summer of code

[Valerie]

Oh! Summer of Code! Goodie!

Pity that for the webpage proposal, I had stopped thinking too much 
about the workspace proposals, if anybody remembers those. 
I think there would be a lot of potential to implement at least a 
very basic workspace structure.

At its barest, a workspace proposal would:
- implement a way to save different interface settings separately
- also be selective about which plugins are loaded and which are not
- offer an interface proposing workspaces upon start-up (ex.:
a bunch of icons including "photo-edit, paint, etc")

That's it. But such a foundation could lead to much more as each
workspace gets refined. To get an idea of the potential, a person
starting up Krita would first open to a list of functions (in 
easy-to-understand icons). 

With say... a "batch photo editing" workspace:
- you get the option to immediately open an entire folder
- the photos appear as thumbnails in a gallery list on the right
- you have at the top a few common options such as "rotate," 
"resize", etc, as well as batch operations such as "rotate all 
selected," "resize all selected", "auto-color-balance all 
selected" etc.

Easier life for those processing all their piles of digital photos!

On the other hand, if you open a paint workspace, you're have a
nice batch of brushes on the side and a nice palette to work with
on the other. And since the rest of you have been discussing whether
a node-based "painting" approach would appeal... just make different
workspaces.

Imagine the mess though if the two above interfaces were to be
stuffed into one. Hence, the separation. They're all customizable
too.

The other proposal I would have liked to see would involve a special
toolbar that loads a whole folder of settings (example: for brush
settings) at once. Just like a palette loads multiple colors, such
a function would load brush folders etc for easy tool management in
the future. I'd actually call this the "drawer" function: the top of
the toolbar displays a small drawer for the sake of being intuitive.
You can manage individual "drawers" much like you do bookmarks.

This isn't really needed right now, but as Krita adds more brush
functions, it'd be nice to have.


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