Hmm, my first diary post. Well, a little about
myself.
I'm a graphic design and computer science double major...
(Using the gimp and coding it... Coding it eventually but,
not right now).
I am currently working, going to school, having a sort
of social
life, reading slashdot and advogato everyday and somewhere
in there learning C++, perl and Python. Not much luck on
getting the languages down or school that much but, my
social life is probably the brightest it's ever been. I
don't miss slashdot except maybe on the weekends when I go
out. Hmm, if life was just slashdot, advogato, and
socializing, I would be very sucessful.
But, I'm not. Anyways, I'm at my job right now.
I'm
making a website. Using the boss's windows machine and I'm
using the Gimp. The windows port by Tor is just sweet. It
crashes every now and then but, that's understandable.
It's EXTREMELY usable. That's all I use anymore.
After 1.2 is done and out the door, I have some
great
ideas for the gimp as far as UI. I want to a UI guy after
I get out with both of my degrees (5 years from now
UHHH!!). Most of them have deal with making the Gimp more
attractive to Graphic Designers who ultimately will use the
program anyways. You want to get people away from
Photoshop and Corel Draw/Paint.
Paint looks like it's going to be on linux desktops
soon
(as in 6-12 months) and I'm sure that Photoshop isn't more
than two years away. In this time, Gimp needs to become
easier for the ex-Photoshop Graphic Designer. Someone
needs to make a Glade plug-in for the Gimp so one can
easily make scripts without haveing to go through so much
code. A kinda mix and match type thing. Using the new
actions/steps dialog that I saw in the slides from GUADEC.
You should be able to experiment with-in Gimp and
all of
a sudden when you make this Super-Cool effect that shows
just how sweet of a designer (or how lucky of a bastard)
you are, you can just say take the last 15 steps and make
that into a script. Then this script maker should take all
the steps and automatically make them with the settings
that you did as default but, build a dialog with sliders,
options and the rest.
Now you have a dialog a mile long with 15 stages.
You
should be easily be able to cut that down. It should take
me a person that knows Gimp pretty well and knows a bit
about programming about 15-30 min. to make a script from
scratch. It should take someone that isn't so adept no
more than an hour.
Think of the power that something like this would
have!
Having designers in-house just making scripts and then soon
all of the designers have this power. Scriptablity is so
powerful but, it never has been leveraged as much it should
in Gimp. Make it easier to make a script, more scripts are
made. A script is the easiest way to get a wow out of a
photoshop person.
Another problem I have with Gimp is the dialogs.
They
are HUGE. There has to be some way of condesing them. I'm
working at 1024x768 and it seems cramped. This is
rediculous. Coming back to Photoshop, they found that
smaller dialogs are better. Multiple sets of info in the
same space. It should come up in context when needed.
When working in multiple images, I switch images and
the
layer dialog switches to the layers of that images when I
press ctrl or something. That should be automatic or at
least an option to be automatic. More things like that.
Like how the tools dialog switches. The tools dialog
however needs to remain a constant size. This is very
annoying if I have to move it or something to see some of
the information on there because before it was just a
little thing and now it's double it's size.
Dialogs should snap to corners and each other. I
don't
know if this is already true but, image windows should auto-
size intelligently and be aware of the dialog boxes, where
and how big they are. Obviously, like Photoshop. PS has
been around for at least 12 years of solid heavy
development. Gimp should use some of this UI wisdom to
it's advantage.
There are plenty of other ideas that I'm playing
with in
my head so, keep tuned to this diary if you want to hear
them or you can always e-mail me at gimptek@yahoo.com.
Yeah, it's yahoo but, it works.