Work in progress

From GIMP GUI Redesign
Revision as of 12:11, 18 May 2012 by Foser (talk) (add reoccuring tool options)
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Tool Options redesign

Vision

Tools in GIMP enable hands-on manipulation of the compostion, direct on the canvas.

The tool options enable the fine and precise configurations that make the tool fit the job.

Configuring tool parameters can happen anywhere from almost continuously during a work session - to once in a user's lifetime.

Changing tool set-ups will never break user’s workflows.

Tool Option widgets

All UI elements are built from a few basic UI building blocks called widgets. A list with images of all current available GTK+ 2 widgets can be found at [1] and their respective GTK+ 3 counterparts at [2]. Since GIMP has special needs it also has quite a few widgets of it's own, a number of them (the external accessible ones) can be found at [3]. GIMP also has a number of additional internally used widgets, quite a few just extend basic GTK+ widgets for a specific need, without altering the visual look and feel. However, there are also completely new widgets for specific needs like those used for pressure curves or the gimpspinscale, a mix of a spin and scale button that is now used by a lot of tool options. A third category are meta widgets that mix together a few basic widgets in a certain fashion for a particular purpose, an example is the gimpscaleentry which consists of a label, scale slider and spinbutton (look at Tools->Color Tools->Brightness-Contrast menu).

An exhaustive list of widgets is unneeded as most tool options only use a basic subset of aforementioned widgets, the following table is a list of those common widgets used in tool options and their GIMP counterparts if applicable.

List of widgets used by GIMP tools
GTK+ GIMP
GtkLabel
GtkComboBox Gimp{Int,Unit,Sttring,ColorProfile,Enum}ComboBox
GtkButton Gimp{,Chain,Pick,Color}Button
GtkSpinButton
GimpSpinScale
GtkExpander
GtkEntry
GtkToggleButton
GtkScale
GtkRadioButton
GtkCheckButton
GimpFrame

Currently used

GtkLabel

Tkr GtkLabel.png

Widget to display small to medium amount of text.

  • can be selectable
  • can be ellipsized

GtkComboBox

Tkr GtkComboBox.png

Widget used to choose from a list of items

  • can have textentry
  • relevant GIMP specific subclasses
    • GimpUnitComboBox
      a convience combobox for measurement units

GtkButton

Tkr GtkButton.png

Widget that creates a signal when clicked on.

  • can have image and/or text
  • relevant GIMP specific subclasses
    • GimpButton
      adds click modifier keys
    • GimpChainButton
      button for (un)chain action used in conjunction with other widgets

GtkToggleButton

Similar to GtkButton, but retains state.

GtkSpinButton

Tkr GtkSpinButton.png

Widget to retrieve number from user.

GtkEntry

Tkr GtkEntry.png

Widget for single line keyboard entry.

  • relevant GIMP specific subclass
    • GimpNumberPair
      entry widget for ratios

GtkScale

Tkr GtkScale.png

Slider widget to select value from a range.

GtkRadioButton

Tkr GtkRadioButton.png

Widget to select one from a multiplechoice options list.

  • In tool options sometimes used to hide widgets like a GtkExpander

GtkCheckButton

Tkr GtkCheckButton.png

Discrete toggle button.

GtkExpander

Tkr GtkExpander.png
Tkr GtkExpander closed.png

Widget to show or hide a widget container.

GimpSpinScale

Tkr GimpSpinScale.png

A mixture of scale and spin button in one.

GimpFrame

Tkr GimpFrame.png

GNOME HIG compliant frame [4].

Reoccuring tool options

Some sets of widgets reoccur several times in the different tool option menus. It might be practical to keep these in mind when redesigning. The most common of these sets are listed below.


Tkr meta selectmode.png

Mode selection for selection tools.


Tkr meta selectoptions.png

A set of options for selection tools.


Tkr meta paintmode.png

Mode selection for paint tools.


Tkr meta brush.png

Brush selection for paint tools.


Tkr meta dynamics.png

Dynamics selection for paint tools.

previously…