Re: How do I modify a selection ?

In <12bo14ir59iie53@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Yugo wrote:

Marc BlackJack Rintsch wrote:

In <12bno94ku6mm1df@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Yugo wrote:

Most open source projects don't have alphas or betas but just version
numbers. Common sense should tell that a 0.0.2 isn't that mature. Many
have a notion of stable and development versions though.

Tell this to Suse, they have no idea of how Linux development is done:

Development Release: SUSE Linux 10.2 Alpha 2
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=03571#0

SuSE Linux is not most open source projects. You know the difference
between "most" and "all"!?

[…], and there are plenty open source projects with mailing lists and
IRC channels where you can reach developers without dealing with bug
tracking software.

I don't use IRC. When I used Windows software, there always was an email
where you could reach the author. Whether it was shareware or commercial
software, results came fast.

As I said, most projects have a mailing list. The authors read your mails
there and other users read them too. So your problems can be tackled by
more people than just the one author you would have reached otherwise.

What's wrong with applying Filters?Enhance?Sharpen… to the image
or the selection!?

Why should a beginner suppose that sharpness is a filter? Why enhance?

Why should a beginner suppose it's not a filter? Most things in Gimp are
implemented as filters and a beginner will quickly find out, looking
around in the menus. And filters have to be categorized somehow. I have
about 140 filters under the filter menu and it would be bad to have them
all in one menu instead in several sub menus.

Why does this fuckin menu closes everytime you select a certain degree
of sharpness?

Huh? What are you talking about?

Why doesn't it close with the ESC key only when you're through?

Again I have no idea what you are talking about. The escape key in
dialogs acts as pressing the `Cancel` button. That's common GUI
convention. You can change the sharpness value and either apply or abort.
What do you mean with “only when you're through”?

Why can't you get sharp*ness* in a menu when you right-click the
picture? You'd then have a -100% 0 +100% scale for blurring to
sharpening, either a selection, outside a selection, or both for the
whole picture, plus the tools for selective blurring or sharpening.

Because no one has done such a filter or interface to existing filters.
And the filters *are* in a sub menu when you right click on the image.

Why all those click-ke-dee-roo RTFM menus?

It's one click and then moving the mouse. You can tear off often used
menus so they stay permanent on screen and you can define keyboard
shortcuts to menu entries you use very often.

For a quick overview of the available filters you can browse the menu, no
need to consult the manual.

Yes, great! Why is it, though, that they made the fonts so small in
mode 1280 x 1024 that the url window is hardly readable? Anybody with a
slightly impaired vision can't read it. Of course, a url bar is not
that important in a browser.

Filed a bug report?
Tthe problem with Linux software is you've got to file reports for the
most obvious things. It's as if the developers only saw their code and
never used their own software.

What is obvious to you maybe never happened to the developer!?

With even the 17" LCD screens coming in 1280x1024 definition, this mode
is ever more popular. I now have a good quality 19" LCD and the url
windows is readable. But on a CRT, it was hard to read and such is
probably the case for 17" LCDs. How come developers can't figure out
that it would be better fot the fonts to fill the URL window without
somebody writing to them? Are they such dunces?

Font sizes are given in points. That's an absolute size so it's a problem
with the combination of display and windowing system if they come out in
different sizes if you change the resolution of the monitor.

While Google now allows searches of more than 10 words, who came up
with the bright idea of making searches possible only in a small
windows where hardly more than 3 words can be entered?

I have no problem entering 10 or more words there.

Oh, yes! The only little problem is you can't see what you've entered
before sending the query. Who cares, you have time, you can correct it
later.

Yes. Or Google is suggesting a spell checked query. Or the results are
already good enough.

Most people start a search with just one or two words anyway and then
refine the search term if the results are to broad or wrong.

I see your point of view. You mean it was quite an inconvenient to fill
only 2 or 3 words in the url window for a search while you could just as
well enter 10 or more AND SEE THEM?

File a feature request then that the the Google entry's size should be
customizable.

What's the 8th most often asked question at OOo? How to save a document
as a default template. Of course, those bastards don't RTFMsss!

That's the 8th most often question? Yes those people should consult
the online help.

RTFM for saving a document as a default template? What is it then, that
you won't have to RTFM about?

Things you already know or can deduce from context? Why is it so bad to
have to look up something that is not used very often?

But don't tell Linux developers that their interface is ill-conceived.

Well I like the Linux interface philosophy “everything is a file”.
It's a nice and clean abstraction. Well most of the time. If `fnctl`
comes into the mix, things start to get a bit ugly.

The problem is people don't want to spend days on end RTFMsss.

Open the online help and search for `standard template` does not take days.

P.s.: As I'm trying to send this message I an told that certain
characters are not in my chosen character set. I looked 3 times through
the message and I can't find any Russian or Chinese characters.

Yep I use(d) characters outside ISO-8859-1. Most of the time that's right
arrows for "paths" through a menu hierarchy like in `File→Open`, opening
and closing quotation marks like “these” and ellipsis (…) when I snip
something.

Everything seems OK. If the software can identify some characters that
are not part of the default character set, why doesn't it highlight
them?

Should I write to the developers about this too?

Yes.

I feel I could spend my whole life writing to developers about just one
software.

You seem to already do this right now, right here. :-)

Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch
.