RawTherapee: the newest open source raw photo editor

Posted Jan 14, 2010 11:35 UTC (Thu) by ikm (subscriber, #493)
In reply to: RawTherapee: the newest open source raw photo editor by drag
Parent article: RawTherapee: the newest open source raw photo editor

> Either your experiences are not with recent Gimp versions or your window manager sucks and you should use a different one.

It's KDE4. When I minimize gimp's main window, those small windows do hide, and after I un-minimize the window they do appear back. But when I merely switch to other window, and then bring GIMP back forward, those windows aren't brought back -- they are still somewhere behind the window I just was in.

I don't think a program should dictate the choice of a window manager.

> With the current development version of Gimp they added a 'one window mode' so that it'll reflect the Photoshop behavior in Windows.

I have a 2.7.2-2009090102~jj version installed, this option is not yet there. It is supposed to be a life saver, yes.

Thanks to you I did find out that it is possible to change window types for those utility windows to be 'normal windows'. Now at least I will be able to bring them back from taskbar.

> So Photoshop in OS X is much more like Gimp in Linux rather then Photoshop in Windows in the way the window management works. It's just that in Linux you would have to manually separate your Windows into each virtual desktop rather then have it happen naturally

Exactly!

> which makes it all very confusing for people not used to how the Linux desktop works.

But this conclusion is just wrong. Linux desktop works pretty much the same way Windows desktop does. Yes, there are additional features like virtual desktops, but many people, me included, find them unnecessary and complicated, and would rather prefer to have Photoshop-like single window. You've said yourself that Photoshop under OS X is like GIMP, BUT at the same time Photoshop under Windows is a single window.

I hope this will all become moot once this new 'single window' mode for GIMP is available.

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RawTherapee: the newest open source raw photo editor

Posted Jan 14, 2010 14:59 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't think a program should dictate the choice of a window manager

Well you need one that works correctly. It's like using a browser with broken CSS support then complaining when somebody tells you to use firefox. It's not a big deal, but it's not really the Gimp's fault with this particular problem.

I don't know for certain, but I think the 'utility window hinting' that gimp uses is _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_UTILITY from: latest wm spec

This particular feature was in 1.1 of the specification, I think. I am not really up on the whole window manager specification thing and it's quite possible that utility window behavior is unspecified and KDE4's behavior is acceptable, but it does not sound like it. It's probable one of those WM corner cases that does not come up very often and it could be a easy fix. I'd file a bug.

I have a 2.7.2-2009090102~jj version installed, this option is not yet there. It is supposed to be a life saver, yes.

I have not tried the developer version of Gimp yet, but this guy says he is using single window mode in 2.7.1, but it's not turned on by default. Maybe it's a build option? how to install gimp with single window

He just goes through adding a PPA repo to Ubuntu to grab the development version, but he has a screenshot of where to enable the option.

Personally when I use Gimp I like to have all the dialogs open all the time and dividing things up into 2 desktops it makes it easy to go alt + arrow right and alt + arrow left to access all of them. That way I don't have to hunt through menus or whatever.

But this conclusion is just wrong. Linux desktop works pretty much the same way Windows desktop does. Yes, there are additional features like virtual desktops, but many people, me included, find them unnecessary and complicated, and would rather prefer to have Photoshop-like single window. You've said yourself that Photoshop under OS X is like GIMP, BUT at the same time Photoshop under Windows is a single window.

I've always thought of the virtual desktop thing as fundamental to how the Linux desktop operates. I use it constantly and when I go back to using windows I find the window behavior there quite painful.

Unfortunately here is no way to see all your applications at once if they are spread around, unlike OS X. This is one of the reasons I like the newer Gnome Shell (not that it's perfect... the alt-tab behavior leaves a lot to be desired, for example) since it makes it very easy to locate things.

RawTherapee: the newest open source raw photo editor

Posted Jan 14, 2010 15:31 UTC (Thu) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link] (1 responses)

> it's not really the Gimp's fault with this particular problem.

Well, I'm sure you understand that while this is technically true, in reality it doesn't matter whose fault is that.

> I have not tried the developer version of Gimp yet, but this guy says he is using single window mode in 2.7.1, but it's not turned on by default.

Thanks. No, there wasn't such an option in mine's install, but I've just updated from that PPA to 2.7.3-something, and there's that option now indeed! So I turned it on, and I can say gimp looks MUCH better now! Utilities now occupy left and right vertical screen areas, which you can resize with splitters to give more or less space to the canvas in the middle. Also, instead of different windows for different images, there are tabs now. Overall, this looks so much better, you wouldn't believe!

However, right now this works glitchy as hell. Oh well. I'll wait for 2.8. That's all very promising. Thanks for a pointer!

RawTherapee: the newest open source raw photo editor

Posted Jan 14, 2010 16:01 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

> in reality it doesn't matter whose fault is that.

It's just the fix is easy. Use Metacity or something that works correctly.
;)

I tested Metacity, Openbox, Compiz, and Gnome-shell (which uses Mutter) and
all those behaved how I expected it. No Gimp windows getting mixed up with
anybody else's.