On Thu, 19 Feb 2004, Nestor Diaz Valencia wrote:
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 06:42:33 +0000 From: Nestor Diaz Valencia <nestordiaz@...207...> To: MenTaLguY <mental@...3...>, Inkscape ML inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] 'dialogs' menu
If The Gimp is not going to change it too then I wouldn't change it.
I am also UI design aware, but in this case I prefer to keep cohesion a la Adobe between the "graphic applications suite". It helps when teaching you don't have to say "when you want to see the Option Window you have to go to the Dialog entry in The Gimp and to the Windows entry in Inkskape"
The Gimp uses a Controlled Single Document Interface (CDSI). Sodipodi does the same.
Inkscape uses SDI. This was a huge and incredibly significant change for which I will continue to praise Inkscape for a very long time.
The GIMP developers will very likely keep doing things the way they have been doing them. I cannot take the GIMP seriously in terms of usability when I get that kind of response because I'm not convinced a huge amount of thought went into why things were done that way in the first place. The GIMP could be helping to lead the way but at the moment it is playing it safe sticking with what they have. Which is fair enough except that other projects have followed the GIMP based on the assumption that they know exactly what they are doing.
It doesn't give me any pleasure to complain about the GIMP and I really try not to do it. The GIMP is good at what it does, it provides a toolset that makes many things possible but not necessarily easy and at a price that cant be beaten. But the GIMP isn't as good as Adobe Photoshop (and I can explain why if you really want) and in some ways I dont think it is even as Good as Paint Shop Pro (Versions 7 and 8 are really good and make it really easy to do some things quickly (like red-eye correction) as opposed to just the fairly raw tools in the GIMP that make it possible but not easy by default).
Inkscape is new and still willing to try things but still willing to change them and try other things if there are good reasons to do so and be the best that it can be.
Frankly when GIMP 2.0 goes Gold I'll be asking them again to reconsider things even though I expect them to strongly resist and refuse changes I really do want the GIMP to be more consistant with Gnome.
On the upside there is a bug report against the GIMP discussing menus like 'Script-Fu' and 'Perl-Fu' and there is some willingness to reorganise and streamline those menus by functionality and hide the implmentation details form the user (ie no longer grouped by programming language). Credit where credit is due: The GIMP 2.0 has still made many has a menubar which is very useful to a wide range of users and at the same time lets the older users keep doing things the way they are used to.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/