[Gpaint-develop] menu restructuring proposal

[Alan Horkan]

http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~horkana/dev/gpaint/gpaint-2.0.2.3a/ui.c
Sorry I know it is not in patch format (and I'm unlikely to be
resubmitting it properly formatted anytime soon) but I hope it is still of
some use

I've been meaning to do this for a very long time.  (I started it ages ago
but ran gpaint2 instead of ./gpaint2 and never realised my changes had
worked).

What this does is flatten the menu structure a little primarily by putting
the Effects in a top level menu of thier own (N.B. the mnemonic is
Effec_ts, I used _t so that it would be similar to Fil_ters which is what
Phothshop uses).
>From the note in main.c and the abscence of any glade files in the gpaint
2.0.2.3 a tarball I assumed that ui.c was also originally generated using
Glade but could safely be edited (shame you didn't hold on to the glade
files though).

The Flip menu item also get moved up a level and I'm sure I added a few
mnemonics in places.  I almost forgot, i removed the "About Gnome" menu
item as it is not something the Gnome developers would recommend (no need
for overt branding) and as a user I find external links that fire up a
browser can be quite slow and if I'm not connect to the internet at the
time it is just frustrating because nothing really happens.

I didn't switch to stock menu items or add more keyboard shortcuts as I
had hoped to do but maybe I'll give that a try some other time.  (in the
longer run I'd also like to add a view menu, show toolbars/status bar,
Fullscreen etc.  In the unlikely event i got really ambitious I'd like to
rewrite them as plain GTK only but now I'm just being over optimistic).

I would greatly apprecaite if someone could take the changes I tried to
make and test them and beat them into some sort of sensible shape and
please commit them.

I really like using Gpaint and I think it is a fantastic program.  I think
there is a niche that needs to be filled because for most task the gimp is
overkill, particularly if you are not using layered files.  Gpaint already
has crop and if it had a simple red-eye tool it would be excellent for
ordinary users that want to make quick edits to their digital photos.

Have you considered trying to get gpaint included in Gnome?  (or Ubuntu?)
Getting into Gnome (and Gnome CVS) would mean the support of the Gnome
Translation and Gnome Documentation teams.  A request to the gnome-love
mailing list for help making gpaint fit in better with Gnome (things like
recent files, icon themes etc) might attract developers.

(did a quick bit of research and found this, clearly there are other who
have long wished for gpaint to be inlcuded in Gnome
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-1.4-list/2000-November/msg00044.html
Miguel even liked the idea, although I suspect if gpaint doesn't get
included soon some one will implement something very similar using Mono :)
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-1.4-list/2000-November/msg00081.html

At the moment I am not aware of any simple gtk based image editor for
ordinary users that do not need all the complexity of the gimp.
Gthumb is gradually adding lots of basic image editing functionality but I
think there is still plenty of room for gpaint for the forseeable future.

Thanks for reading, I hope I can get organise and contribute soon.

Thanks again for the software.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org
Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

P.S.  Looks like Lindows are still using the gtk1 version.  I hope you
will agree that a flatter menu structure is a little bit easier and
hopefully the Linspire people will too and will upgrade their version to
gtk2
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.php?id=2201