[Gimp-developer] [GIMP] Suggestion to simplify user interaction

[David Gowers]

On 10/14/06, Philip Ganchev <phil.ganchev at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Unfortunately not. It is a key found on keyboards with the 'Windows'
> keys or
> > their equivalent. GTK treats it as an indication to pop up the menus
> (Alt
> > does sort-of the same thing; Shift-F10 does exactly the same thing)
>
> You're not suggesting that Shift+F10 is better than Control+F, right?
> At least Control key and 'F' key are close to each-other.


Not on my keyboard. 12cm from the corner of ctrl to the corner of F; 13cm
from the other ctrl key to the corner of F; 8.5cm from the corner of shift
to the corner of F10.

However, no, I wasn't suggesting that. Merely that the menu key should be
supported for this purpose and indicated as the preferred method when
possible. i.e. 'use the Menu key to access the menu searching function; If
you don't have a Menu key on your keyboard, use Ctrl+F'


> The people I know who use Gimp use it only occasionally, and they do
> not use shortcuts.  I did not know they existed until someone
> mentioned it in reply to my post.


I find it difficult to believe that you are in a position to comment on gimp
usability, without experience with such a vital feature. Even the horrific
MSPaint has keyboard shortcuts.

I also wonder how you could have possibly missed them, since they are
printed right next to the menu items, just as is standard in modern UI
design.

I suppose there are ergonomic advantages to one-hand command invocation if
> 1.  you hold the mouse with the other hand, and
> 2.  there is a keyboard shortcut for the action you want, and
> 3.  you know what it is without having to check.
>
> How many command shortcuts can a user be expected to remember?  10?
> 20?  So we are choosing between the ergonomic convenience of one-key


I think I have about 40 memorized, of 60-70 I've defined (all custom -- I
deleted every default one.); I admit I am atypical, however.


invocation for 20 commands, and the cognitive convenience of the
> general search for all commands, current and future.


That's true, but tools are -- as their name implies -- used a lot. In
particular, I often use the selection tools in combination with each other
or with Blend or Bucketfill tools.


You say that moving your hand from the mouse to the keyboard takes too
> long.


I haven't commented on that subject at all (and it is not normally a problem
for me -- I typically have the layout left to right keyboard, tablet, mouse;
I draw righthandedly and key lefthandedly, using the mouse without putting
down the tablet stylus when needed.)

However, moving a hand from the mouse to the keyboard -- which I remember
from the bad old days when I didn't have a tablet -- is indeed a significant
speed hit.

 You must edit with lightning speed.  For me, moving my hand to
> the keyboard is negligible compared to choosing the right points on
> the image to apply the selected tool, choosing the right color, etc.


All I mean is that I have also memorized many menu mnemonics, which are
comparable to this proposed method WRT number of keystrokes, and using them
is extremely sluggish compared to keyboard shortcuts.

An example of the magnitude of the difference is picking colors by moving
through a palette -- '('  and ')' are the shortcuts for that by default --
and manually finding an appropriate spot on the image and eyedropping. It's
also directly comparable to your search idea. I say this completely
seriously -- if I couldn't do such things as select between palette colors
or tools quickly, or swap between FG/BG colors, GIMP would be almost
entirely useless to me.  I do not intend to work with chains around my
wrists.

I use Gimp for creation PRIMARILY; It sounds as if you are thinking of GIMP
as a tool for primarily editing and secondarily creation.

The factors that you discard the significance of effect revision speed a
lot. Everything that interrupts your workflow is evil. This amounts to
anything more complex than a single-part keypress/mouseclick/tablet gesture.
An exclusive implementation of your scheme requires constant searching and
MANY keypresses.

Example: I want to select pencil tool.
P (choice of .. a lot of items)
PE (choice of .. a lot of items)
PEN (choice of 'Open', 'Open Location','Open as Layer', 'Sharpen
(selection)','Blur / Sharpen', 'Sharpen (drawable)','Pencil' )
PENC (selects 'Pencil')

versus keyboard shortcut
'N' (or Shift+P in a vanilla gimp setup)

versus menu mnemonics
'Alt-T-P-N'

That was one of the most conservative examples I could find; at best, it
only matches the number of keypresses needed to use the existing menu access
methods. Arguably, you could implement it to sort the items by how early the
search strings occur; then you might be able to type pe[Enter] -- If you
were looking for pencil tool rather than perspective tool.

Another example is UNDO/REDO! I cannot even really take seriously the
suggestion of having such a vital feature immediately available.

Do you really think that it could justifyably replace the existing system,
with such a non-performance?

>  I believe that you will find that leaving out the 'the' is necessary to
> > make some of the longer command descriptions reasonably readable.
>
> Perhaps.  I thought that using whole sentences would be clearer.  For
> example, "rotate layer 90 degrees" can be taken as a phrase about a
> kind of layer, a "rotate layer".  Clarity is important.
>


Thats true, although rotating a rotate layer probably wouldn't make much
sense anyway :)
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