rethinking text handling in GIMP /1

20 May 2012, 23:02

At the beginning of this month, most of the open source graphics applications community convened for the libre graphics meeting in Vienna, Austria. After a one‐year hiatus, the GIMP team was back in force, and so were two of its UI team members, my colleague Kate Price and yours truly. We delivered a lecture about our most recent GIMP project, which we will write up in three parts. Here is the first.

beyond the text tool

This project was the first one in our series of open internships. I had created these last year, combining mentoring, open working and getting serious interaction design work done for the GIMP project.

Dominique Schmidt worked with us on this project, which goal is to rethink everything associated with text handling in GIMP. It would have been cool to have Dominique on stage in Vienna, telling the story himself. But he had this holiday booked; to a tropical destination; and surprisingly he insisted on going. Since projects means teamwork at m+mi works, Kate and I were instead fully able to report from the trenches.

The text project is quite a wide‐ranging one and at the moment of writing it is in‑progress. So there are going to be no magic bullets, or detailed interaction design specs to be presented—yet. Certainly a wide‐ranging project demands a structured approach, else it goes nowhere. It is exactly this structure that we will use to present it here, in this and the follow‑up blogposts.

direction

Step one: compiling a vision for the project. With text—and editing, styling it—being so ubiquitous in computers, it is very easy to get stuck in nuts‑and‐bolts discussions about it. The trick is to concentrate on the big issue: what is the meaning of text in GIMP work? What we needed was a vision: ‘what is it; who is it for and where is the value?’

The vision is compiled out of quite a few elements: of course it has to align with the overall product vision of GIMP; we interviewed the GIMP developers who have worked on text; it includes the GEGL future of non‑linear working; and we held an informal user survey on the developer mailing list—plenty of users there—about the essence of working with text.

building blocks

To show how the resulting vision, worked out, let’s discuss it line‑by‑line:

  • ‘Text in GIMP is always part of the composition—unless it is an annotation.’

This puts text thoroughly in its proper place; it is never the end‑goal, by itself. Also defined is a separate annotation workflow: users adding notes for themselves or for collaboration purposes. This sets us up for a small side project: annotations in GIMP.

  • ‘The canvas is not a page; there is no such thing as paging in GIMP.’

I love this one. The first part was phrased by Dominique, the second by Kate. This puts clear limits on what text functionality GIMP needs: beyond paragraphs, but short of page‐related stuff. Note that ‘paging’ is a verb, it is about working with pages and managing pages.

  • ‘Text is both for reading and used as graphical shapes; meta data in text—mark‑up, semantics—are not supported.’

This puts on equal footing that text is for information transport and just shapes; an excellent example where the GIMP context makes a big difference. The second part excludes any meta data based processing: e.g. auto‐layouting or auto‐image manipulation.

And now, we get to the value section:

  • ‘GIMP users get: minute control over typography and the layout of text on the canvas.’

If there is one thing we learned from surveying users, it is the essence of typography: to control exactly, down to the (sub)pixel, the placement of every text glyph. This control is exerted via the typographical parameters: margins, leading, tracking, kerning, etc. GIMP needs to support the full spectrum of these and support top‑notch typographical workflows.

  • ‘GIMP users get: internationalisation of text handling, for all locales supported by unicode.’

This thoroughly expands our horizon, we have to look at use of text word‐wide: many different writing systems, different writing directions. But it also sets clear limits: if it cannot be represented in unicode, it is not in scope.

  • ‘GIMP users get: text remains editable forever.’

This anchors the GEGL dream in the project: no matter how many heavy graphical treatments have been applied on top of a piece of text, one can always change it and see the treated result immediately. But also included here is a deep understanding of projects and workflows. E.g. Murphy’s law: a mistake in the text is always found at the last moment. Or the fact that clients always keep changing the text, even after the delivery date.

  • ‘GIMP users get: super‐fast workflow, when they are experienced.’

This reflects that GIMP is for graphics production work and the speed‑of‐use requirements that accompany that.

it’s a wrap

And there we have it. Here they are again, together as the vision statement:

  • Text in GIMP is always part of the composition—unless it is an annotation;
  • the canvas is not a page; there is no such thing as paging in GIMP;
  • text is both for reading and used as graphical shapes; meta data in text—mark‑up, semantics—are not supported.

GIMP users get:

  • minute control over typography and the layout of text on the canvas;
  • internationalisation of text handling, for all locales supported by unicode;
  • text remains editable forever;
  • super‐fast workflow, when they are experienced.

Nice and compact, so that it can be used as a tool. But these seven simple sentences pack a punch. Just formulating them has knocked this project into shape. The goals are clear from hereon.

And on that note, I hand over to Kate, who will continue our overview of the steps we took, in part two.

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portrait of Peter  Peter Sikking is an experienced
interaction architect. He unabashedly puts shipping great products at the centre of his design practice. He is known for his work for Google, Nokia, the Metapolator & GIMP open source projects, and startups.

Peter teaches, mentors, lectures and publishes. He enjoys working with small teams in an international setting, but also the fact that his work can be found on half a billion mobiles and creates billion‐dollar revenues.

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