10 ms·

First Pictures Of Single Window Gimp

108 points by AjJi 17y ago

Anon84 17y ago
Amazing? Hardly!
agnokapathetic 17y ago
"First Pictures Of Single Window Gimp - It Looks Vaguely like Photoshop." FTFY.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Shoulda used a picture of all the dollar bills remaining after not buying Photoshop :) GIMP's pretty good for a free project, but using their own logo as the example picture makes it look like it's only good for editing sprites.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - jcl 17y ago
    That's a clever idea for another reason, too: Photoshop will not allow certain operations on pictures of money, highlighting a disadvantage of closed-source software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_Counterfeit_Deterrence_Group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_Counterfeit_Deterr...
SwellJoe 17y ago
Isn't it interesting how the many-windows paradigm has come and gone? Desktop software for the first ~15 years of personal computing was full screen, single "window" for any given task. And then, for the past fifteen years or so, we've been dealing with the increased complexity of many-windowed interfaces. Seems strange that nobody noticed that some of the changes that windowing systems brought were negative until a whole new generation of developers came along and reinvented the single window model.
- niels_olson 17y ago
  I'm not so sure multi-windowing is quite dead when it comes to drawing and CAD programs. From a practical perspective, the paradigm of being able to move your palettes around, and pick which ones are displayed, is rather valuable regardless of how big your display is.
  - chancho 17y ago
    But having to position them manually is just tedium. Let me choose which palettes to display and which side of the window to display them on, and then let the application take care of the rest. If I'm running at fullscreen then I don't want anything covering up the document/image/model. Otherwise, I only want to have to move/resize one window.
    - yummyfajitas 17y ago
      This issue is solved fairly easily with a superior window manager. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Image:Screen-ohmega-tab-gnome-twopane.jpg http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Image:Screen-ohmega-tab-gnome...
      - monos 17y ago
        hm, my xmonad shows gimp with multi windows free floating. wich makes more sense for the current gimp.
        yummyfajitas 17y ago
        By default gimp is floating. It's not hard to change the defaults. http://nathanhowell.net/2009/03/08/xmonad-and-the-gimp/ http://nathanhowell.net/2009/03/08/xmonad-and-the-gimp/
  - buugs 17y ago
    I'm curious to what CAD programs you are using that are multi-windowing because the only one I can think of is ADAMS by MSC but that UI is a big pain in the ass.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
I can't stand single windows for graphics stuff. ideal is to have the image take up one whole monitor and all the pallets and tools take up another.
- alex_c 17y ago
  That's why it's going to be optional. I, for one, can't stand multi-window interfaces (after almost a year of using a Mac, I still find parts of the interface annoying).
  - elblanco 17y ago
    The multi-window aspect of Macs makes them almost unusable IMHO. I can't conceive of a particular reason to have some completely unrelated program showing up in the same visual space as the one I'm currently working with.
    - bonaldi 17y ago
      What about related ones? If I'm designing a page, I might want my image browser in sight so I can choose and then drag and drop images. Or if I'm writing an article and it takes a lot of research, I'll want a web browser to share the screen equally with the word processor. The multi-window aspects of Macs makes them more usable imo, especially because of the deep support for drag-and-drop interoperation. In the physical world, I mix and match media as suits the task, and the Mac mimics that. I don't fill my desk up with a notepad, then hide it and take out a calculator, then hide it and set up my easel.
      - gloob 17y ago
        In the physical world, I mix and match media as suits the task, and the Mac mimics that. I don't fill my desk up with a notepad, then hide it and take out a calculator, then hide it and set up my easel. Rather than taking out/hiding away your various tools and implements in your desk, I believe the idiomatic Linux strategy is to have nine desks, each with a single tool on it.
jpcx01 17y ago
This? http://bit.ly/1Yl9Su http://bit.ly/1Yl9Su This looks amazing? Really? It looks fine... but maybe the linux dudes have standards lowered a bit?
- ars 17y ago
  No short urls here please - even for very long ones. The url is: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FJH0hYZmVtc/SsuTeVas_WI/AAAAAAAADlc/VkiIOWlsssM/s1600-h/gimp-single-window-mode-in-progress.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FJH0hYZmVtc/SsuTeVas_WI/AAAAAAAADl...
  - nailer 17y ago
    Comment redacted, thought you were referring to the article itself, not your parent comment...
- hughprime 17y ago
  I assume "it looks AMAZING" is perfectly within the usual editorial standards of "omgbuntu", but wouldn't mind seeing a different headline here. How about "it looks REASONABLY GOOD" or "it looks ABOUT LIKE YOU MIGHT EXPECT"?
  - jodrellblank 17y ago
    How about "it looks like a mess" or "it looks like every shareware image editor since the days of Windows 95" or "it looks like you crammed as many controls as you could fit on screen using a cross-platform windowing toolkit"? I can't say any of that, it's rude - but it's what I'm thinking. Look at the right hand side - count the scrollbars, the dropdowns, the counters. What's that hideous layer control thing that's like a treeview/gridview with nested scrollbars sized to suggest it should be huge, crammed into a tiny little space? Grim.
    - nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
      Do note that all that UI is crammed into a 978×722 pixel window; I would imagine it works far better on a decently sized 1280x1024 or larger screen. I bet you'd be pretty hard-pressed to get Photoshop or such to work well in that small of a space too...
ars 17y ago
You can almost do that now, by just arranging your pallets. But I like the tabs for images though - that's a big plus.
elblanco 17y ago
Wow. It's about time. Have no idea what the holdout was.
ori_b 17y ago
First thought: Well, that looks rather painful to use.
kierank 17y ago
Thanks for correcting that title.
NathanKP 17y ago
Finally the day I have been waiting for! I can't stand the multiple windows, especially on the Mac OS X version in which one initial click is required to focus the window and a second to click a button or begin using a tool.
- jpf 17y ago
  There is a fix for the unnecessary double click issue: http://darwingimp.sourceforge.net/guides/install_leopard/ http://darwingimp.sourceforge.net/guides/install_leopard/ (scroll to the bottom)
  - Flow 17y ago
    And the menu is is the wrong place. And Ctrl is used instead of Cmd. It's a weird app for us on Mac.
Janzert 17y ago
The follow up also has a short how to on getting and building the new version http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/10/gimp-single-window-install.html http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/10/gimp-single-window-instal...
firefoxman1 17y ago
Cool, but doesn't GIMPShop already do this?
- kentosi 17y ago
  The main purpose of GIMPShop was to adjust the GIMP hotkeys to work like Photoshop's. That's what it was when I used it years ago. It's gotten a long way since, and yes it does allow you to work in a single window (MDI) mode - but only in Windows. http://www.gimpshop.com/ http://www.gimpshop.com/
imd 17y ago
I'm glad people are being so critical. Back when I started using The GIMP (v1.x), when people (including me) said Photoshop (v4) had a superior interface, people rushed to The GIMP's defense. The GIMP has gotten more Photoshop-like since then, and no one's complained, so apparently the defenders were blind apologists. Not everything should be like Photoshop, but I think doing it Photoshop's way would be better than this way.
- jcl 17y ago
  From the minutes of a GIMP developer conference meeting not too long ago: The user scenarios would be written down in advance. These scenarios should not be changed afterwards because it would lead to too much discussion. The goal is to cut down all this discussion. The product vision is to be used as a filter. For example: If someone comes with the request that the UI of GIMP should be like Photoshop, we can simply state: We are not trying to be like Photoshop, because we have a different product vision. http://developer.gimp.org/gimpcon/2006/index.html http://developer.gimp.org/gimpcon/2006/index.html I think defining their software in terms of "not being Photoshop" hurts their software. Photoshop is free to add any features which they think will help users edit images, while the Gimp limits itself to the features that Photoshop has not already chosen.
antidaily 17y ago
"Bring out the gimp."
- kirubakaran 17y ago
  Looks like the Gimp is not sleeping.
yason 17y ago
I actually loved the floating windows: that's what window managers are for, right? However, since transitioning to StumpWM the multi-window approach just doesn't cut it. Now it's a trade-off between logging in with Metacity and doing gimpwork, or keeping StumpWM running and avoiding gimpwork. If Gimp 2.8 has this, then I can start spending more time with that peculiar but beloved graphics suite again.
axod 17y ago
Wow that looks brilliantly usable. Why did they resist this for so long?
antirez 17y ago
there is an hint for statups in this thing: to blindly copy from the "best on the market" is not a good idea.
- jcl 17y ago
  I take it you don't like this new development? It is perhaps the most requested GIMP feature. Are you saying startups shouldn't listen to user feedback?
  - antirez 17y ago
    No I mean, when the first version if gimp was created to copy photoshop was not a good idea. And actually is not natural at all to split an application into multiple windows. To just do the obvious (single window) was a better alternative even when they started :) but sometimes it's hard to follow your own ideas if you see that the absolute leader (photoshop) is doing something different.
cookiecaper 17y ago
Well this is a bummer. I quite like having multiple windows. I hope they haven't completely gutted the multi-window layout.
- jcl 17y ago
  From the blog post linked in the article: The news also revealed an interesting but previously rather anonymous group of people: multi-window zealots despising the idea of a single-window mode in their beloved multi-window application. I suspect they don't realize that single-window mode is going to be optional...
tocomment 17y ago
I used Gimp a few weeks ago to resize a picture .. I'm still finding Gimp windows on screen ... thanks folks, I'll be here all week!
zokier 17y ago
Is there MS Windows build of 2.8 GIMP floating somewhere? I only found 2.7 which apparently doesn't have single windows goodness.
tybris 17y ago
Awful, why didn't they do that 10 years earlier? I thought I just didn't understand the power of having dozens of tiny windows. Now I feel scammed.
spot 17y ago
I don't care how many windows there are, I just want cut and paste to work in a reasonably intuitive way. In the GIMP it does not.
TrevorJ 17y ago
This looks good. It's worth noting that on the mac at least, even PS can have a windowless UI. It's actually nice when using multiple monitors and a tablet. A single window won't make full use of 2 screens of differing vertical resolutions.

108 points by AjJi 17y ago

Anon84 17y ago

Amazing? Hardly!

agnokapathetic 17y ago

"First Pictures Of Single Window Gimp - It Looks Vaguely like Photoshop." FTFY.

anigbrowl 17y ago
Shoulda used a picture of all the dollar bills remaining after not buying Photoshop :) GIMP's pretty good for a free project, but using their own logo as the example picture makes it look like it's only good for editing sprites.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- jcl 17y ago
  That's a clever idea for another reason, too: Photoshop will not allow certain operations on pictures of money, highlighting a disadvantage of closed-source software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_Counterfeit_Deterrence_Group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_Counterfeit_Deterr...

SwellJoe 17y ago

Isn't it interesting how the many-windows paradigm has come and gone? Desktop software for the first ~15 years of personal computing was full screen, single "window" for any given task. And then, for the past fifteen years or so, we've been dealing with the increased complexity of many-windowed interfaces. Seems strange that nobody noticed that some of the changes that windowing systems brought were negative until a whole new generation of developers came along and reinvented the single window model.

niels_olson 17y ago
I'm not so sure multi-windowing is quite dead when it comes to drawing and CAD programs. From a practical perspective, the paradigm of being able to move your palettes around, and pick which ones are displayed, is rather valuable regardless of how big your display is.
- chancho 17y ago
  But having to position them manually is just tedium. Let me choose which palettes to display and which side of the window to display them on, and then let the application take care of the rest. If I'm running at fullscreen then I don't want anything covering up the document/image/model. Otherwise, I only want to have to move/resize one window.
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    This issue is solved fairly easily with a superior window manager. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Image:Screen-ohmega-tab-gnome-twopane.jpg http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Image:Screen-ohmega-tab-gnome...
    - monos 17y ago
      hm, my xmonad shows gimp with multi windows free floating. wich makes more sense for the current gimp.
      - yummyfajitas 17y ago
        By default gimp is floating. It's not hard to change the defaults. http://nathanhowell.net/2009/03/08/xmonad-and-the-gimp/ http://nathanhowell.net/2009/03/08/xmonad-and-the-gimp/
- buugs 17y ago
  I'm curious to what CAD programs you are using that are multi-windowing because the only one I can think of is ADAMS by MSC but that UI is a big pain in the ass.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

