[Text Editing?!]

No offense intended, but frankly, I don't miss this in a basic paint app.

Actually, I don't think I've ever seen it--does Painter X have text editing? I would be upset if it weren't in a drawing program.

Of course, we may be headed towards more "hybrid" graphics support as in Creature House Expression/MS Acrylic....

[Flipping selections]

I was wondering about the status of this feature request for flipping and/or rotating of selections. I couldn't find it in the bugs area. (Did I overlook it in v2.6RC1?)

[Feature Request: Triangles]

Here's a related post...with a reply from the Team Lead himself:

http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=905

[Those toolboxes, the little scamps...]

Translucent windows--forgot all about that...hey, you can draw under the "toolforms"...but it creeps me out so I'm turning it off again. I guess the idea is not to have folks draw under the toolforms but just be aware of the space, right? Hmm, that must be the reason Sketchbook (and KPT, Bryce, etc.) use annoyingly irregular shapes for UI widgets. (A shadow effect might work, too.)

Hmm, just got a crazy idea trying to think of a real-world parallel to floating toolforms: Maybe you could integrate all the tools in a single "super toolform", (expanding tool options? cycle/swap toolforms by keyboard shortcut?) THEN, get the toolform to follow the brush/pencil around the canvas at a respectful distance. (Some kind of flocking behavior: Attraction to brush--aversion to "wet paint", recently painted pixels.) (This is supposed to be like an artist having a brush in one hand and a palette, brush holder, etc. in the other.) Hmm, probably need a modifier key to get the thing to stay put when you want something off it. It would probably drive your users nuts, but it would keep the tools close at hand, and you could whip it out of the way without clicking-dragging anything. (Hehehe, it's now an inertial palette, with friction (Don't forget the clickable "anchor", and so on and so forth....)

Well, don't mind me--just brainstorming here. Thanks for sharing some "behind-the-scenes footage"--sounds like a fun project, (in addition to lots of work). Of course, we can tell that from the fine app your team has put together.

[Those toolboxes, the little scamps...]

I didn't mean to be too down on "floaters"--they are, after all, very flexible--but in this case, the ability to scroll beyond the document edge seems important to keep them from getting in the way.

That said, I look forward to your re-think of the color palette. (I'm thinking of MacOS or Painter X, and Alias Sketchbook [or MS Word ], at extremes of the completeness/simplicity continuum. I'm personally partial to HSL colorspace, because of it's light-dark symmetry, but users are undoubtedly more familiar with RGB and HSV.)

Thanks for all your hard work!

[Resize handles; polygon/polyline tool]

Sorry to be shedding all my gripes/requests at once today, but....

1) The "active" zone for resize handles seems to prevent moving by dragging for small selections, (esp. at high mag). The selections can then only be moved by arrow keys. Suggestion: Give "move" function precedence? Require modifier key for resize function? (Or vice-versa?) Tell me what I'm doing wrong?

2) Is there a polygon/polyline tool or equivalent function in Paint.NET? I mistook the "freeform" tool for this, but it draws a closed form continuously, and does not permit multiple clicks to "selectively select" vertices. Is there or could there be a modifier key to enable polygon tool behavior? Even better, polygon and polyline behavior in one tool? (Maybe double-click to end? Or graft polyline behavior onto line tool?) (MS Paint does have a polygon tool, but it's a little quirky in my opinion....)

O.K., I'll go away now and mind my own business for awhile. This project is shaping up nicely--maybe Paint.NET can start accepting donations soon!

[Those toolboxes, the little scamps...]

Umm, on a related note, workspace sharing real estate with toolbars and palettes in Paint.net (2.6RC1) is detracting from my experience with the program. (I'm talking more about floating palettes than toolbars, though it would be nice to be able to switch the toolbars between horizontal and vertical orientations--I often use my monitor in "portrait" mode, and some documents are obviously taller than wide.)

I don't think the fix is huge. Personally, I prefer toolbars that crop workspace (you can't paint under them anyway!) to floating palettes, but given that design decision, floating palettes are a problem here because Paint.net does not permit one to scroll off the document proper. (Limited scrolling is not a problem in Paint, for example, because all toolbars and palettes are always clear of the workspace.)

For example, without the ability to scroll into "no man's land", the left edge of a large document (or a small doc at high mag), will never leave the left edge of the workspace, requiring the user to move any floating palettes there to access those pixels. (Then, move them back to access the right edge.) This requires two operations (scrolling doc and dragging palette) where one should suffice (scrolling only). For this reason, I think floating palette implementations ought to include the ability to scroll off the document area.

I think I recently saw unlimited scrolling in a drawing program, maybe OpenOffice Draw. Something to avoid: scrolling away from the document altogether, which can be disorienting. A clever program might stop the document edge from scrolling past the middle of the window.

Besides that, hey, the -LMB panning shortcut is cool--so is the two-way scrolling via -mouse wheel.

[Simpler print features]

Not to beat a dead horse, but I heartily agree about ditching the print wizard. Did I miss something, or does the print wizard not permit you to print "at resolution" (I mean, "one dot per pixel")?

Other than that, glad to see the cut-and-paste between layers is fixed in 2.6RC1. Interface-wise...O.K., separate post....