Procedure for Specifications

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This page describes a start of procedure for proposing requests for GIMP User Interactions. It is itself an early proposition and is likely to evolve soon.

Types of Requests

We can distinguish 2 types of requests: request for new features and requests for changes of existing features.

Discussion Media

You are invited to discuss any topic related to UI/UX on our mailing list and on IRC (#gimp on irc.gimp.org). Mailing list is the preferred place since it keeps traces of what was discussed.

A good proposition should describe use cases, user scenarios, analysis of existing UI…

Workgroups

When it has been decided that a topic should be worked on, it will be possible to open a workgroup wiki page, adding the "Workgroups" category allowing all workgroup pages to be listed: 

[[Category:Workgroups]]

This page can contain working data, researches, use cases, references…

Specifications

When it is time for writing a specification, a wiki page can be created, in the "Specifications" category: 

[[Category:Specifications]]

You should also add the "Specification" template at the top of the wiki page. The template currently has the following parameters:

  • status: could be one of proposed, rejected, accepted, work-in-progress, partially-implemented, implemented.
  • milestone: could be "future" or a GIMP version to come. Note that this is a "target" milestone and it does not mean that an approved spec will actually be released at the targetted release.
  • links: links to reference discussions (for instance the discussion in the mailing list).

For instance: 

{{Specification|status=work-in-progress|milestone=3.0}}

This template will help to track status and history of a specification.

TODO: the current Specification template is a crappy banner. I would welcome anyone who could create a proper infobox typical in WikiMedia projects. It seems to involve importing some modules, and therefore probably some admin rights on the wiki.

Note: a specification page should not be created unless it has been decided that a feature is desired. Nevertheless if you wish to propose something which did not go through the workgroup, you are welcome to create a subpage of your user page (for instance: User:Jehan/my_clever_spec, which should not belong to the "Specifications" category, for proposal purpose.