Do you really want to drop years of serious UI design work(gimp) just because the kde people haven't done their work yet?

I never suggested to "drop" anything, only _add_.

Wouldn't it be better to push hard for the freedesktop standard?

Of course it would be better! So, are you doing it already? When can we expect to see the unsinkability option for utility windows in, say, KDE?

no offense intended, but inkscape is pretty much useless for professional work as it is right now. Take a look at the inkscape screenshot i've made, there are 13! dialogs open. And it's just version 0.36.

Please don't dodge the subject. Dialogs reorganization is in our plans (see DialogsReorganization on our Wiki), it's completely irrelevant to what I've been discussing in Gimp.

Where are you going to put them so that they're immidiatelly accesible? If i click on freehand, i'd like to immidiatelly set the thickness or color of the curves i'd like to draw, How will i do that?

See SecondaryToolbar on our Wiki.

Depending upon which tool you choose in inkscape another (sub)toolbox shows up on the top, so it's either there or it's not, you'll end up looking at a jumping canvas which is just disturbing.

Jumping already fixed.

Besides, what's the purpose of having the main toolbox on the left while having the other one on the top? It makes no sense.

It makes perfect sence as they are the primary and secondary toolbars, directly linked (change tool on the primary and get all relevant controls on the secondary). This is the approach taken by (at least) Photoshop and Xara, and it's very convenient.

It's not clear which tool is selected.

I guess this will be fixed when we return to the standard button widget.

The A4 rectangle in the canvas window is horribly disturbing.

It helps me, but you can switch it off easily. In a next version this preference will be saved for future sessions.

...

Second, users coming from Windows or Mac will never...

If you want those users to migrate, the first thing you should do is to look at the UI of all those apps. As i said, they all look pretty much the same, except that gimp doesn't do WiW and gtk doesn't offer that(luckily!).

No, WiW is secondary. The biggest problem with Gimp is that dialogs sink. They never do in any Windows or Mac program I've EVER seen.

There's no space left for innovation here.

:)

As for the transients - as long as 1.) the toolbox and the docks all behave like one group(for the purpose of minimising, bringing forward, always on top etc), and making the image window active switches the images/layers/channels/paths/ dock to that image, it will do a much better job than WiW has ever done. the images should always be kept as separate objects/windows.

Exactly! This is _precisely_ what we're doing in Inkscape and what Gimp refuses to do.

No ofense intended again, but you guys just installed gimp 1.3.x. toying around with it for a few hours, it seems like it's not sufficient to realise how well designed the gimp UI really is and how efficient it is.

No offence in my comments either. Just first impressions of a new user, which should be at least as valuable to a UI designer as comments from a long-time user. I ran the new Gimp and saw severe usability problems at once. You say they can be fixed by changing preferences? Great! But first, not everything can be fixed, and the biggest problem - sinking dialogs - is unfixable. And second, first-time users don't have to go into preferences; they should get the most usable and _standard_ interface by default. Sinking dialogs are not standard in any UI, sorry.

But keep in mind, that through all those years of gimp development, tons of discussions were going on regarding the UI, so it's really a great piece of work and it just works. Why would you want to go through all that again?

:)

Sorry if i sounded rude but i just fear seeing another promising project going the drain just because the developers didn't trust something that is actually proven.

Don't worry for us. We won't go down the drain, I promise :)