GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 357436
Making read only brushes editable through the Brush Editor
Last modified: 2006-09-24 19:29:00 UTC
When the standard brushes that comes with the GIMP is converted to VBR brushes, they would be far more useful if they were editable even though they are read only. In fact, they *are* already now editable if you assign keyboard shortcuts to increase/decrease radius etc, even though editing is disabled if you try to use the Brush Editor. Because consistency is important, it would make sense to either allow changing brush properties for read only brushes in the Brush Editor, or disabling the changing the properties through keyboard shortcuts. Since the VBR brushes would be pretty pointless if changing their size was not allowed, I suggest the former solution. From a usability point of view, I think people realize that if they edit a read only brush, the changes will not be saved when they exit the gimp. I don't think forcing the user to make a new brush/copy system brushes to be able to change brush properties is desirable. This of course assumes that the GIMP not will copy the VBR brushes to the user directory (which I don't think GIMP should). Other information:
Well, we have discussed this before, and my opinion is that the brushes supplied with GIMP should *not* be editable -- it would create a host of problems, including the fact that numerous scripts rely on those brushes. Note that it only takes a single click on "duplicate brush" in the editor to turn a read-only brush into an editable brush. ("I think people realize that if they edit a read only brush, the changes will not be saved when they exit the gimp." <-- A very dubious assumption.) What we really need, above all, is selective display of data items like brushes, so that users can control which items are shown in the brush selector. The brushes supplied with GIMP are intended in part to serve as a fixed baseline we can rely on, and in part as useful tools, and in part as examples, but there is no reason why a user should always need to work with the entire available set.
I agree. Apart from that, it's simply a bug that the actions allowed to edit all brushes, regardless of writability of the brush file. Fixed this in CVS: 2006-09-24 Michael Natterer <mitch@gimp.org> * app/actions/context-commands.c: don't allow editing of read-only generated brushes. Addresses bug #357436.
> it would create a host of > problems, including the fact that numerous scripts rely on those brushes. Ah yes, I didn't think of that, it makes sense to totally ban editing.