[Gimp-developer] 2.6 roadmapping, the UI part of it...

[Robert Krawitz]

   Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:25:38 -0300
   From: Guillermo Espertino <gespertino at gmail.com>

   Loo wrote:
   > I'm not a developer, but I am a pro, and I would love to see some kind
   > of tab implimentation--as long as the individual images can be
   > undocked or detabbed allowing more than one image open at a time.  In
   > fact, that's the most profound idea I'd read about for the UI.
   >   
   Yes, sure. But detachable tabs aren't too different to the photoshop 
   "windows in a window" approach, and maybe it's a better idea to choose 
   that instead of tabs (for people who usually rant because Gimp UI isn't 
   like photoshop's).

Personally, I'd greatly prefer tabs to nested windows for anything
like this (in general, I detest nested-window MDI interfaces for any
purpose).  I find the two interface paradigms completely different --
nested windows have all of the clutter problems as individual windows,
without the advantages of floating windows (ability to be
independently managed, using my existing window manager paradigm which
may be very different from what the MDI designer selected).

My two use cases for this are:

* I have multiple photos of the same subject with slightly different
  composition, lighting, what have you and I want to decide which one
  to work on.  Nested windows don't help me; I still have to hunt for
  the multiple images.  Tabs let me easily alternate and compare the
  two (or more) images, at the same size and position on the screen.

* I have selected multiple photos to process sequentially.  The photos
  aren't related, other than being part of the same job.  In this
  case, having all of the photographs as separate tabs makes the
  screen a lot less cluttered than having multiple windows, whether
  independent or nested.  It's like separate pages in a book.

  I may well open extra floating windows to work on the individual
  images, but I don't need each image to have its own window.

There is *no* situation I can think of where I'd like to have multiple
floating sub-windows within a larger workspace window.

-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf at uunet.uu.net
Project lead for Gutenprint   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton