Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica) [LWN.net]

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 6, 2010 8:45 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

So is ION3 a "Bad" WM or a "tiling" one? :-)

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 8, 2010 0:01 UTC (Mon) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link]

ION and its ilk are ridiculously bad window managers that harken back to the very first primitive attempts to make graphical interfaces. I have no idea why they are so popular with a particular extreme minority of Linux geeks (there does seem to be an odd intersection between Lisp fans and tiling WM fans, though).

I use fluxbox, because it supports tabbing windows, fine granularity in managing the z-index of windows, and excellent support for both mouse and keyboard-controlled window management.

I can not understand why these innovations have never made it into GNOME or KDE (let alone OSX and Windows). They make multi-window interfaces like Gimp a dream to use, and are a natural evolution in the capabilities of window managers from what we had in the 90s, when mainstream WM development stopped.

My use of Fluxbox isn't some weird geek asceticism. It's because Fluxbox has *more* useful features for me than the more mainstream systems. I've tried to switch to GNOME a few times and have gone back in frustration at its primitive window management.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 8, 2010 1:16 UTC (Mon) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]

> ION and its ilk are ridiculously bad window managers that harken back to the very first primitive attempts to make graphical interfaces. I have no idea why they are so popular with a particular extreme minority of Linux geeks

I agree that there's this bizarre minimalist asceticism to most of the tiling window managers, but tiling is still an awesome UI paradigm. Basically it means that your windows are always arranged in a useful way, *and* you get excellent keyboard control over laying them out and selecting them. The keyboard sucks for pointing and placing objects on an arbitrary 2d plane, but it's excellent for saying "over two and up one", etc.

On the other hand, I have no idea why people like floating, tabbed windows. It's nice for web browsers, where part of the UI paradigm is to be constantly opening/closing related windows, but otherwise...

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 8, 2010 3:06 UTC (Mon) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link]

Two examples:

In The Gimp, tab the toolbar and the layers window together. Select a tool, hit super-tab (my fluxbox sequence to rotate a tab group) and choose the layer from the layers window. Then hit super-w to flip from the tools/layers tab group to the image window. Do your edits and hit super-w again to flip back to t/l tab group and select another layer, etc.

Tweaking webpage layout, tab Firefox and Emacs together. Open the templates and CSS files in Emacs. Open a terminal in another window in case you have to restart apache, check logs, etc. Now you can edit in emacs, hit super-tab to flip to fluxbox, and C-r to see the change. You can ignore the third window unless you need it, and when you do, hit super-w to get it.

Tab groups are an incredibly powerful tool, and once I grew accustomed to them, I found it very clunky to use anything else.

The trend in GNOME is to start adding tabs to every application, to make up for the fact that they're missing from the window manager. Now you can use tabs in the terminal application, for example.

But I've been tabbing terminals together for years. I've also been tabbing them together with GUI Emacs, with Firefox, and with anything else. But I can't do that in GNOME at all, because they're insisting on going the half-assed application-by-application route and making 'tab incompatibilities' between windows because they happen to be running different applications.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 8, 2010 3:31 UTC (Mon) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]

Different usage styles, I guess -- in all those cases you mention, I want the windows attached to each other, sure, but *next* to each other and visible simultaneously.

I agree about the silliness of adding tab support to every app.

value of tabbed windows

Posted Feb 17, 2010 4:07 UTC (Wed) by pjm (subscriber, #2080) [Link]

Presumably it depends in part on whether you actually have space for both would-be-tabs to be fully visible while also having the third window fully visible. In the gimp example, maybe you'd prefer to have more space for the image window; in the firefox/emacs example, maybe you'd prefer more space to show the various source files.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 8, 2010 13:59 UTC (Mon) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]

>ION and its ilk are ridiculously bad window managers

Amongst ION's ilk is the ratpoison windowmanager.

ratpoison is the single most productive piece of software ever written for a graphical interface. It's the one true window manager that holds dear the values of the UNIX philosophy.

>that harken back to the very first primitive attempts to make graphical interfaces.

"that harken back to the very first primitive attempts to get a man to the moon"

Sometimes things work out almost exactly right the first time and every subsequent attempt somehow fails miserably.

