Text-Handling in GIMP
From GIMP GUI Redesign
Contents
Vision
Text handling in GIMP
- Text in GIMP is always part of the composition - (unless it is an annotation)
- There is no such thing as paging in gimp
- Text in gimp has form and symbolic meaning, but meta levels of information in text are not supported
Users get:
- Complete control over typography and the layout of text on the canvas
- unicode supported localisation of text tools
- text is always editable until users decides otherwise
- super-fast workflow, when they are experienced
Functionality
Internationalization
- full support of all Unicode content
- support for all OpenType features
- multiple writing systems in the same text-box
- right to left and top-down textflow
Corrections
- the text content is always accessible and editable
- all applied effects are kept
Quick plain text
- the full-functionality text-tool is not obligatory
- simple annotations are supported
- can be inserted in an easy way
Effects
- stroke text
- fill text
- all effects and filter can be applied on the text itself (see "Corrections")
Layout
- full control to the user on every level
- all this is done in the context of the overall work:
- the canvas
- the applied effects
Positioning
- freely positionable on the canvas
- text boxes of any shape
- (rectangular) box fixed or dynamic
- text overflow from box to box
- text along path
- transformation tools
- combinations of above functions
- ?grid (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_%28page_layout%29 )
Typography
- fine grained-control
- presets can be saved
- manual access (M) to open type (OT) features: Glyph palette
Character level
- Font family
- Font variant
- size
- Color
- Hinting
- Kerning (M+OT)
- faux bold+italics
- underline
- through-line
- baseline shift
- language
- ?glyph scaling (vertical and horizontal)
line and paragraph level
- leading (Line Spacing)
- tracking
- Indent
- justification
- inter-paragraph spacing
- text-flow
User scenarios
Photographer (Annotations)
(see Scenario 1a)
- open file
- apply changes
- add text information to image
- no effects, basic font+style+size
Creating Original Art
- create canvas
- add image parts
- brushwork
- alter images
- freely define text-box-shape (draw it)
- type text
- experiment with font-family/variant/size/color
- apply effects on all text elements
- apply overall effect (let text "interact" with other parts of the composition)
- transform text-box
- transform text (-> perspective, 3-D, along path)
- fine-tune text (make use of advanced typography)
- manually alter advanced typo: manual kerning, individual glyph replacement,…
- do further brushwork
- apply more effects
- change wording
Poster ("lot-of-text-scenario")
- create several text-boxes (e.g. info)
- define overflow direction
- paste text (formatted or plain)
- work on typography
- chose font family + variant
- chose size + color
- set alignment, justification, hyphenation
- use advanced open type features
- manually fine-tune text layout (kerning, tracking, glyph replacement)
- move, resize, reshape, reorder boxes
- new box (e.g. poster title)
- type text
- typography…
- transform text, along path, etc…
- heavy effects
- "connect" with image elements of poster
- enhance "out of one piece look" (overall effects, coloring)
- save/export/print
later
- return - load file
- change wording/correct text
- maybe change font (other computer)
- adjust typography
- save/export/print
Icon Design
- Open/hot link to vector image
- Polish & refine the icon
- add very small amount of text
- manually pick a glyph
- deform text
- apply pixel-based effects
- Review icon & make changes to vector image & edit text in GIMP. Go back to the 2nd bullet, and repeat.
- Save Icon