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It's interesting on how they tout implementing very basic usability features like these: - multi-select in some (admittedly non-standard and treeview-like) lis

It's interesting on how they tout implementing very basic usability features like these: - multi-select in some (admittedly non-standard and treeview-like) listbox... How did such a "feature" require 7 years to implement? - switching between dark and light themes with a single button... Doesn't every UI library implement this as default by now? Also, refactoring file I/O completely so that it abstracts away path separators, which, apparently are a real headache? I mean, yeah, other toolkits have had these abstractions for years. Or they could just convert everything to forward slashes which also works on every OS... When reading changelogs like these, I keep wondering how Gimp (and to some extent Gtk) has been able to work as well as it does for so many years

bogwog 4y ago
> multi-select in some (admittedly non-standard and treeview-like) listbox... How did such a "feature" require 7 years to implement? How often do you need to multi-select items on a list box? I don’t I’ve ever found myself needing to do that in the many years I’ve been a GIMP user. > switching between dark and light themes with a single button... Doesn't every UI library implement this as default by now? Which UI libraries do that? > Or they could just convert everything to forward slashes which also works on every OS... ...except Windows.
- dark-star 4y ago
  > How often do you need to multi-select items on a list box? I don’t I’ve ever found myself needing to do that in the many years I’ve been a GIMP user. In other picture-editing software I use it all the time to select multiple layers to move them at the same time, or to show/hide multiple layers all at once >> Or they could just convert everything to forward slashes which also works on every OS... > ...except Windows. Wrong. I have no idea where this comes from, other than Linux-fanboys re-iterating the same old story from Windows 95 over and over again. Windows has supported forward slashes as path separators since Windows 2000 (at least).
  - bogwog 4y ago
    > In other picture-editing software I use it all the time to select multiple layers to move them at the same time, or to show/hide multiple layers all at once Fair enough. When you said "listbox", I assumed you were referring to generic listbox widgets as you might find in a filter/settings window. > Wrong. I have no idea where this comes from, other than Linux-fanboys re-iterating the same old story from Windows 95 over and over again. Windows has supported forward slashes as path separators since Windows 2000 (at least). It comes from the fact that a lot of native win32 APIs do not support forward slashes, and Microsoft's own documentation says that you need to use back slashes, not forward slashes (example: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/libloaderapi/nf-libloaderapi-loadlibrarya?redirectedfrom=MSDN#parameters https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/libloader...). Most of the filesystem APIs have a preprocessing step that, among other things, can convert forward slashes automatically. However, this is not always available or desirable, and sometimes it can be disabled by an API without you realizing it. Not using the native path separator will cause your path handling code to be fragile, especially if you need to handle arbitrary user-provided paths (as GIMP does). Also, many (all?) Windows software with a command line interface use the forward slash for arguments. For example, on a unix you may invoke a command like `ls -a` whereas the equivalent on Windows would need to be `ls /a`. Having forward slashes in your paths can lead to problems.

bogwog 4y ago

> multi-select in some (admittedly non-standard and treeview-like) listbox... How did such a "feature" require 7 years to implement? How often do you need to multi-select items on a list box? I don’t I’ve ever found myself needing to do that in the many years I’ve been a GIMP user. > switching between dark and light themes with a single button... Doesn't every UI library implement this as default by now? Which UI libraries do that? > Or they could just convert everything to forward slashes which also works on every OS... ...except Windows.

dark-star 4y ago
> How often do you need to multi-select items on a list box? I don’t I’ve ever found myself needing to do that in the many years I’ve been a GIMP user. In other picture-editing software I use it all the time to select multiple layers to move them at the same time, or to show/hide multiple layers all at once >> Or they could just convert everything to forward slashes which also works on every OS... > ...except Windows. Wrong. I have no idea where this comes from, other than Linux-fanboys re-iterating the same old story from Windows 95 over and over again. Windows has supported forward slashes as path separators since Windows 2000 (at least).
- bogwog 4y ago
  > In other picture-editing software I use it all the time to select multiple layers to move them at the same time, or to show/hide multiple layers all at once Fair enough. When you said "listbox", I assumed you were referring to generic listbox widgets as you might find in a filter/settings window. > Wrong. I have no idea where this comes from, other than Linux-fanboys re-iterating the same old story from Windows 95 over and over again. Windows has supported forward slashes as path separators since Windows 2000 (at least). It comes from the fact that a lot of native win32 APIs do not support forward slashes, and Microsoft's own documentation says that you need to use back slashes, not forward slashes (example: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/libloaderapi/nf-libloaderapi-loadlibrarya?redirectedfrom=MSDN#parameters https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/libloader...). Most of the filesystem APIs have a preprocessing step that, among other things, can convert forward slashes automatically. However, this is not always available or desirable, and sometimes it can be disabled by an API without you realizing it. Not using the native path separator will cause your path handling code to be fragile, especially if you need to handle arbitrary user-provided paths (as GIMP does). Also, many (all?) Windows software with a command line interface use the forward slash for arguments. For example, on a unix you may invoke a command like `ls -a` whereas the equivalent on Windows would need to be `ls /a`. Having forward slashes in your paths can lead to problems.