As much as I love the new on-canvas text editing in GIMP 2.8, I do run into
some creative disputes with the on-canvas text editor from time to time....
My main issue is that the on-canvas options are used to provide local style
overrides (e.g. emphasizing a word here or there) and have no connection to the
default settings for the text object as a whole. Local style overrides are
good and all, but there are some scenarios where you might think (even expect)
the on-canvas options to change the default for the text object as a whole, and
they don't. And not understanding that these are separate settings leads to
problems down the road, such as:
1 - If there is no selection inside the text, the on-canvas controls have no
immediate (visible) effect; they appear to "not work" because there is no
selection to affect. GIMP makes no attempts to divine whether you intended to
change the default style or specify a new one to start typing with (which is a
rightly thorny issue by itself). As an alternative idea - you know how if you
double-click it selects the current word, and if you triple-click it selects
all text in the object? How about adding an intermediary step where it selects
all nearby words that share the same style? E.g. 2 clicks - current word; 3
clicks - current style; 4 clicks - all text
(Another alternative would be, in the Layers dialog, display a text object like
a layer group instead of a single layer, similar to the display of an XML tree.
But I'm sure the technical implementation would be horribly complex :[ )
2 - Inversely, select all text in the object and then make some adjustment to
it (font face/size/color). This has the same (visible) effect as changing the
default style, but again, technically you are specifying a local style that
just happens to cover the length of the entire text object and GIMP is making
no attempts to discern whether that was actually your intent. The immediate
result is - if the cursor is placed at the start of the text object then any
insertions are typed using the default style, while if the cursor is placed at
the end, any insertions are typed using the local style. I don't really see
any ideal alternative behavior here (word processors in general tend to do the
same thing) outside of just "don't do that".
3 - Related to #2: When creating a text object, click once to get started, but
before the initial typing, make some adjustments via on-canvas controls (again,
font face/size/color). Again, whether you realize/expect it or not you are
typing using a local style override that is not affected by the default options
in the toolbox.
4 - If you use the on-canvas controls to specify a setting that happens to
match as the default (toolbox) options, it is actually -not- the same setting
but invisibly different. E.g. type "Lorem Ipsum" at 24px size; then change the
word "Lorem" to 28; then change it back to 24 (do not Undo this; change it back
manually). Now adjust the default font size in the toolbox; the word "Lorem"
does not change in size because it's not actually using the default size, it's
using a local size that just -coincidentally matches- the default size. (A
similar thing applies with font face and color.) Here, the on-canvas Font Face
and Font Size boxes could benefit from an additional entry (labelled "default"
or something) to identify when a given section of text is using the default
face/size or not; there's no easy way to tell at the moment.
5 - Speaking of font sizes, an option/setting/preference to scale local font
sizes (on-canvas options) relative to changes made in the default size (toolbox
options) would be stellar. Say I'm using 'small caps' to emphasize words or
phrases in one of my text objects -- which I do by typing the emphasized words
in ALLCAPS and then shrinking their text size by a notch (e.g. 20 px default
style -> 16 px local style). Some time later I want to scale my text object
from a default of 20px to 40px and I do -- but my smallcaps words are stuck at
16px and I have to resize them manually. If I was choosing a different form of
emphasis (bold/italic) this would not be a problem, but as it stands....
6 - And, out of two years' occasional GIMP 2.8 usage I did not even once
realize there was a button in the on-canvas box labelled "clear style of
selected text". (A.k.a. the 'revert' button.) How come I never noticed it
before? . . . I'm thinking maybe because its icon is a -paintbrush-. (Y'know,
an interior decorating paintbrush like you'd buy at a home improvement store
instead of an art store.) See, paintbrushes are tools that 'do' stuff, not
'undo' stuff. Shouldn't the icon be an eraser instead? Or even that
arrow-circling-about-back-to-itself like we have on every other
reset-to-default button in every toolbox?
I also have some gripes about the placement of the 'clear style' button (now
that I'm aware of it) in the on-canvas toolbox, but that's eclipsed by it
having a counter-intuitive icon.
-- Stratadrake
strata_ran...@hotmail.com
--------------------
Numbers may not lie, but neither do they tell the whole truth.
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