The splash screen is just a window. Unlike other windows it has the _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_SPLASH hint set. These hints are defined in the Extended Window Manager Hints, a spec meant to unify the GNOME and KDE window manager hint conventions.
It is up to your window manager what to do about a window that has the splash hint set. You could probably configure it to give it a window decoration and to treat it like any normal dialog window.
Use gimp --no-splash then. GIMP implements the startup notification protocol (as defined on freedesktop.org) so there's really no need for the splash. It's just eye-candy and if you don't like it, feel free to turn it off.
Sure. It should be possible to define an internal API to manage the docks and image displays. Different backends could then be written. Perhaps you want to work out a proposal or even prepare a patch? It would certainly be considered.
See. There are better places to write such a thing than on Slashdot. Lucky as you are, I have read it, but it was a lot more likely that I would have missed it. Since I am the one who wrote the new text tool, I am of course interested in such feedback. A lot of the things you mentioned above have been taken care of or there are plans to take care of them. If your feedback would have come up earlier, perhaps the text tool would be a lot better already. Perhaps you should consider not to waste your time with the trolls on slashdot but to join the gimp mailing lists, give us some feedback and help us to improve GIMP.
It's coming. Text transformations are definitely on my list of things I want to do for 2.4. And now that Pango offers this functionality, it should actually be rather simple to implement.
You should consider to setup X to have two screens then. GIMP supports this quite nicely and will remember on which screen you want it's windows to appear. It also allows you to move windows between the screens (which is a functionality that the WM should offer actually).
You just need to start GIMP with the --no-splash command-line option to suppress the splash screen. Or better yet, edit gimp.desktop so it works when GIMP is started from the menu. Since GIMP supports startup notification, your desktop can do whatever it wants to do to inform you about the startup.
30 seconds? It's more like 5 seconds. The first startup is slow since all plug-ins need to be queried but this info is cached and subsequent startup is a lot faster.
I do have some ideas though that would reduce the startup time further. Some of this might make into GIMP 2.4...
I don't even have direct access to an operating system where Photoshop would run on but I am frequently talking to Photoshop users and watch them using it and other graphics applications (including GIMP). That makes a lot more sense than me using it myself. I am a developer, I have different needs and different approaches anyway. What counts is making myself familiar with the common workflow of graphics artists.
GIMP is also not meant to be like Photoshop and we aren't trying to win PS users over. We are creating a tool that gets the job done. Some approaches of PS are worth to copy, others aren't. GIMP is not a Photoshop clone and it was never meant to be one.
That's been fixed a while ago at the GLib level. I am not sure if the current installer for Win32 picked up the new version already but from a developer's point of view it's fixed.
If there's a plug-in or script that can't be undone, that would be a bug then. Please report it.
I would also like to add that GIMP had a configurable number of undo steps years before Photoshop introduced that feature.
About configuring the number of undo levels, yes, that is possible. But I'd suggest that instead of configuring the number of levels, you set a higher limit for undo memory. Small modifications such as toggling layer visibility or small brush strokes only need a few bytes so you can easily undo hundreds of these actions.
If you open the file-chooser from the image you just opened, it will open with that directory preselected. Also with the new filechooser in GIMP 2.2 you can set bookmarks for your frequently used folders.
Sorry, but the ability to easily draw a straight line has been there forever and more than five years ago a preview was added to make it more apparent that this is what happens when you press Shift. I have even been told that PS does it exactly this way.
If you think this is not intuitive enough, perhaps you should suggest a better way of doing it. You seem to have a lot of time on your hands, judging from the lengthy posts.
I just had a look at the source and it seems that GDK for Win32 does support the optional "keep-above" setting that we added with GIMP 2.2. So it should be possible to configure the toolbox and all docks to be always above all other windows. Not sure if that's a solution for everyone but I guess some users will find this useful.
Thanks for your insightful remarks. While reading this, I felt I should add a comment here. Not directly in reply to what you have said but more as a response to a complaint that seems to come up frequently.
Some people seem to have the impression that the GIMP developers would believe that the GIMP user interface would be perfect and must not be changed. I wonder how that impression has come up since of course we see the problems and we listen to users reporting usability problems or suggesting enhancements. It's just that code doesn't fall from the sky and changes take time. Of course not everyone agrees with the priorities that the GIMP developers set and not everyone likes the solutions that we come up with. These are points that can and should be discussed on a technical level.
Whoever claims that the GIMP developers would be ignoring problems is quite ignorant himself. What do you think why I (and other GIMP developers) go through the hassle of reading the slashdot comments at all? Because it's a good way to get user feedback and perhaps in between all those flamebaits someone even comes up with a good idea and/or reasonable arguments.
