It's more than that. Sometimes the tools act as if they are aware of the context - something is selected, something was previously used, something is often used

It's more than that. Sometimes the tools act as if they are aware of the context - something is selected, something was previously used, something is often used following the current state - and other times it completely ignores all context. Like the way it pops up dialog boxes for most of the geometry manipulation tools, pulling focus from the canvas where you have to hit Enter to commit changes. If I'm dragging with the mouse, I want to simply drag it into position quickly and be done, not search for an OK button or swap focus. It's fine to add some form of fine tuning, but that's usually done with either a menu command or a tool information bar within the GUI. It's functionally the same thing as asking "Are you sure?" at the end of every action. It violates basic UI assumptions, so unless you use it constantly, you're going to forget which tools operate on which elements in which state. Other graphics programs follow logical flows that are intuitive - select layer, select area of picture, copy, select new layer, paste = selected area in new layer. GIMP wants to buffer every action with an intermediate state that allows some further manipulation, but then provides no intuitive way to take advantage of that state. Like the retention of selected areas as 'floating selections' (or whatever they're called) in the layers list. Here's a rough analogy: You crack an egg on the edge of a bowl. GIMP wants you to hold onto the egg because you might want to smush it in your fingers or whisper a secret to it now. If you try to put it in the bowl, GIMP ignores that there's a 99% chance that the recipe doesn't call for eggshell bits, so your first attempt results in having to clean out the bowl and crack another egg. Then you realize you first you have to specify that the shell should be removed, with options to change the angle of the shell crack relative to the bowl and the height from which the egg innards are released. Completed, you choose to crack another egg, but because you had not changed focus from the bowl, you proceed to smash the bowl on the counter. I'm sure there are legitimate cases where having access to those intermediates can be useful, but they shouldn't interrupt every logical step in a common process.