GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 82648
Option for new users to 'take a tour' and show new features
Last modified: 2005-03-23 09:48:17 UTC
Would be very nice to have the option to 'Take the Tour' after GIMP startup. New users could select this option and sit back and watch all the powerful things GIMP can do for them. Another nice feature along those same lines would be a 'Show new features' option that will show the main new features since the previous release. I guess for both options we would need a powerful macro recorder. PS: this suggestion was made by a user to whom I showed GIMP for the first time.
This is an ambitious goal. It would indeed require a script recorder (as I mentioned some days ago on the gimp-developer mailing list, I started working on one but unfortunately I lost almost everything in a hard disk crash so I have to re-do it again) but it would also require some way to open the menus and dialog boxes automatically so that the user can see where each feature is located. The interactive playback will be much harder to implement than the script recorder (see bug #51937) because the script recorder does not care about where each action is located in the menus: it only records the names and parameters of the PDB calls, but it has no idea of how the user has called each function. Some actions can be triggered from several places in the menus: for example, there are at least three different ways to add an alpha channel to an image, although they all generate the same PDB call. Once the issue of mapping the PDB calls to menu entries is solved, it would still be necessary to implement a mechanism to open the menus or dialog boxes and navigate them at an appropriate speed so that the user can see what is happening. During that time, the user actions should be disabled so that it is not possible to mess up everything by clicking at the wrong time while the demo is being played. This would require some extensive changes in the user interface code. And then there is also the issue of the plug-ins, especially if it is necessary to display their dialog boxes (which are only displayed in interactive mode). So it is possible to implement all these things, but this is certainly not easy. It will also require some careful planning because some of the features have to be designed in the right way so that they do not interfere with other parts of the code. Volunteers are welcome...
Just for the records: GERD can playback a recorded GIMP-Session. This works pretty good. http://www.gtk.org/~timj/gerd/
I don't think this bug depends on #51937. We don't need a script recorder to create a tour of The GIMP. The event recorder GERD that Simon already mentioned should be sufficient.
OK, I removed the dependency on bug #51937. I didn't know about GERD and it looks like it can solve this problem to a large extent. It would probably be sufficient for someone to write a script that would create a virtual user directory (with a pre-defined gimprc and other settings that are known to work) and then run GERD with a suitable demo file. Maybe GERD could be improved by adding the ability to open its own window and display some comments about what is happening. So this bug could be closed if someone takes the time to: - write the wrapper script that installs a gimprc file and other stuff - record a nice set of demos - improve GERD or write a separate application that uses the same timings as GERD and displays some messages to the user (describing the new features and so on...)
This is IMO too much of an ambitious goal. There are quite a few technical difficulties to solve and someone would have to create and maintain the content. Also i18n and l10n hasn't been considered at all yet. All that effort would better be put into improving the user manual. Closing as WONTFIX. If someone really wants to start to work on this feature, feel free to propose it again.