Re: [Gimp-developer] 15 lines

[Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre prokoudine gmail com>]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 2:30 PM, scl <scl gplus gmail com> wrote:

> To come a bit closer to your needs: the guides can also be set to 'Rule of
> thirds', 'Rule of fifths' or 'Golden sections'. Beside having less lines
> they provide established artistic guidelines for image composition.
> Did you also notice the little 'Save' button on the bottom of the Transform
> tools' dialogs? (If not, click the little low triangle in the upper right
> corner of the dock, then 'Show Button Bar'). Then in the Guides list-box
> select 'Number of lines', enter 3  and press the Save button. In the next
> pop-up dialog enter for instance 'Rotate, 3 lines guides'. This will save
> the Transform tools setting as a preset. The next time you can load your
> preset by clicking the Load button in the Button Bar.

Choosing a preset is not much (if any) faster than hovering the
combobox and scrolling the mouse wheel. And both do not exactly
provide a nice user experience.

I mean, c'mon, as far as I can tell, the only reason we even have this
by default is the corrective mode of the rotation tool which is as far
from being discoverable as it can get. I can't remember anyone saying
"Oh, figured out how to fix horizon all by myself, and it's the
corrective mode".

But if I could count on my fingers every time a user said "WTF, how do
I make horizon horizontal without using a combination of measure tool,
my brain for remembering the angle, and the rotation tool?", I'd be on
display in a museum of natural history.

So I would suggest to revisit straightening horizon use case and
limiting the amount of lines in transformation tools to a minimum.
Personally I would even switch them off by default or go for the
"Center" as defaults, but that's me.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org