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Re: Tried Beryl Today

[snips]

On Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:35:02 -0500, Linonut wrote:

>> If I'm using an image editing app, the editing tools are *always* where I
>> can see 'em and get at 'em... or it's not an editing app, it's an image
>> *viewing* app.  Editing is an active process; tools which hide at a
>> moment's notice are not helpful, they are an active, intentional,
>> pointless hindrance - and the GIMP UI gits have never figured this out.
> 
> How so?  You can drag the popups so that they are always there.

I just fired it up again.  Up comes... okay, first item, wrong freakin'
monitor.  Most things, if I launch 'em from monitor 2 - at least if I leave
the mouse sitting there until they're loaded - come up on monitor 2.  GIMP
came up on monitor 1.

Fine, fine.  Got two windows: an image and a nice, handy, useful little
toolbar.  Let's open a couple more images.

Great.  Got a couple images I want to edit.  The toolbar window?  Nowhere
to be seen.  Which means now I have to go hunting for the barking stupid
thing.  Wherever it is, it is *not* sitting there, visible, ready to be
used.

It's like a hammer which, every time you pound one nail, magically hangs
itself back up down in the basement workshop.  This might be nice at the
end of the job, but when you're trying to get the job done, it is nothing
but a pointless pain in the proverbials.

> Are you talking about them not staying on top?
> 
> That could be an issue with a small screen.

How about a dual-screen setup with each running 1600x1200?  Doesn't
matter, the UI still bites sweaty sacks.

> What image editor fulfills your UI requirements?

Anything that grasps the concept that hiding the tools you're going to use
is an absolutely idiotic way to go and therefore doesn't do it.

The best would be the equivalent of the MDI interface: one top-level
window, with embedded tools, and image windows open as sub-windows of the
topmost.  This way all your images, tools, etc, are immediately
manageable, movable, etc, and the toolbars can be visible, available,
ready to go at all times, barring perhaps a full-screen viewing of an
image.

Heh.  Just opened several images with GIMPy.  Not only is the toolbar
buried God knows where, but there is, half-buried in the chaos of its
completely unmanaged insanity of an interface, a "Tip of the Day" dialog. 
The last run, I did not even see this window - because the UI is such a
steaming pile of stewed entrails that it can't even manage something as
basic as making "helpful hints" actually visible to the user unless they
go spelunking.

Stupid, broken, bad, pointless, in the way, counter productive... there is
not one single thing about the GIMP UI that works on any level.  Hell, you
can't even move the app windows around easily, say to toss 'em all on
another virtual desktop.  On yet another level it actively gets in the way
to do the wrong thing, the wrong way, to pointlessly reduce the efficiency
and effectiveness of using it.

Oh, goodies.  Just found *another* way it's broken beyond redemption. 
Somehow - don't ask me, as it persists in hiding useful things such as,
oh, the tool selector window - I wound up with two copies running.  Which
means two tool selector windows.

Well, hell, don't need all that, one's sufficient.  Close the other...
*poof*, there go five images off the desktop.

EXCUSE ME?  If your UI is too freaking stupid to cope with a properly
associated window layout so you can at least *tell* what tool window is in
charge of what image windows, then the UI has *no goddamn business" closing
the windows it's not managing.  Except it is managing them, it's simply
lying - visually - about the fact, showing them all as first-class
windows, not second-class descendant windows.  So when you close what
appears to be a completely pointless and redundant tool selector, what you
get instead is a wholly unexpected - and absolutely *wrong*, based on
visual cues - closing of the very windows you *do* want open.

This UI is, to be blunt, retarded.  It is bad, broken, crippled beyond any
hope of repair.  The program itself is good, powerful, flexible, we can
all agree on this, I'm sure.  The UI, however, would have been right at
home in the toolbox of the Marquis de Sade.


I just fired up a copy of Xara.  Guess what?  A single top-level window. 
Multiple images, each in its own tab.  The tool selector is always
visible.  You know, from simply looking at it, that clicking _this_
"close" button will, in fact, close all the image windows.  You can move
the whole blinkin' lot, monitor to monitor, desktop to desktop, by moving
a single top-level window.  The UI *does not lie* about what is and isn't
in control.

As an editing app, Xara may not be anywhere near as powerful as GIMP.  In
terms of UI design, however... Xara may not be perfect, but it makes GIMP
look like a challenged chimp by comparison.

Xara also has some UI issues I'm not fond of.  Pull up "galleries", for
example.  Voila; a new, dissociated window.  Blech.  Okay, fine, it's not
perfect... merely about 8 million times better than the stewed nonsense
that is the GIMP's UI.



-- 
Do not contact me at kbjarnason@xxxxxxxxxxx

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