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> Its certainly OK for a product to innovate, as GIMP has. I'm not sure the GIMP's UI choices can generally be described as "innovating". I think they're gener

by Joeboy 10y ago

> Its certainly OK for a product to innovate, as GIMP has. I'm not sure the GIMP's UI choices can generally be described as "innovating". I think they're generally just the obvious GTK+ default options, implemented without much testing or tweaking.

DonHopkins 10y ago
It's like they've confused the valid idea of an open source programmer being tainted by looking proprietary source code, with the ridiculous idea that a user interface designer would be tainted by looking at or using a proprietary user interface. Some aspects of Photoshop's user interface are patented, but it's much safer and wiser to LOOK at them and be aware of them and read the patents, so you're consciously aware of what not to do accidentally, and able to work around them.
bluGill 10y ago
GTK is the Gimp Tool Kit. I expect GIMP to use the defaults: historically they created to toolkit for their needs, and so they should choose the right defaults for them. Note that the above is historical. GNOME selected GTK long ago and has somewhat strong armed GTK development away from GNOME. I don't follow either project closely enough to suggest how much.
- Joeboy 10y ago
  Here's an example that was just pointed out to me by prokoudine: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/commit/?id=52ad5bb2a11e39ffe714b5b3ba1f3be0aa305e7f https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/commit/?id=52ad5bb2a11e39f... The default situation was that the toolbox grabbed the focus when clicked. That meant various actions, eg. "Show/hide docks", didn't work if the last thing you clicked was the toolbox. That's an annoyance created by "accepting the defaults", that's thankfully now been fixed in light of real-world usability issues.
zeveb 10y ago
> I think they're generally just the obvious GTK+ default options, implemented without much testing or tweaking. GTK+ is the GIMP ToolKit; the entire toolkit is GIMP's innovation.

by Joeboy 10y ago

DonHopkins 10y ago

It's like they've confused the valid idea of an open source programmer being tainted by looking proprietary source code, with the ridiculous idea that a user interface designer would be tainted by looking at or using a proprietary user interface. Some aspects of Photoshop's user interface are patented, but it's much safer and wiser to LOOK at them and be aware of them and read the patents, so you're consciously aware of what not to do accidentally, and able to work around them.

bluGill 10y ago

GTK is the Gimp Tool Kit. I expect GIMP to use the defaults: historically they created to toolkit for their needs, and so they should choose the right defaults for them. Note that the above is historical. GNOME selected GTK long ago and has somewhat strong armed GTK development away from GNOME. I don't follow either project closely enough to suggest how much.

Joeboy 10y ago
Here's an example that was just pointed out to me by prokoudine: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/commit/?id=52ad5bb2a11e39ffe714b5b3ba1f3be0aa305e7f https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/commit/?id=52ad5bb2a11e39f... The default situation was that the toolbox grabbed the focus when clicked. That meant various actions, eg. "Show/hide docks", didn't work if the last thing you clicked was the toolbox. That's an annoyance created by "accepting the defaults", that's thankfully now been fixed in light of real-world usability issues.

zeveb 10y ago

> I think they're generally just the obvious GTK+ default options, implemented without much testing or tweaking. GTK+ is the GIMP ToolKit; the entire toolkit is GIMP's innovation.