Comment 2 for bug 671874

Where do you see Pinta in comparison to other image editors?

I would like to understand where do you see Pinta in comparison to other image editors in few releases time when program matures?

On Windows XP I use the following four image editors:
1. Gimp
2. Paint.net
3. Microsoft Paint
4. Pinta

All of them have some advantages and some disadvantages.

Gimp
Description: Advanced image editing tool for advance professional users. It is assumed that you can't launch a program and begin to edit image without learning. It is just like Vim text editor, needs a lot of time to start-up, but when you have learnt it enough it can be very powerful tool.
Advantages: powerful tool.
Disadvantages: advance learning is needed, extremely slow when starting up.
User base: advance professional users

Paint.net
Description: Nice tool with some of the elements of simple tool and some of the elements of advance tool.
Advantages: it is simpler to use. If you have used some other simple tool like Microsoft Paint, you can start editing pictures without big hassle.
Disadvantages: it's becoming blooded, it just ask you too many questions instead of doing the default one. For example: Save as into JPG it ask you about quality instead of just set it as default one. When pasting image it asks you if you would like to expand canvas or not, instead of just do it.
I don't like that it is reinventing the wheel with answers instead of simple buttons etc.
It only runs on Windows. I am also Ubuntu user, so I would like to have one tool on Windows and on Ubuntu. I don't like to have two tools that behave slightly different.
User base: middle to advance users

Microsoft Paint
Description: Very simple tool already included in default operating system with no additional costs.
Advantages: Simple to use. It starts up instantly.
Disadvantages: Simple undo. Missing basic features like crop file. Unable to set default save image format like png. No toolbar for copy/paste/delete/print etc basic functions. Windows only. Multiple task to do for single draw action, like selecting line object where line width is selected then select Rectangle to draw a rectangle on canvas.
User base: simple users that would more like to draw a simple picture then edit existing images.

Pinta.
Description: simple to use non-bloded image editing tool
Advantages: Multiplatform. Easy to learn comparing to Gimp. Does not reinvent the wheel in GUI. Does not asks unnecessary
questions like pasting the image and asking for canvas width etc.
Disadvantages: Early in development, so some bugs.
User base: average user

How I see Pinta in this 4 tools. I see it between Paint.net and Microsoft Paint. It should not become blooded and should stay as simple as possible for average user.

In my humble opinion there are two ways of having advance features. Asking user to make a decision each time (nice for advance users that are choosing different options each time they use a tool) or set some settings as default and make a possibility to change it from some Edit | Preferences window (it is assumed that user will set some settings and have the same settings for every time he/she is using the tool - this is perfectly acceptable and desired for average user - to stop asking "stupid" technical questions).

So that is why I have opened this bug report.

I hope Pinta will not follow Paint.net in exactly the same way of asking millions of questions. I don't see any point of having two exactly the same tools. Some of them should be simpler to use and I think it should be Pinta.

I would just like to have some preferences window where all this nasty settings are stored like jpeg quality and similar settings and stop asking average user to set this settings manually. Average user does not care or even know what is jpeg quality and why should he/she care about it. The average user will never even go into Edit | Preferences, because programmer will choose default values that are OK by most of the users.

The same thing is about File | New Screenshot. I always set the time to 3 seconds. So I am little bit annoyed of asking me the same question every time. It would be nice if there would be some kind of checkbox like "Don't ask this question anymore. Remember the settings. But you can change the default value in Edit | Preferences." In Edit | Preferences there would be a settings for delay and checkbox for "Ask every time when New Screenshot is executed."

I don't know if is really time to have a Edit | Preferences right now, so when I opened a bug report - wish - I asked a question like "Is it time for Edit | Preferences?"

I know it looks like having Edit | Preferences it looks like of having more complicated program, but I think the opposite. Storing some info into Preferences window really helps average user to stop asking the same questions every time he/she is executing the same task over and over again.

Hope this helps explaining my wish.

P.S. Sure you have my blessing of leaving this bug report as "Won't fix" if you do not like this idea and you think this can be solved better with asking the same question and setting default last action.