>I have no idea why they are so popular with a particular extreme minority of Linux geeks

People will probably claim the exact same thing about the use of xterm and the command-line in the future. The answer is "efficiency".

I don't think actually doing what you're payed to do is a particularly extreme point of view, although it appears to be increasingly unfashionable.

>(there does seem to be an odd intersection between Lisp fans and tiling WM fans, though)

A predisposition towards software that sucks less, I'd say.

>I use fluxbox

And I use blackbox on machines that are used to waste time on, simply because it keeps the efficiency down and allows for some time idling reaching for the mouse, using the mouse to browse, get distracted by other stuff on the screen, etc.

All in all the above is somewhat tongue in cheek, but please remember that to those of us who actually use a tiling window manager, a rant about how "primitive" and "unfriendly" it is sounds like "I am the City Manager of Tuttle. This is different than what I know. It scares and confuses me."

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 8, 2010 18:02 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It's the one true window manager

If there was such a thing, we wouldn't have fifty million window managers at this point. Hell, we even have fifty million minimalist tabbing window managers.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 9, 2010 15:01 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

It might be mergeable with future technology.

Take the focus wars. I currently use sloppy focus after spending a while as a strict focus-follows-mouse user, I know people who stand by click-to-focus, but I'm pretty sure we could all get along with the ideal focus mechanism focus-follows-brain. If the key strokes always landed in the window I'm expecting them to, then I won't be surprised and I will be happy with the focus policy - obviously.

Now, we just need to make the machine smart enough to implement this "obvious" policy. Similarly, I'm sure there is an obviously right but as yet unimplementable policy for window management.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 10, 2010 11:01 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

Ooh, interesting. I've never understood why anyone would want strict focus-follows-mouse rather than sloppy focus - what are the advantages? Am I correct in thinking that the only real difference is when the cursor is over the root window, or have I missed something?

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 6, 2010 14:32 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

The OS X Window handling is better then most anything in Linux, in terms of usability.

If you looked you'd notice that Photoshop in OS X does not use a single master window like it does in Windows. The whole single window mode in the Windows version is mostly just to emulate how window handling is done in Mac OS.

Here is a video taken out of a Photoshop tutorial for illustrative purposes:
http://dr-photoshop.com/zfile/tutorials/wallpaper/oswallpaper.mov

This works out pretty well for OS X because of Apple's use of virtual windows and it's composited desktop.

Each application has it's windows naturally grouped together on it's own virtual desktop. Each desktop is then layered on top of one another. Whenever you click on one portion of a application all the application windows come forward. Also this has the advantage that the application's menus are always located in the same place at the top of the screen. And as you change applications the context changes with it.

This is very intuitive and it is natural enough that most people are able to use OS X without even noticing how the window management works.

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Linux is kinda cursed with the worst and best of both worlds. Mostly worst when it comes to usability.

Linux's desktops tend to get all the windows mixed together like happens with Microsoft Windows. That is if you have 8 browser windows open and you have 8 terminals open then you have to flip through 16 windows all mixed in together to find the one you want.

And when you combine that with the fact that you have 4 desktops and it's very difficult to know what window is on what desktop.. people that tend to use applications with multiple windows or have large numbers of windows can easily get lost and waste a lot of productivity hunting around.

It gets pretty bad sometimes. If your in the middle of a task and your desktop disrupts what your doing then it can take up to 15 minutes to regain your concentration.

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The best way to work around this for people that have lots of applications is to simply get into a habit of ordering their windows the same way every time they use it. Using the virtual desktops in a habitual manner so they simply keep everything memorized.

Of course, that is also why people freak out on Gnome for dropping the session management stuff. They spend a great deal of time setting everything up, but lose it each time they log out.

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The multi-windowed Gimp tries to compensate for this by using 'Window Hinting'. That way it can tell the Window manager that all toolbar and dialog windows are just utility windows for the main window holding your image.

Metacity honors that (as well as a few others) so that when you click on one of Gimp's windows then it brings all of them forward and they are managed as a single unit.

When you alt-tab, for example, your not shuffling through the toolbar, 3-4 dialog windows, and your image window... as well as the half a dozen or so other windows that you happen to have open. You just see one Gimp window and you select all of them at one time.

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Gnome-shell tries to do some rudimentary window grouping and tries to improve the 'intuitiveness' of having multiple virtual desktop. It's a improvement over the status quo, but not up to the same level of usability or naturalness of OS X's window management.

