Re: new rotate wish

On 01/06 12:15 , Rob wrote:
> On Tuesday 06 January 2004 11:50, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:
> > - if you're not a knowlegeable user; you edit files by
> > choosing to edit them in GIMP, via a menu from gqview.
> 
> And then say "This sucks, I could rotate pictures with one click 
> in ACDsee/Thumbsplus/whatever.  This takes forever, loading this 
> 'gimp' every time.  Give me back my Windows."

so write a lightweight tool that just rotates images. put that on the
image-editing menu instead of gimp. (I'm serious).

of course then users will say "can you make it crop images too?", "can you
make it adjust the gamma too?", "can you make it automatically take out
red-eye too?"... and all of a sudden you're competing with GIMP.

pain and madness lie that way.

> I know, because I'm the one they say it to.  

unless you explain to them the best way to do things, and why it is the best
way to do things; they're going to keep on complaining no matter what you
do. 

for that matter, they're going to complain anyway. it's the nature of end-users.
Design your environment to make life easy for advanced users, and if done
properly, it should fall out naturally that low-end users will be able to
use it as well.

believe it or not, advanced users enjoy short menu paths, sensibly-organized
menus, and buttons or other types of quick links to commonly-used items,
just as much as new users do. I believe there are some reasonably universal
truths in UI design; following them will make most people happy, no matter
their knowlege level. :)

> Further, this particular option, usually implemented as a 
> lossless JPEG rotate in Windows image managers, is not actually 
> available in any Linux image editor I'm aware of: you have to go 
> through a recompression step just to rotate your image if the 
> user is to do things the (current) "Unix way".

I didn't even know that lossless JPEG rotation was possible. Like I said
tho; write a tool. Doesn't have to be much other than a window with the
image, and a menu that appears when you right-click on the image (or buttons
along the top) that lets you select how you want to flip or rotate the
image.

> I know, I know, this is Unix software, not Windows software.  
> It's just that most of the people who aren't just typing "display 
> imagename" in the first place are not anoraks and expect a 
> better user experience than that.  

I don't use 'display' because it doesn't scale well to
viewing/deleting/sorting hundreds of images. that's what gqview is for. I
virtually *never* edit the images I look at; so I don't see why an
image-management tool needs the functionality to do so. Other tools do it
better already; why duplicate the code and the effort?

> I believe that anyone who really objects to a "Rotate" menu item 
> being present because it diminishes the purity of the unix 
> experience is probably also enough of a nerd to know how to 
> patch it out of his copy of gqview. ;)

I don't object to it on the basis of purity; I object to it on the basis
that I'd rather our fine developer spend his time doing more constructive
things than duplicating functionality and adding room for bugs. :)

Mind you, it's his time; so if he wants to do it, I can't stop him. :)

Carl Soderstrom.
-- 
Systems Administrator
Real-Time Enterprises
www.real-time.com


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