GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 791797
on-canvas dialog not useful if the viewport is smaller than the canvas
Last modified: 2017-12-22 01:21:51 UTC
When using the rotate tool, if I zoom in on the part of the image I'm rotating, there seems at first to be no way to rotate to a fixed angle the way I could in earlier GIMP versions. Turns out the angle information that used to be in a dialog is now in an on-canvas dialog that's fixed at a spot on the canvas that's way outside the viewport, so it's not visible. The consensus on #gimp was that this was a known bug and a general problem with tools that use an on-canvas dialog, but I couldn't find anything related, so I'm filing this. Maybe the on-canvas dialog should be fixed to the viewport rather than the full canvas. Or the info could be in tool options rather than a dialog -- it seems fairly similar to info that other tools show in tool options.
There was a similar issue, but it was actually about handles of the unified transform tool (bug 720505). In any case, I personally believe the on-canvas GUI have a lot of issues. It may indeed be out of the viewport, but also very often it is in an annoying place and bothers you to see your image appropriately. So you end up having to detach it to move the dialog somewhere else. Basically even though it's shiny and all modern-looking, the experience is quite poor with this widget IMO. Also currently it has a few annoying bugs (i.e. bug 791689), and some others which may even in some cases lead to crashes of GIMP (bug 791447). Maybe it may be worth thinking of disabling the on-canvas dialogs, as Massimo suggests on bug 791447, comment 9. They are fancy but have just so many issues both stability and usability-wise.
> Turns out the angle information that used to be in a dialog is now in an on-canvas dialog that's fixed at a spot on the canvas that's way outside the viewport, so it's not visible. > […] > Maybe the on-canvas dialog should be fixed to the viewport rather than the full canvas. This being said, I just tested, and here the on-canvas dialog seems to be fixed on the viewport (top-right), not the canvas. However I zoom, the on-canvas dialog is always visible here (for any tool with such dialog, rotation included; only such dialog I can find where the on-canvas GUI is fixed on canvas is the text tool, cf. bug 675409).
> Turns out the angle information that used to be in a dialog is now in an on-canvas dialog that's fixed at a spot on the canvas that's way outside the viewport, so it's not visible. One solution that could be a more usable approach is: 1) To show current rotation angle as a small on-screen display tooltip that follows the mouse pointer at a reasonable offset. That way you always see the numeric _feedback_ right where you are looking at. no need to travel all across the screen to look at the status bar. 2) To move numeric _input_ to the tool's setting dock where settings are expected to be anyway.
What exactly is this bug about? One month everybody lobbies against popup dialogs, the next month on-canvas is evil? And now a thing that follows the mouse? Guys... I would say the initial premise of this bug is just wrong, so NOTABUG?
I am not sure about this specific bug, as I said in comment 2. But yes, on-canvas dialogs are definitely evil. I don't know about popup dialogs, but compared to on-canvas, they are mostly ok.
I see that now the dialog attaches to the viewport, not the canvas, and can be detached. That helps a lot. (I reported this based on a build from a few weeks ago, and when I checked on IRC everybody else also had similarly old builds.) On lobbying against popup dialogs: I don't think anyone liked the popups. But why can't that information go in tool options? The rotate tool has an almost blank tool options, and the information presented in the dialog seems very similar in nature to the information presented in the crop tool's options.
> I see that now the dialog attaches to the viewport, not the canvas, and can be detached. That helps a lot. (I reported this based on a build from a few weeks ago, and when I checked on IRC everybody else also had similarly old builds.) Ok. Then I close this report as obsolete. > On lobbying against popup dialogs: I don't think anyone liked the popups. But why can't that information go in tool options? The rotate tool has an almost blank tool options, and the information presented in the dialog seems very similar in nature to the information presented in the crop tool's options. I agree with you. Let's continue the discussion on IRC/Mailing list/bug 791859.