* load/save dialog, these are really just the standard Gtk+ ones with a single thumbnail, however for a graphic application it would be quite usefull to have full thumbnail view of all images, like you get in Nautilus or any fileviewer
Why don't you use nautilus or any other fileviewer then? The point of the GIMP UI is to allow you to use it together with other apps. So why don't you just open images from nautilus or drag them onto the GIMP toolbox? In GIMP 2.2 you can also drag them to an already opened image or into the Layers dialog.
It would be a terrible waste of time and efforts to duplicate the functionality of your favorite file browser if you can just use it with The GIMP.
* no quick&easy way to create brushes, ie. I would like to use a layer click a 'to-brush' button and then paint with it, however thats more or less impossible todo today
It is possible for a long time already by means of "Script-Fu->Selection->To Brush". Sure this isn't very intuitive and it is planned to improve this with the next version. Most of the framework that is needed to make this happen is in place already.
* developers seem to be quite hostile against any suggestions from the outside, both on IRC and on the mailing list
Look at your own posting. It is titled "Top Reasons I hate GIMP". Now do you seriously expect to get friendly response when you address volunteers in such a way? You get back what you throw at people.
That sounds like the last time you played with GIMP it was on version 1.2. Perhaps you should try a newer version. Of course there's still lots of room for improvement (where isn't?) but the points you mentioned have been addressed.
The development version of GTK+ adds pretty nice keyboard navigation to the new file-chooser. GTK+-2.6 is supposed to be released soon so this will be on everyone's desktop soon. If you want to give it a try right now, you could use GTK+-2.5.5.
Actually there's an easier way to correct for a misrotated image and it's in GIMP since version 1.2. The transform tools have a Corrective mode (available from the tool options). In that mode you rotate the grid so it aligns with the horizontal/vertical lines in your image and the tool will rotate the image in the other direction so that these lines become horizontal/vertical.
GIMP 2.2 adds the often requested preview for transformations but actually Corrective mode is a lot more versatile and much easier to use especially when it comes to correcting perspective distortions.
Slashdot Mirror
The splash screen is just a window. Unlike other windows it has the _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_SPLASH hint set. These hints are defined in the Extended Window Manager Hints, a spec meant to unify the GNOME and KDE window manager hint conventions.
It is up to your window manager what to do about a window that has the splash hint set. You could probably configure it to give it a window decoration and to treat it like any normal dialog window.
Use gimp --no-splash then. GIMP implements the startup notification protocol (as defined on freedesktop.org) so there's really no need for the splash. It's just eye-candy and if you don't like it, feel free to turn it off.
Sure. It should be possible to define an internal API to manage the docks and image displays. Different backends could then be written. Perhaps you want to work out a proposal or even prepare a patch? It would certainly be considered.
See. There are better places to write such a thing than on Slashdot. Lucky as you are, I have read it, but it was a lot more likely that I would have missed it. Since I am the one who wrote the new text tool, I am of course interested in such feedback. A lot of the things you mentioned above have been taken care of or there are plans to take care of them. If your feedback would have come up earlier, perhaps the text tool would be a lot better already. Perhaps you should consider not to waste your time with the trolls on slashdot but to join the gimp mailing lists, give us some feedback and help us to improve GIMP.
It's coming. Text transformations are definitely on my list of things I want to do for 2.4. And now that Pango offers this functionality, it should actually be rather simple to implement.
You should consider to setup X to have two screens then. GIMP supports this quite nicely and will remember on which screen you want it's windows to appear. It also allows you to move windows between the screens (which is a functionality that the WM should offer actually).
You just need to start GIMP with the --no-splash command-line option to suppress the splash screen. Or better yet, edit gimp.desktop so it works when GIMP is started from the menu. Since GIMP supports startup notification, your desktop can do whatever it wants to do to inform you about the startup.
30 seconds? It's more like 5 seconds. The first startup is slow since all plug-ins need to be queried but this info is cached and subsequent startup is a lot faster.
I do have some ideas though that would reduce the startup time further. Some of this might make into GIMP 2.4...
I don't even have direct access to an operating system where Photoshop would run on but I am frequently talking to Photoshop users and watch them using it and other graphics applications (including GIMP). That makes a lot more sense than me using it myself. I am a developer, I have different needs and different approaches anyway. What counts is making myself familiar with the common workflow of graphics artists.
GIMP is also not meant to be like Photoshop and we aren't trying to win PS users over. We are creating a tool that gets the job done. Some approaches of PS are worth to copy, others aren't. GIMP is not a Photoshop clone and it was never meant to be one.
It is of course also explained in the startup tips and in the user manual. This tutorial is a joke, in case you didn't notice that.
