multiple-images-in-document

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Krita currently supports, as I'm sure everyone is aware, having more than one 
image in a single Krita document, just like Kivio, KPresenter and KSpread, 
but unlike KWord, Karbon and Kexi.

Even after more than a year of working on Krita I'm still not sure it's 
actually a useful feature. I'm still getting a mental jolt when I import an 
image, and it is placed in the next image slot in the document. Same with 
screenshots.

I can see a few uses for this interface in a bitmap application:

* Frames for animation images in a single document.
* Selections from one image appear in other images in the same document, a 
kind of shared scrapbook.
* A sketchbook metaphor for creating original art (all exercises from 
Rendering in Pen and Ink in one document, frex).

On the other hand:

* it complicates our code to no little extent
* it hardly  fits with the way I perceive most people work with images 
(judging from observation in the family circle :-) and looks out of place 
with other image applications.
* it makes it harder to see images side by side. (I know you can 
split/duplicate views and have each view show a different image from the 
document, but that is quite a complicated procedure. In fact, so complicated 
I guess nobody does it much, since our tool handling is broken for split 
views).
* Because undo information is per-document, not per image, if you work on 
several images, the undo lists get mixed. That is, go to image 1, do stuff, 
go to image 2, do stuff, go back to image 1 do stuff, go to image 2, undo
stuff. Stuff for image 1 gets undone until you reach the undo stuff for image 
2. Confusion reigns.

Only the animation support is a strong argument in my opinion, but is it 
strong enough to keep wrestling with the complexity for developers and users?
But maybe I've missed the, or a, or several point(s).
-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | "Geef mij maar zuurtjes."
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi
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