[Gimp-developer] Background color property for GIMP images

[Jon Senior]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:01:08 +0930
David Gowers <00ai99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> X could work almost unchanged (just, pressing X multiple times in
> quick succession would move back through the 5-slot color history,
> rather than just swapping the two newest slots. So your current usage
> of X would be unchanged, but you could use it to switch between more
> than 2 colors)
> 
> So far, no one has given any feedback on the idea, or indeed any
> acknowledgement of it. This disappoints me, as it really does fit
> neatly into the 'holes' of yahvuu's proposal and would make those
> areas even more effective than GIMP currently is before implementing
> yahvuu's proposal alone.

I didn't understand it at first, and believed that the idea was that 'x' would cycle through the colours in a palette. Meaning that the user would press 'x' once to change to a new colour and another four times to go back to the original. Looking at your animated gif it all makes a lot more sense, although I suspect that the timings will be critical. I would also (as a user) want some method of adjusting or "loading" those five colours, either via 5 swatches in the tool box, or a single "choose colours" dialog.
 
> If we maintain a strict visual order (eg. newest at right -- see my
> GIF above), this could work better than naming it 'current' ->
> 'previous'

It does also resolve a question that was floating around in my head as to what the "new" non-background colour would be called. The gradient tool is an obvious example of one where the foreground/background naming convention is strong, and easy to understand. This might require that the "choose colours" dialog allows a method for swapping the colour order, because having to do it using only 'x' could get annoying when arranging two colours for use in a gradient.

-- 
Jon Senior <jon at restlesslemon.co.uk>