GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 776508
devices having their own associated tool and colors is user UNfriendly
Last modified: 2017-01-04 11:17:26 UTC
I am using a Wacom tablet along with a trackball. If I switch from the Wacom to the trackball, the tool and colors associated with the Wacom will change to that of the trackball. In other words, they do not share the selected tool and colors. Furthermore, my Wacom tablet also supports using one's finger as a mouse. However, this too will has it's own tool and colors associated with it. So, I can use my finger, the stylus, or the trackball, and each will have it's own tool and color set. To me, this violates "the principle of least surprise" as well as "keep it simple", and is user UNfriendly. I ask GIMP be changed so that the selected tool and colors remain unchanged irrespective of what device is being used. Or for an option in the preferences to make this behavior so. Thank you.
Hello, > Or for an option in the preferences to make this behavior so. There is such an option: "Preferences" > "Input Devices" > "Share tool and tool options between input devices". This said, I believe defaults can be improved, in particular for finger-related inputs, because now screen-tablets become very common and the expected interaction is quite different to what it was years ago. A few days ago, in an animation festival booth, I tested a Photoshop on a Wacom screen and the fingers would never draw. Their interaction was only used for panning/rotating/zooming… That makes it much more useful than having finger input disabled when drawing. Though this would likely be more of something we'd deal during the GTK+3 port, I think.
I don't see such any such option under Preferences > Input Devices see: https://s23.postimg.org/awyf6ijbf/2016_12_27_162123_753x656_scrot.png
Oh. That's probably one of the new feature in the dev version, now that I think of it. Not in 2.8. Sorry for the false joy.
This "Share tool and tool options" is in GIMP 2.9 as the fix to this bug report: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=667862
Thanks Elle. That's what I thought. This said, this is only a workaround IMO and can still definitely be improved. If we could get our hands on a Cintiq tablet-screen, this kind of interaction improvement would definitely get into my high priority list. Unfortunately we have no such material yet here.
Bug 701870 already exists for ignoring devices, and I extended it for more finer settings to make it a non-drawable input. This together with bug 667862 which brought the "Share tool and tool options" will deal with better interactions with various input devices. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 701870 ***