[Gimp-developer] change layout of mode menus?

[gg at catking.net]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:53:16 +0100, Sven Neumann <sven at gimp.org> wrote:

> but for almost all users and almost all use cases they are unnecessary
> clutter and make the menu more difficult to use.  There's a tradeoff here
> between being useful every once in a while for a very small minority of
> users and being in the way for everyone almost all of the time.

Slight over statement about making a menu difficult to use! I used Gimp  
for years without even realising they were a tear off, I thought it was  
window decoration at the head of the menu. They never obstructed my usage  
but once I found out what it was I found it very useful.


I also think we need to be very careful about such hand-wavy hypothetical  
statements about how many users do or don't use something. Even now Peter  
has done some user observation which is valuable, the sample size hardly  
allows extrapolation of the results to the whole user base.

They are a very useful shortcut to the one or two things that a specific  
work load requires but find them selves buries 3 levels deep in a very  
crowded menu hierarchy.

One would not want to leave them sprinkled liberally around but they do  
provide a valuable time saving mechanism for tasks which will be as  
different as each users job.

My particular use is Edit | Paste as | Paste as new. This I use all the  
time. In 2.2 it is on the edit menu, so click-drag-release. Fine. Now all  
that zigzagging to get the extra menu is a major annoyance. A tear-off for  
this tiny menu would be great but I no longer see any tear-offs. Maybe I  
need to spend time finding how to get them back.

In any case that's just an example , another guy will want another  
sub-submenu all the time.

My main critisism of tear-offs is the lack of discoverability. The  
toilet-paper metaphore is less than obvious unless you've met it elsewhere.

regards /gg


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