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GIMP 2.8 Will Sport a Redesigned UI
ceswiedler writes "Ars Technica's Ryan Paul previews the upcoming release of the GIMP. It will include a single-window mode where the user can dock toolbar windows and switch between images via tabs. There are other improvements as well, including docking support in multi-window mode and improvements to the text tool." To get this early preview, Paul compiled version 2.7.1 from the active development branch, along with its dependencies.
I'm glad they're doing this.
It makes it much easier to work on the images, instead of having to "mishap-click" on every single window, and having to click on the related window in order to get back into the image editor again. WAAAAY overdue, but finally here - good job guys!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
But some of the screenshots look Photoshopped.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Are they still committed to breaking one of Gimp's best features: "Intelligent Save" ? (Inferring file type based on extension)
Splitting "File > Export" and "File > Save" is counter-intuitive; it's not DWIMish, and I guarantee more people will be frustrated that the Save dialog box is "broken" when they try to save a JPG and end up with an XCF file instead. "File > Export" reeks of being Designed By Developers, rather than actually taking user behavior into account.
(And stealing the keystroke for "Fit In Window" is just adding insult to injury...)
The fact that you use focus-follows-mouse notes that you have a very special taste regarding GUI. Photoshop changed too, more or less in the same direction (less little windows floating all over)
My other signature is a car
GIMP is always compared to photoshop. There are some key features missing in GIMP that do not allow serious artists to move to it from Photoshop. Three of these are adjustment layers (which GEGL is suppose to eventually bring about, but it's been a long wait), proper 16 and 32 bit image editing and LAB and CYMK modes. (GIMP only does RGB). I'm greatful for GIMP and thankful for the developer's efforts but I'd rather they focus on these things than dicking around with windowing. The truth is once you get use to it, GIMP's windowing isn't THAT bad.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Me, I don't care much about the UI - I'll get used to whatever way it goes. The significant change, to me, is left at the very end of the article: GEGL and proper high-bit-depth color support it brings.
Yes, this is *that* post. Just trying to keep it fresh in your mind. I use the GNU Image Manipulation Program all the time, and internally, I call it GIMP, and amongst friends in the know, I call it GIMP, but amongst people who are new to FOSS, I usually make an effort to use the full name. Every once in a while, I forget, and most people associate GIMP or "The GIMP" with Pulp Fiction these days, or worse, they've never seen Pulp Fiction because they would be offended by it, but they still know "The GIMP" through cultural allusions to that character, and thus are offended by any reference to GIMP.
Hell, I'd even take GIMPY (the GNU Image Manipulation Program for You), since that evokes a different, albeit still negative, emotional response.
The best suggestion I've heard is just drop GNU or make GNU separate from the acronym: IMP, GNU IMP.
And the reasons for this are political, with a side of history. The GIMP developers invented GTK+, and now they're tied to it.
Know what? GTK+ is great under X11. It looks and behaves like crap under everything else, regardless of what theme you select. Basic UI principles say that your applications should be consistent with the OS, and that means using standard widgets (menu bars, icons, buttons, file open dialogs, and other things that match the look and feel of your OS). When GIMP was first released there WERE no standard widgets for Linux, so the devs hacked some together and released them as a separate library. A couple other devs saw the work that had been done, and figured that GTK could be used to save work on their own projects, and before long a ton of apps and window managers used it. Some of those app developers wanted to port their apps to Windows and Mac OS, and so GTK+ was ported as well. But because GTK+ manually renders all the buttons and widgets and so on, the ports look out of place. Strike that. They look godawful. Really this isn't GTK's fault, it's just not the right tool for the job. It's not just that they look bad, but users have to learn things like how to interact with a new file manager. It's unprofessional, it robs the user of time and effort, and it makes ported open source software seem inferior to native apps.
Recognizing the inherent problem, several other developers made toolkits so that apps would look normal again. A wxWidgets program compiled for Linux uses GTK+ to draw the dialogs and menus, but calls the native widget functions under Windows. The result is a program that looks like it was designed specifically for each OS on which it runs. Take a look at screenshots of Audacity for a great example.
They could design the UI in wxWidgets or Qt to make it actually look decent under every OS, but they won't-- and really at this point they can't, because the former would be seen as pandering, and the latter would be seen as abandoning GTK+. But to everyone outside the community, it looks like the GIMP devs are rallying to prove the superiority of GTK+ using the flagship Linux graphics app, at the expense of the open source movement. It only pisses off those of us who are trying to ease migrations to a free OS by gradually replacing existing non-free apps with free alternatives like OpenOffice. OO is a drop in replacement for MS Office in many cases, and behaves almost exactly like a native app under Windows. On the other hand, Inkscape is a great program with a decent UI, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend it as an Illustrator replacement to Windows users because it doesn't look or act like what they're used to. And if I can't get my mother weaned off the crippled photo editor that came bundled with her camera, I'm never going to get her to switch completely.
Face it, folks, GTK+ is cross platform only by the loosest possible interpretation. I realize a lot of time and effort has gone into the 2.7/2.8 "redesign", but these UI changes to GIMP are too little, too late. At this point the only thing which is really going to save The GIMP on other platforms is a complete UI redesign using something other than GTK+. If GEGL is ever finished this shouldn't be too hard. Conveniently this would also allow us to change the cringe-inducing name as well. The result would be a Photoshop replacement that would look like it wasn't cobbled together by two bearded guys in a basement.