GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 122519
No way to disable per tool brush selection (also brush and pattern)
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
I find myself constantly annoyd by the fact that brush selection is per tool. There should be a preference to disable this.
Me too. But it's probably best that we get used to it - it is really useful sometimes. That said, I think that changing the brush in the "active brush" dock (as opposed to in the tool options) should perhaps change the brush everywhere. That's the behaviour I expected, at least. Cheers, Dave.
There are some inconsistencies in the user interface, and we should try to solve them. There should be at least some visual hints telling the user what is global and what changes when you switch tools. In gimp-1.2, the current fg and bg color, brush, pattern and gradient were displayed in the toolbox. They were global. Other options were only shown in the "tool options" dialog box and therefore it made sense to consider them as being per-tool options. In gimp-1.3, the interface is very confusing: the fg and bg color are still global, but the brush, pattern and gradient are now per-tool options. The confusion would probably be reduced if the selectors were removed from the toolbox, but then I think that we would have lost some usability: I do not like to be forced to change the brush in all tools every time I switch tools. This does not only apply to the brushes, but also to the patterns and gradients: when I paint with a gradient and then decide to try the airbrush instead of the normal brush, I usually have to re-select the gradient. This also happens with the patterns, when I switch between the bucket fill and clone tool. In fact, the changes to the pattern are probably the most confusing part of gimp-1.3: most tools do not affect it, but some of them do (fill and clone, but not blend, for some strange reason). Try to click on all tools and see how the current pattern changes or does not change.
Please ignore the brush/pattern/gradient indicators in the toolbox. Let's assume they are non-existant...
This seems to me like serious usability problem. I think it should be at least partially resolved in 2.0.
Of course it needs to be resolved before 2.0 and we know that. I don't think that we should introduce global paint options again but the UI needs to be made consistent.
How about having pattern/fg/bg default to the last selected pattern/fg/bg in the case where the tool context isn't yet initialised? That way, if I want to paint in a leapordskin pattern, and then I want to do some airbrushing with the same pattern, it's still selected and I don't have to go hunting in the tool options. If I then switch the airbrush pattern, and go back to the paintbrush, the paintbrush pattern would still be the leapordskin. How difficult would this be to do? Cheers, Dave.
That would be very difficult to implement, would need lots of code and break the GimpContext paradigms. Totally trivial would be the addition of [ ] Global Brush [ ] Global Pattern ... toggle buttons to the prefs dialog.
I like Mitch's proposal. I don't think that Dave's proposal would solve the whole problem anyway. In the original report, Ville mentioned the problems of brushes specifically. Several times, I found myself changing the current brush while a selection tool was active, then switching to the paintbrush and having to re-select the brush again. I would prefer to have a global setting for the brush, pattern, gradient and other settings. Alternatively, the brush selection tab could be rendered inactive (grayed out) while a selection tool is active (stroking a selection would always use the paintbrush context). This would at least reduce the chances of wasting time selecting things for the wrong tool.
Cool. Trivial is good. I vote we do that then (I also vote for having them on by default). Dave.
Raphael, do you want to take care of this, if you have the time? It would be nice to get it into the next release. Dave.
Fixed in CVS: 2004-03-04 Michael Natterer <mitch@gimp.org> * app/config/gimpcoreconfig.[ch] * app/config/gimprc-blurbs.h: added boolean properties "global-brush", "global-pattern" etc. * app/gui/preferences-dialog.c: added GUI for them to the "Tool Options" page. * app/tools/tool_manager.c (tool_manager_tool_changed): honor the new prefs options when copying the new tool's properties. Fixed bug #122519.