I can't stand single windows for graphics stuff. ideal is to have the image take up one whole monitor and all the pallets and tools take up another.

alex_c 17y ago
That's why it's going to be optional. I, for one, can't stand multi-window interfaces (after almost a year of using a Mac, I still find parts of the interface annoying).
- elblanco 17y ago
  The multi-window aspect of Macs makes them almost unusable IMHO. I can't conceive of a particular reason to have some completely unrelated program showing up in the same visual space as the one I'm currently working with.
  - bonaldi 17y ago
    What about related ones? If I'm designing a page, I might want my image browser in sight so I can choose and then drag and drop images. Or if I'm writing an article and it takes a lot of research, I'll want a web browser to share the screen equally with the word processor. The multi-window aspects of Macs makes them more usable imo, especially because of the deep support for drag-and-drop interoperation. In the physical world, I mix and match media as suits the task, and the Mac mimics that. I don't fill my desk up with a notepad, then hide it and take out a calculator, then hide it and set up my easel.
    - gloob 17y ago
      In the physical world, I mix and match media as suits the task, and the Mac mimics that. I don't fill my desk up with a notepad, then hide it and take out a calculator, then hide it and set up my easel. Rather than taking out/hiding away your various tools and implements in your desk, I believe the idiomatic Linux strategy is to have nine desks, each with a single tool on it.

jpcx01 17y ago

This? http://bit.ly/1Yl9Su http://bit.ly/1Yl9Su This looks amazing? Really? It looks fine... but maybe the linux dudes have standards lowered a bit?

ars 17y ago
No short urls here please - even for very long ones. The url is: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FJH0hYZmVtc/SsuTeVas_WI/AAAAAAAADlc/VkiIOWlsssM/s1600-h/gimp-single-window-mode-in-progress.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FJH0hYZmVtc/SsuTeVas_WI/AAAAAAAADl...
- nailer 17y ago
  Comment redacted, thought you were referring to the article itself, not your parent comment...
hughprime 17y ago
I assume "it looks AMAZING" is perfectly within the usual editorial standards of "omgbuntu", but wouldn't mind seeing a different headline here. How about "it looks REASONABLY GOOD" or "it looks ABOUT LIKE YOU MIGHT EXPECT"?
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  How about "it looks like a mess" or "it looks like every shareware image editor since the days of Windows 95" or "it looks like you crammed as many controls as you could fit on screen using a cross-platform windowing toolkit"? I can't say any of that, it's rude - but it's what I'm thinking. Look at the right hand side - count the scrollbars, the dropdowns, the counters. What's that hideous layer control thing that's like a treeview/gridview with nested scrollbars sized to suggest it should be huge, crammed into a tiny little space? Grim.
  - nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
    Do note that all that UI is crammed into a 978×722 pixel window; I would imagine it works far better on a decently sized 1280x1024 or larger screen. I bet you'd be pretty hard-pressed to get Photoshop or such to work well in that small of a space too...

ars 17y ago

You can almost do that now, by just arranging your pallets. But I like the tabs for images though - that's a big plus.

elblanco 17y ago

Wow. It's about time. Have no idea what the holdout was.

ori_b 17y ago

First thought: Well, that looks rather painful to use.

kierank 17y ago

Thanks for correcting that title.

NathanKP 17y ago

Finally the day I have been waiting for! I can't stand the multiple windows, especially on the Mac OS X version in which one initial click is required to focus the window and a second to click a button or begin using a tool.

jpf 17y ago
There is a fix for the unnecessary double click issue: http://darwingimp.sourceforge.net/guides/install_leopard/ http://darwingimp.sourceforge.net/guides/install_leopard/ (scroll to the bottom)
- Flow 17y ago
  And the menu is is the wrong place. And Ctrl is used instead of Cmd. It's a weird app for us on Mac.

