Hello Sven,

Thanks for taking time to answer my comments. I hope you don't mind if I cc my response to the Inkscape list.

As I wrote, I only spent one day playing with the new Gimp and did not claim to be able to discover everything it's capable of doing. I'm glad to hear Gimp is so configurable, however the first impressions are important, and maybe you can use the feedback of the fresh-eye, first-time users to change some defaults.

The majority of palettes (dialogs) are still not transient and "sink" readily when you switch to the document window that overlaps them. Working with a maximized document window is therefore next to impossible. Some of the dialogs/palettes are transient, though - I think it's those that can only apply to the current document and are more or less "modal", i.e. you cannot do anything on the canvas while such a window is active (examples are Levels, Color balance, etc.) Making such modal windows transient is indeed a step in the right direction, as in Gimp 1.2 even they could be buried easily (and confusingly for most users). However, having to dig out my primary toolbox from under a pile of windows still drives me crazy.

Some people prefer the toolbox and the docks to stay on top, others hate this. So it's up to you to set the utility window type hint in the GIMP perferences and to configure your WM to keep these windows on top. Most window managers seem to handle utility windows like this by default.

I have never heard before about "the utility window type hint". My KDE (3.1.3) does not seem to be aware of such windows at all, I don't see how I can configure that. If you use the hint that most WMs are unaware of, you must either bug the WM developers to implement it (the high profile of Gimp does give you some power to do that, IMHO) or offer some better supported ways to do the same. For example, if you add a third option, "transient", to the "window type hints" list in Preferences and make that the default (both for toolbox and for docks), I think the default Gimp will behave in a more expected way for the majority of new users (while remaining usable for those who prefer another behavior.)

The main toolbox is also exempt from docking. This means that although you now have a way to reduce the number of windows on your desktop, you still have at least three windows (document, toolbox, a group of docked palettes) that you'll have to alt-tab your way through.

That is simply wrong. You can dock to the bottom of the toolbox just like to any other dock. The only difference is that the toolbox doesn't offer an image menu. We suggest to dock the tool-options to the toolbox but it's up to you to configure your preferred setup.

Indeed! However, unlike tabs, I could not drag-and dock the toolbox to another dock, which is why I did not realize how it can be docked. That is, unlike tabs, you cannot grab the toolbox at an empty menubar space and drag it to another dock. Also, there's no way to add a toolbox to a dock via the "Add tab" menu. I think the interface must be consistent: if the toolbox is dockable, it must behave exactly like all other dockables.

Weirdly, the single-letter keys for switching tools only work in the document window.

We hope to get the problem of the global accelerator table sorted out before 2.0. Things will definitely become a lot better with the UI manager that will be part of GTK+-2.4. So GIMP-2.2 is supposed to have a much better global handling of shortcuts.

Glad to hear that. It's important. In Inkscape, global keys really work everywhere now, while in Gimp, I cannot even press Ctrl-q to exit if I'm inside a dock!

The palettes are so "independent" that they don't even care to track the current document. Switch from one document to another and watch your Layers palette, for example. Does it show you the layers of the new document? Nope! You have to use another palette called Images to select what document is being displayed.

That's simply not true. You can set each dock to "Auto Follow Active Image" in the dockable menu and it will update with the active image. If you add an image menu, there's that "Auto" button next to it which gives the same functionality. Please note that this is the default configuration that The GIMP will start with when it is launched for the first time.

I noticed that menu option and it was indeed on, but it did not do anything for me. As I now see, there's one more thing I had to do: "Activate the focused image" in Preferences must be on. Please make that setting on by default, too.

Still, even with "Auto follow", I see no way to move focus from a dock to the active image using keyboard.

Zoom shortcuts are inconvenient. "-" on the keyboard zooms out without shift, but to zoom in I have to press "+" with shift. Keypad

• and + do not work at all.

It may be inconvenient on your keyboard layout, but why don't you reconfigure it then? Go to the Prefs dialog and enable "Dynamic Keyboard Shortcuts", hover your mouse over the Zoom menu entry and press your favorite key.

Sure, but zoom keys are the first any user will try to use, why not make them more convenient by default?

Fullscreen mode is actually designed as a way to view your document w/o any distracting user interface elements. It's not supposed to be used for editing. However since some people prefer to do the latter, you can configure the fullscreen appearance of the image window in Preferences. If you follow my advice to set the utility window type hint, your toolbox and docks should also float on the image window in fullscreen mode.

Wonderful, but see above on the "utility type hint".

-- bb