That's been fixed a while ago at the GLib level. I am not sure if the current installer for Win32 picked up the new version already but from a developer's point of view it's fixed.
If there's a plug-in or script that can't be undone, that would be a bug then. Please report it.
I would also like to add that GIMP had a configurable number of undo steps years before Photoshop introduced that feature.
About configuring the number of undo levels, yes, that is possible. But I'd suggest that instead of configuring the number of levels, you set a higher limit for undo memory. Small modifications such as toggling layer visibility or small brush strokes only need a few bytes so you can easily undo hundreds of these actions.
If you open the file-chooser from the image you just opened, it will open with that directory preselected. Also with the new filechooser in GIMP 2.2 you can set bookmarks for your frequently used folders.
Sorry, but the ability to easily draw a straight line has been there forever and more than five years ago a preview was added to make it more apparent that this is what happens when you press Shift. I have even been told that PS does it exactly this way.
If you think this is not intuitive enough, perhaps you should suggest a better way of doing it. You seem to have a lot of time on your hands, judging from the lengthy posts.
The EWMH spec unfortunately misses a proper hint for the GIMP toolbox. As you noticed already, "utility" doesn't quite fit here.
I just had a look at the source and it seems that GDK for Win32 does support the optional "keep-above" setting that we added with GIMP 2.2. So it should be possible to configure the toolbox and all docks to be always above all other windows. Not sure if that's a solution for everyone but I guess some users will find this useful.
Thanks for your insightful remarks. While reading this, I felt I should add a comment here. Not directly in reply to what you have said but more as a response to a complaint that seems to come up frequently.
Some people seem to have the impression that the GIMP developers would believe that the GIMP user interface would be perfect and must not be changed. I wonder how that impression has come up since of course we see the problems and we listen to users reporting usability problems or suggesting enhancements. It's just that code doesn't fall from the sky and changes take time. Of course not everyone agrees with the priorities that the GIMP developers set and not everyone likes the solutions that we come up with. These are points that can and should be discussed on a technical level.
Whoever claims that the GIMP developers would be ignoring problems is quite ignorant himself. What do you think why I (and other GIMP developers) go through the hassle of reading the slashdot comments at all? Because it's a good way to get user feedback and perhaps in between all those flamebaits someone even comes up with a good idea and/or reasonable arguments.
GIMP had multiple undo levels years before Photoshop had it. Just one example out of many...
This has been addressed in GIMP 2.2. Shortcuts work from the image windows as well as from the toolbox and all docks.
Let me comment on some of your points:
* load/save dialog, these are really just the standard Gtk+ ones with a single thumbnail, however for a graphic application it would be quite usefull to have full thumbnail view of all images, like you get in Nautilus or any fileviewer
Why don't you use nautilus or any other fileviewer then? The point of the GIMP UI is to allow you to use it together with other apps. So why don't you just open images from nautilus or drag them onto the GIMP toolbox? In GIMP 2.2 you can also drag them to an already opened image or into the Layers dialog.
It would be a terrible waste of time and efforts to duplicate the functionality of your favorite file browser if you can just use it with The GIMP.
* no quick&easy way to create brushes, ie. I would like to use a layer click a 'to-brush' button and then paint with it, however thats more or less impossible todo today
It is possible for a long time already by means of "Script-Fu->Selection->To Brush". Sure this isn't very intuitive and it is planned to improve this with the next version. Most of the framework that is needed to make this happen is in place already.
* developers seem to be quite hostile against any suggestions from the outside, both on IRC and on the mailing list
Look at your own posting. It is titled "Top Reasons I hate GIMP". Now do you seriously expect to get friendly response when you address volunteers in such a way? You get back what you throw at people.
You should update libexif then. The bug is there, not in the GIMP code.
That sounds like the last time you played with GIMP it was on version 1.2. Perhaps you should try a newer version. Of course there's still lots of room for improvement (where isn't?) but the points you mentioned have been addressed.
You could have pointed to this tutorial instead which is about as sarcastic as your reply ;)
The development version of GTK+ adds pretty nice keyboard navigation to the new file-chooser. GTK+-2.6 is supposed to be released soon so this will be on everyone's desktop soon. If you want to give it a try right now, you could use GTK+-2.5.5.
Actually there's an easier way to correct for a misrotated image and it's in GIMP since version 1.2. The transform tools have a Corrective mode (available from the tool options). In that mode you rotate the grid so it aligns with the horizontal/vertical lines in your image and the tool will rotate the image in the other direction so that these lines become horizontal/vertical.
GIMP 2.2 adds the often requested preview for transformations but actually Corrective mode is a lot more versatile and much easier to use especially when it comes to correcting perspective distortions.