GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 119812
Wish: Remake the interface as an MDI
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Please, please, please redesign the window system of GIMP to be an MDI window system like Photoshop uses, or at least give the user the option when setting it up. It's so very irritating to keep track of a multitude of tiny windows scattered all over the place. When I use the GIMP, I always have to assign it to it's own virtual desktop so that the windows will not get mixed up with whatever else I use. But even that doesn't help when I have lots of images up at once. As I often use the GIMP for animations of various kinds, even film clips, having literarely hundreds of windows up at once gets very, very, very irritating. If it was all enclosed in one window, all I had to manage would be that one window, so I could move it about, minimize and maximize and do whatever I want without fuss. Besides, other people I've asked about it would choose to pay for and use Photoshop rather than use the GIMP, mostly because the window management is so lousy. The GIMP could also learn from Photoshop's layer management, and various other things in Photoshop. Basicly, do it like Photoshop and it will be great. On the plus side, though, I'd like to point out that things like animations were much easier to do in the GIMP. To export/import a gif animation from/to a layered image is ingenious, and something not even Photoshop handles. And also that the GIMP can do rudimentary video editing is something Photoshop can't handle without external applications :) Although I was surprised to see that it didn't have support for MNG files (yet?)
Don't worry, the MDI option will eventually be available in the GIMP. I am planning to work on this, but it will take a while for me to have enough spare time to implement it. Anyway, this has already been requested in bug #7379, so I will mark this one as a duplicate. If you want to track the status of that bug report, feel free to add your e-mail address in its Cc: list. Regarding your other comments, I don't think that the GIMP should do everything like Photoshop, but you will find several bug reports about implementing layer groups and other nice features. As for MNG, this is available (save only) in the development version of the GIMP. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 7379 ***
The 1.3 user interface doesn't necessarily have lots of tiny windows. A typical setup uses the ability to dock windows and only has like two or three toplevel windows. IMHO this problem is FIXED and as I stated in #7379 already, any attempt to move everything into a single toplevel window is a regression and should be avoided.
Common Sven, you cannot be serious: if you have lots of small image windows (such as when you are editing icons), you have lots of windows on your screen, in addition to the docks. Other programs such as Photoshop do not have this problem because they use MDI correctly. This is certainly not a regression: this would be an improvement for most users. Those who prefer to keep multiple top-level windows can keep on using that (I would probably be one of them), but we should try to offer the MDI option as soon as possible because the way this is done in 1.3 is an improvement but it only solves a part of the problem.
s/Common/Come on/ ;-)
I am completely serious here. The WiW approach is bad and must be avoided. The obvious approach to the problem of many image windows is to allow image windows to be docked using a notebook. Or of course to use a reasonable WM that groups the windows for you...
A notebook and dockable image windows will not solve the problem because the whole point of having a WiW interface with multiple child windows is that you can have them side-by-side or stack them or tile them to be able to work on several images at the same time. So that will not work. Changing the WM is not an option either (this is the old argument: "your window manager sucks, get another one"). Most users do not use the GIMP every day as their main application: this is just another tool that helps them to get their job done. You cannot require all users to reconfigure their whole environment for a single application. Besides, there is also the issue of training, especially for Windows users or for those who come from Photoshop and are expecting a WiW MDI interface. If you find a solution that is better than WiW MDI, does not require a new WM on any OS, allows the user to work on multiple images at the same time, reduces the number of top-level windows, and works in a way that is similar to other applications on the same platform (in order to reduce the re-training effort) then I would be happy to use that. But for the moment, the WiW MDI model seems to be the best compromise even if it has its own flaws.
It's the WM's job and we don't have the resources to work around stupid window managers. It's not our job, why should we waste developer resources on it? We also don't provide any workarounds for missing features in the operating system or the lack of mouse buttons or 8-bit displays or ... We let the underlying framework do it and I don't see why we should handle it differently here especially since there are working solutions available.
Well, it looks like the "working solutions" are the minority, alas. And even those who use a "good" WM are still not happy with it and would prefer to have a menu bar on top (not in every image window), a status bar at the bottom, some easy ways to keep all GIMP windows together, etc. I am a diehard UNIX user who has always worked with a decent window manager (multiple workspaces, focus-follows-mouse, etc.) but I do understand the frustration of those who have problems with the current GIMP user interface (both 1.2.x and 1.3.x). Anwyay, it looks like we could argue about this forever. If I am the only developer who is prepared to waste his resources on this, then so be it. I just hope that the changes, once commited, will provide positive user feedback that should convince you that it was not such a bad solution after all. ;-)
The issue is much deeper than simply _wanting_ an MDI interface. The concept of an MDI interface is quite forgein to the Window Manager/X/Client split in the Unix world. Essentially, the problem is that since clients (like the GIMP) are deliberatly kept in the dark about the details of the window manager (note that this is a deliberate abstraction in the X api's) there is no way to make the internal MDI window manager behave like the normal window manager. For the unix world it really would be a painful, confusing, and unwise hack. This is, I think, probably Sven's deeper reasoning for considering this idea stupid. this says nothing, however, for the Windows port, for which it _might_ work better to have an mdi interface (this depends on how well gtk would let us do this). There is a reason that there exists NO apps with an mdi interface on unix.
Yes, I am fully aware of the problems related to implementing MDI on UNIX. I have quite some experience with the interactions between WMs and apps, the ICCCM, etc. But it is simply a fact that some UNIX users are requesting an MDI option, not only the Windows users. See also the comments in bug #7379 (especially the one mentioning that the container widget should not even try to look the same as the WM decorations). Regarding the applications using MDI interfaces on UNIX, you have probably never used SunONE Studio, Eclipse, StarOffice, Photoshop... ;-)
I used Maple with WIW-Style MDI and it had some kind of Motif Window Manager inside. Click to focus (I prefer sloppyfocus), active windows were marked green (I used blue outside). It simply was horrible. I don't know about the other programs, but Eclipse uses a "Tabbed" MDI interface for the files that are part of a project and I am unaware of a way to make two files visible side-by-side. The other "windows" use a fixed tiled layout. This is not really a WIW-MDI. I highly doubt that WIW-MDI can be implemented in a non-intrusive manner.
The changes need to be discussed beforehand. Please don't simply commit something to convince people.
hmm, if want you want is a tabbed interface ala eclipse (which I use at work all the time and is very much not the same as MDI), I suspect that this is not only possible, but probably rather easy considering that the gimp dockable interface already exists. It my be as easy as allowing several images to be tabbed through in the same window and allowing dockables to be put in that same window. I find this idea both much more achievable, appealing and possible even desirable. Incidentally, StarOffice did have an MDI sytle that sucked a lot of ass, (for precisely the reasons described above and mostly 'cause I couldn't turn it off) and has turned that feature off by default (it may still have it, I wouldn't know, I never looked for it).