GIMP‘s hostility to users actually being able to productively use it is legendary as is its disdain for people showing concern about its name.
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@skjeggtroll the original GIMP user interface was not THAT bad, but it seems, that people who were adding new features where kind of confused with the original tool box and didn't find a way to integrate it with original "paintbrush" paradigm.
Also, the original trick of menu being invisible and available only on right-click was weird, but maybe consistent with UX of original X11 apps. At least, toolbox was available all the time.
In the current version, menu can be found, where you would expect it 20 years ago (funny thing: in browser UX, menu is now not where you would expect it 20 years ago and works little like GIMP worked back then), but you have to open toolbox as new Window.
This is what I mean that "original GIMP UI was not that bad". I can use GIMP probably only because I started 20 years ago, and I now the features are there, only the new way to find these features is perhaps even more confusing, than the old way.
Speaking about "target group": well, programmers and coders in 1990s had to understand stuff like color channels, indexed colors, and so, even layers. Perhaps, GIMP would be powerful tool for making animated GIFs on Amiga ecosystem (before being adopted by web, GIF format was used by Amiga hobbyists and by BBS scene...)
GIMP is at least very powerful conversion, resizing and cropping tool for many classical image exchange formats. It is not so practical for creative work, perhaps because it was designed by people, who needed other specific tasks to be done.
There are some features, which nobody really wants or uses, but which were relatively easy to implement and other tools of the era had them too.
Speaking about UI... I still prefer Gtk over other toolkits. I use MATE desktop (GNOME 2 fork).
To be a little uncharitable, the original GIMP user interface felt like an afterthought, as was common for OSS projects in that era. It was clunky and a little ugly and a bit greedy for screen real estate. I don't think anyone would call it 'elegant'.
The new user interface feels like the result of conscious, deliberate design -- but conscious, deliberate design that fails to be _for_ anyone.
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To be a little uncharitable, the original GIMP user interface felt like an afterthought, as was common for OSS projects in that era. It was clunky and a little ugly and a bit greedy for screen real estate. I don't think anyone would call it 'elegant'.
The new user interface feels like the result of conscious, deliberate design -- but conscious, deliberate design that fails to be _for_ anyone.
@skjeggtroll Perhaps. Not opening the toolbox by default is definitely deliberate. And it can't be called user friendly for anyone.
