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Bug 137761 - shortcut to load tool settings
shortcut to load tool settings
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: GIMP
Classification: Other
Component: User Interface
git master
Other All
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: GIMP Bugs
GIMP Bugs
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2004-03-20 12:02 UTC by Martin Renold
Modified: 2018-05-24 10:59 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Martin Renold 2004-03-20 12:02:51 UTC
What I want: select with the left hand with one keystroke between
predefined airbrush settings.
What is there: you can save/load predefined airbrush settings from a menu
and even bind a dynamic key to an entry, but does not work.
(On the other hand with a wacom tablet I have different tools, they would
remember the settings the way I want them too.)
Comment 1 Sven Neumann 2004-03-20 12:09:40 UTC
Tool presets are on our list of things to implement/improve. The
current functionality is rather basic and there's certainly room for
improvement. Unless there's a bug-report on this already, we could
perhaps rephrase this one to be a more general request.
Comment 2 Valerie Van Kerckhove 2007-04-10 08:01:02 UTC
I'm a big fan of Gimp's configurable shortcut system, so here are a few possible ideas. I haven't tried Gimp 2.3 by the way, so I apologize if some of the ideas are already being worked on.

Recently while checking Inkscape, I misunderstood its shortcut system at first and ironically thought, back then, that "it was a great idea." Maybe it could still be useful for Gimp though.

The idea is to have the shortcuts behave in two ways:
- the "global" setting
- and the "tool-specific" setting, that you can access by pressing a button (at first I thought Inkscape did this with the "space" button, it turned out "selector" just meant "selection tool," not "select different mode...")

The idea is that once you've selected a tool, you can use space or some other button to go into tool-specific shortcut settings, separate from global ones. A sign would appear somewhere to warn you that you're in tool-shortcuts mode. You press the same button to return to a global mode.

A text indication will also appear at the bottom of the active window to tell you what mode the tool is on, with perhaps extra information on what you can do in that mode (provided you can find the space down there...). 

I can see immediate applications for this, especially for selection tools and for path tools, as they each have multiple modes:
- with the rectangle or whatever else modes, for example, you could press F1 to access normal mode, F2 for the addition mode, F3 for the exclusion mode and F4 for the intersect mode. This frees up modifier keys such as Shift, Alt etc for shape functions. No more wrestling over whether "shift" should be used for addition mode or for making the selection square!
- with the path tools, you'd have Design, Edit and Move modes. F1, F2, F3.
- there would be many options for the painting tools as well.
- it could even give you the option to select specific settings that you save in one of the F# buttons.

It could speed things up: to toggle between functions, you don't even need to keep certain keys pressed down!

There's the question of whether such temporary settings apply solely to the F# buttons (in which case there might be no need for dual settings in the first place: just move "help" to F12 and you're done, with F1 to F10 reserved for tool modes). 

For the shortcut-obsessed though, the option of assigning different paintbrush settings and the likes to letter shortcuts might be appealing (n for normal, m for multiply, s for screen..., then additional shortcuts for options in-between...). Maybe not.

In any case, it would probably be too early to implement something like this. I don't know much about programming, but tool-specific settings would probably be more easy to program once GEGL is in place? You could ideally access means to modifiy tool-specific shortcuts directly from the Tool Options box, where you can create custom settings as well, rather than from "preferences."

Of course, all this might seem confusing to some at first. That said, my personal experience is that people either take the time to learn shortcuts, or don't use them at all... and an idea like this would certainly free up programmers of part of the headaches of deciding how to assign the scarce modifier keys.

If you do consider such an idea, here's another one: make layers, channels and such into "pseudo-tools" with their own shortcut sub-sets. Meaning you can press l or the likes to conjure up current layer information in the toolbox, then use other shortcuts to modify layer information such as mode, transparency, "toggle visibility of other layers" (if you want to see the layer by itself), etc.

Of course, if such ideas have been considered before and deemed unpractical, then nevermind. 
Comment 3 Sven Neumann 2007-04-10 14:39:15 UTC
Valerie, thanks for your input. But please do not use Bugzilla for this but bring up your suggestions on the gimp-developer mailing-list. You will reach a larger audience there and when we have discussed your ideas, we might decide to open a bug report for it.
Comment 4 GNOME Infrastructure Team 2018-05-24 10:59:57 UTC
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/issues/66.