Janzert 17y ago

The follow up also has a short how to on getting and building the new version http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/10/gimp-single-window-install.html http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/10/gimp-single-window-instal...

firefoxman1 17y ago

Cool, but doesn't GIMPShop already do this?

kentosi 17y ago
The main purpose of GIMPShop was to adjust the GIMP hotkeys to work like Photoshop's. That's what it was when I used it years ago. It's gotten a long way since, and yes it does allow you to work in a single window (MDI) mode - but only in Windows. http://www.gimpshop.com/ http://www.gimpshop.com/

imd 17y ago

I'm glad people are being so critical. Back when I started using The GIMP (v1.x), when people (including me) said Photoshop (v4) had a superior interface, people rushed to The GIMP's defense. The GIMP has gotten more Photoshop-like since then, and no one's complained, so apparently the defenders were blind apologists. Not everything should be like Photoshop, but I think doing it Photoshop's way would be better than this way.

jcl 17y ago
From the minutes of a GIMP developer conference meeting not too long ago: The user scenarios would be written down in advance. These scenarios should not be changed afterwards because it would lead to too much discussion. The goal is to cut down all this discussion. The product vision is to be used as a filter. For example: If someone comes with the request that the UI of GIMP should be like Photoshop, we can simply state: We are not trying to be like Photoshop, because we have a different product vision. http://developer.gimp.org/gimpcon/2006/index.html http://developer.gimp.org/gimpcon/2006/index.html I think defining their software in terms of "not being Photoshop" hurts their software. Photoshop is free to add any features which they think will help users edit images, while the Gimp limits itself to the features that Photoshop has not already chosen.

antidaily 17y ago

"Bring out the gimp."

kirubakaran 17y ago
Looks like the Gimp is not sleeping.

yason 17y ago

I actually loved the floating windows: that's what window managers are for, right? However, since transitioning to StumpWM the multi-window approach just doesn't cut it. Now it's a trade-off between logging in with Metacity and doing gimpwork, or keeping StumpWM running and avoiding gimpwork. If Gimp 2.8 has this, then I can start spending more time with that peculiar but beloved graphics suite again.

axod 17y ago

Wow that looks brilliantly usable. Why did they resist this for so long?

antirez 17y ago

there is an hint for statups in this thing: to blindly copy from the "best on the market" is not a good idea.

jcl 17y ago
I take it you don't like this new development? It is perhaps the most requested GIMP feature. Are you saying startups shouldn't listen to user feedback?
- antirez 17y ago
  No I mean, when the first version if gimp was created to copy photoshop was not a good idea. And actually is not natural at all to split an application into multiple windows. To just do the obvious (single window) was a better alternative even when they started :) but sometimes it's hard to follow your own ideas if you see that the absolute leader (photoshop) is doing something different.

cookiecaper 17y ago

Well this is a bummer. I quite like having multiple windows. I hope they haven't completely gutted the multi-window layout.

jcl 17y ago
From the blog post linked in the article: The news also revealed an interesting but previously rather anonymous group of people: multi-window zealots despising the idea of a single-window mode in their beloved multi-window application. I suspect they don't realize that single-window mode is going to be optional...

tocomment 17y ago

I used Gimp a few weeks ago to resize a picture .. I'm still finding Gimp windows on screen ... thanks folks, I'll be here all week!

zokier 17y ago

Is there MS Windows build of 2.8 GIMP floating somewhere? I only found 2.7 which apparently doesn't have single windows goodness.

tybris 17y ago

Awful, why didn't they do that 10 years earlier? I thought I just didn't understand the power of having dozens of tiny windows. Now I feel scammed.

spot 17y ago

I don't care how many windows there are, I just want cut and paste to work in a reasonably intuitive way. In the GIMP it does not.

TrevorJ 17y ago

This looks good. It's worth noting that on the mac at least, even PS can have a windowless UI. It's actually nice when using multiple monitors and a tablet. A single window won't make full use of 2 screens of differing vertical resolutions.