[Gimp-developer] A very simple feature that would be very nice...

[David Gowers]

Hi Hadrien,

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:48 AM, Hadrien G. <guydeloinbard at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> => I'm currently using Microsoft Windows XP as my main OS. Would it help
> greatly to get some Linux distro back on my hard drive ?
Yes, development is much easier on Linux.

> => How does one design the gimp UI ? Are there graphical tools/XML
> files/other high-level things to know about ? Or is this hard-coded in some
> unit (and, in that case, which unit) ?


You can experiment with graphical designing using Glade. But you would
need to finally code the GUI manually, since we don't use Glade in
GIMP.

http://zetcode.com/tutorials/gtktutorial/

might help.

> => By the way, could one show me an example of gimp config file saving code,
> to know which standard applies here ?
> => A proposal is to switch between whole different gimprcs. Is this really
> wise ? I mean, shouldn't some settings stay profile-independant, say, those
> about memory management, help system, display (especially DPI), color
> management, and folders ?

That was my proposal for working with gimp as it currently is; of
course this is not exactly what is wanted, just what could be done
with the current gimp.
> I think that one should first plot some boundaries around the profile thing.
> What should be included in a profile, and what shouldn't ?
> Personnally, I would suggest :

> -Toolbox state
> -Dockable windows status
> -Keyboard shortcuts (maybe)
> -Tool options
Does this include presets? (see tool-options directory in your
personal gimp directory)

> -Image window appearance (maybe)
Are you talking about whether rulers, menubar, selection, etc.. is
shown in the default image window?
If so,  I think that's stored in gimprc.
If you're rather talking about image window position and size, it's
stored in sessionrc, along with the dockable windows state.

> -Extended input peripheral shortcuts (maybe)

Although Photoshop supports switching between sets of keyboard
shortcuts (and presumably between sets of peripheral shortcuts), it
might be quite confusing to switch between them. I think if you asked
Peter, he would say "that's more trouble than it's worth".


You might consider including this too:
- Device status (found in devicerc)

This would mean that when you switched between profiles, it could
automatically switch to a sensible tool and sensible brush, colors,
etc.


> => Should one new config file be created for each profile, and a "profile"
> subfolder be added to the .gimp-2.x directory ? In any case, which naming
> convention should I use ?
I think .gimp-2.x/profiles is probably appropriate. Each profile would
almost certainly need to be a subdirectory with multiple config files
(eg toolrc, sessionrc, ..) .

> => Should this setting be called a profile or workspace ?
Profile seems more accurate, to me.

> => Where should this be put in GUI to make people know about it ? The
> preference dialog is a pretty obvious location, but since this is more
> likely to be used as a tool than as a setting, shouldn't there be a specific
> dockable window about it ? And should this be added to the default UI or not
> ?

A dockable would be good while you're developing it; We should
probably try to get Peter's input on what a sensible way for it to end
up might be.

David