There remains a need to have the ability to application group windows together and have them exist as a unified object.

Think about web browser tabs, for example. They are really just a crutch for poor window management on the part of the OS.

If you are able to group like application windows as a single unit then it would not only make it easier to find and select the window your looking for, but it would make non-conventional window managers like tiling window managers or tab-based window managers much more practical. You could easily do something like select 'tab terminal windows' together and have them all automatically resize and work together. Even in a conventional window manager this would be much easier.

Right now I can manually tile terminals together, but it's tedious and is something that should be handled naturally by the window manager. I've used advanced tiling window managers and have used ratpoison long before that, but those demand a lot of scripting to get things done and tend to be too inflexible for what I want.

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Basically if the Linux desktop did a good job managing application windows as a single entity rather then getting everything all mixed up in one another then the whole Gimp thing would be mute. People simply would not really notice how different it is to manage Gimp while using it versus Krita or Inkscape.

Also you would have people not using tabs in their browsers and would not use tabs in their terminals. They would tend to not understand why tabbing is so nice for certain types of applications.

It would really solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 6, 2010 17:20 UTC (Sat) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link]

> The OS X Window handling is better then most anything in Linux, in terms
> of usability.

Hey drag, I hate to nitpick, but are you aware that you always use "then" when you should be using "than" in your posts? Those words have different meanings so it can make your posts confusing to read.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 9, 2010 15:12 UTC (Tue) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

And (whilst we're on the subject) your-> you're.

Worthwhile post despite the grammar issues, I hasten to add.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 12, 2010 7:00 UTC (Fri) by phip (guest, #1715) [Link]

And while we're in grammar-police mode, it's 'moot', not 'mute'.

For some reason I've been seeing this one a lot lately.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 7, 2010 16:42 UTC (Sun) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link]

"The xxx is better then most anything in yyy"

Abuse of word "better". It's obviously more suited to you and your usage pattern; to me and mine it's just horrible, the most counter intuitive and limiting interface I've ever come across, and I've used a fair few (and I don't just mean different versions of windows or even different WMs under Linux) that all have their fair share of differences from each other, I do not have a problem learning and adapting to new/different things by any means.

There's a whole world out here full of different people who think in ways so different they could be from different planets. Hell the difference between just my own usage patterns are massive, for example from when using a seperate keyboard and mouse where there's a greater division of function between hands, to when I'm using a combined keyboard+trackpad interface such as my laptop where switching a finger/thumb between keyboard and trackpad can be done in the sub 100ms range and can see me moving the mouse cursor with left or right hand depending on where the other hand just needed to be or needs to be next. If on top of those differences I was also a whole different person as well, I'd imagine the differences in use would be even greater, to the extent that I really can't see how anyone could make any credible claims about one being better than the others.

For example: multiple windows & toolbars all popping up when you switch into an application, as you have described, is something I find hyper-annoying. Most applications at that kind of level will generally allow docking of toolbars/etc. If I have a toolbar or something undocked it's often because I don't want its actions to be tied to what I do with the main window. It really wouldn't be a freak occurance for me to be working in an app's main window while have something else open that obscures the view of a toolbar or property sheet for an amount of time. Should I have to remove a toolbar when I want to work in a window of an app while still being able to see something else on the screen that the toolbar would otherwise block? No, that would be annoying, I'd much prefer to be able to control whether it's docked and thus follows the main window or not.

Bare in mind when things are subjective and not facts is basically what I'm saying. Incidentally, if you're interested and have a machine you can run it on, give Scalable Fabric a look. I very much like the ideas there; windows get smaller as you drag them past the desktop border towards the edge of the screen; you can throw windows together to form groups which you can then restore/minimise as a whole group; being able to bump other windows out of the way slightly without having to put down what you're currently dragging. Unfortunately it's just a research piece and is not really stable enough to switch to using/relying on, but some interesting ideas on doing things differently nonetheless.

Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy (ars technica)

Posted Feb 7, 2010 16:48 UTC (Sun) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link]

It's a simple window change that, amongst other things, opens it up as a more usable application to a small group of people known as "the majority of the population". Although yes now I've said it like that, it hardly seems worth it.