS-mounted accounts (universities, for instance). Why not /tmp by default? Since /tmp is not always a good choice, it might even not exist?! For that reason we say: All image and undo data which doesn't fit into the Tile Cache will be written to a swap file. This file should be located on a local filesystem with enough free space (several hundred MB). On a UNIX system, you may want to use the system-wide temp-dir (/tmp or /var/tmp). Don't you think this is enough to help the user make a good decision? Now for the main UI. We should have a way to remind people to use the RIGHT BUTTON on the image. I bet many people think Gimp is some kind of small MS Paint-like program because they have never been able to reach the filters. Yes, I know this is the second tip, but... Overall I don't like the idea of treating the user like an
Re: [Gimp-developer] UI remarks
Hi, On Wed, Jun 06, 2001 at 12:48:28PM +0200, Sven Neumann wrote: 2. The current second dialog box shows a full list of files and directories that most users will never care about at first. Maybe we should add an indication that knowing all about this is not necessary to use Gimp? I think it is very nice that we don't quietly install a bunch of dirs and files in the users home directory without telling him. Perhaps we should indeed change the accompaigning words. Patches are welcome. What about writing script output to ~/.gimp-x.y/install.log and telling the user that it can be found there? Like: Some files have been copied to ~/.gimp-x.y/. Have a look at ~/.gimp-x.y/install.log if you're curious. Usually, this is not important. Bye, Tino. -- * LINUX - Where do you want to be tomorrow? * http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/linux/tag/ ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] UI remarks
Hi, Branko Collin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: After scrolling. And not on the page where you would expect it, on the download page. Surely, you do not expect a visitor to read the whole web site before downloading the software? please move this discussion about the webpage to the gimp-web mailing list. I did the first, but not the second. However, when you told me to write to [EMAIL PROTECTED], the web mailing list was not up yet, so who was I writing to? Probably to the tarball of ~200 unanswered [EMAIL PROTECTED] mails that was handed over to Carol?! Salut, Sven ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] UI remarks
On Wed, 06 Jun 2001, Sven Neumann wrote: David Monniaux [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The installation process is frightening: 1. The user is presented with a dialog box Welcome to GIMP that is half full of legalese (NO GUARANTEE etc...). actually our first version had an Accept button at the bottom ;-) The GPL wants you to put a visible notification about the license into your program. This notice should be seen whenever you start Gimp. We only show it on user installation and one day RMS will come and get us for this lazyness. Well, I doubt that RMS would blame us for that. The notice must not be displayed every time the program is started, as long as it can be accessed easily using some command-line option or dialog box that is commonly used to display some information about the program (such as --help, --version or some About dialog for graphical programs such as the Gimp). I think the license part should stay and we should add an additional note about the GPL to the About dialog. Yes, adding a notice about the GPL in the About dialog is a very good idea and would satisfy the requirements of the GPL. However, the part about the license in the first installation window could be softened a bit, as David suggests. There must be at least a pointer to the GPL and the usual wording about use at your own risks, but this could come after a user-friendly text that explains in a few words that the Gimp is free software. I have no precise ideas about how this could look like; suggestions are welcome... [...other good replies snipped...] 4. Adjustment of parameters Another frightening dialog box. We should really convey the idea that the default settings are OK, and that those settings can be changed at any time afterwards (otherwise the users may spend time pondering what to say here). It is indeed possible to change this later, but we moved it into the user installation since experience shows that these values will never be adjusted later. Setting the tile cache correctly is viable for a good user experience so I expect the user to spend some time here pondering what values to choose. I agree. However, the reports in various newsgroups and mailing lists show that many Linux and Windows users did not pay enough attention to these settings, maybe because they did not fully understand the consequences. Or maybe because they wanted to try the program quickly and they pressed OK or Next on all installation windows, assuming that the defaults are fine and that only the experts need to change them. a) The default tile cache size should be adjusted with respect to the installed RAM size. This should fulfill the need of most users (PCs with one console user). In the case of multi-user systems, the system administrator should be able to set other default values (maybe depending on the machine). Yeah, we had that discussion before quite often and everyone agreed that it should be as you say here, but until today noone found it important enough to change the code. Here is a suggestion. I doubt that I will implement it, but maybe David can do it since he wants to improve the installation process. Keep the current dialog as it is (telling the user to adjust the value as needed), but try to change the default value of 32M on the systems in which the available memory is easy to guess. This means that the users of other systems will still have to change the tile cache size from the default of 32M, but at least those who are using one of the common configurations (e.g., Linux 2.2 or 2.4 on a single-user machine) will get a more sensible value by default. The default value could be computed like this: if /proc/meminfo exists, then open it, read the MemTotal value, substract 42M and round to the nearest multiple of 16M to have a nice number. Use the result as the default tile cache size, with a minimum of 32M. If there is no /proc/meminfo, then use 32M as before. A similar thing could probably be done for Windows, although I do not know much about that. [...] b) The setting of the swap file in .gimp-x.y/tmp is a problem on NFS-mounted accounts (universities, for instance). Why not /tmp by default? Since /tmp is not always a good choice, it might even not exist?! For that reason we say: All image and undo data which doesn't fit into the Tile Cache will be written to a swap file. This file should be located on a local filesystem with enough free space (several hundred MB). On a UNIX system, you may want to use the system-wide temp-dir (/tmp or /var/tmp). Don't you think this is enough to help the user make a good decision? Using the same point of view as above, we could try to provide a better default value if possible. The user will still have to pay attention to this value and change it in order to get the best results, but we could provide more sensible defaults. Making a good guess will probably be a bit tricky. I
Re: [Gimp-developer] UI remarks
Hi, Branko Collin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A web master who knows www.gimp.org inside and out may think that 'where is the Windows version?' is neither here nor there, sinds www.gimp.org is not the distribution point for the Windows version. www.gimp.org mentions the win32 version on the front page. Getting back to updating the web site: Sven, I wrote to the [EMAIL PROTECTED], to offer them my services in updating the current site, but I never got a reply. Could you tell me more specifically whom I should talk to? Thanks in advance. subscribe to the gimp-web mailing list as described at https://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-web and offer your help there. Salut, Sven ___ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
