Suggestion - GDI+ & Dancing Ants option?

[Roley]

I suppose this is the right forum location for submitting suggestions; so I just would like to state my suggestion here.

Hello, PDN

I really like the new update from 3.36 to 3.5.1. The new icons and all look very stylish and made Paint.NET look fresh and new

I've been using Paint.NET for about a year or so, starting with the 3.36 build. I was greatly impressed with the program; being able to make amazing effects or adjustments. When I got the 3.5 update, I was really excited and downloaded it.

Once downloaded, I was checking all of the improvements and I spotted two new changes

-1- Text is much more :AntiAliasingOff: -looking even if you set it as :AntiAliasingOn:

-2- Dancing Ants Outline is removed.

Now, I checked the roadmap and previous other forums and I did see the fact that GDI+ was removed (that I guess was the thing that made font viewing look great on Paint.NET) and instead GDI is used, and that the outline was replace with a XOR pattern. I understand these changes were made to make the program more lighter and faster, but sadly, my experience with Paint.NET is not as good as it was with 3.36, mostly for GDI+ being removed.

Yes, I do run a Windows XP computer, and no, I don't want to get a new computer with Vista or Seven just to have a better font handling experience.

So, my suggestion is

Can the next update of Paint.NET have an option to either toggle on or off the Dancing Ants outline or GDI+?

I really don't care much about the XOR pattern. I liked the Dancing Ants pattern better, but my main concern is text handling. It sucks (well, on XP, anyway).

Again, I understand that GDI+ was removed to improve speed and "weight" of the program, but really, when I had V3.36, I did not experience any problems; no crashes, no corrupt files, nothing; and Paint.NET still ran pretty fast on my computer.

So, maybe having this toggle option implemented on Paint.NET may make the experience a tad better, IF it is possible to implement it.

Anyway, thank you for your time reading this suggestion. Sorry for being a bit lengthy but I really miss Paint.NET's amazing Font/Text Handling; and knowing that it's impossible to downgrade the build to 3.36, I don't really have anyone else to report this problem to.

Hope you can reply soon~

Sincerely,

Roley

[Rick Brewster]

GDI+ in the Text tool wasn't removed for performance reasons. It was crash happy.

The dancing ants aren't something I can just "make an option for". First, there's no options dialog. Second, I'm not adding an options dialog for the sake of 1 option. Third, the animation involved a lot of extra state that complicated things and made the code a little messy. Fourth, it was very slow and ate a ton of battery power. Fifth, the only reason the animation was there was to ensure contrast regardless of the image's contents -- and that was solved by using a stippled XOR pattern.

Back to the text. Going forward, I simply can't justify doing features or a lot of work for the sake of XP. It's an ancient operating system that is quickly losing tons of market share to Win7. Hopefully someday soon you'll have a system with Vista or Win7 on it. And Win7 will give you a lot more in return that just "a better font handling experience." It's way better than XP.

[Frontcannon]

I miss the Dancing Ants, without them every selection looks so messy.

[Roley]

I must admit; when I tried out Win7 at the local computer store, I also found it MUCH better than XP.

Sadly, I don't have any extra money to go buy a new computer that runs with Win7, and for me to buy the operating system itself (i.e. Windows 7 Home Premium for ~$230) and re-formatting my current Hard Drive to Win7 will take quite some time since I have many music files on my computer that I will have to re-install after the format (well, that and the fact that some of the programs currently installed on my XP will probably not be supported on 7.)

I do suppose XP is an ancient OS now..

Ah well, I guess I have to stick with what Paint.NET offers to me now.

The program is still great nonetheless, so I congratulate you for that

Thanks for replying.

[david.atwell]

Thank YOU for being understanding. You're probably one of the most pleasant feature requestors we've had in a long while. Most people have a sense of entitlement...you actually understand that this is an awesome program to get for free. Thank YOU. :-D

[Sharp]

Yeah, the dancing ants looked better with basic shape selections, it ate up a TON of memory with complex selections, such as using the magic wand.

[AmadeusX]

Hidden Content:

GDI+ in the Text tool wasn't removed for performance reasons. It was crash happy.

The dancing ants aren't something I can just "make an option for". First, there's no options dialog. Second, I'm not adding an options dialog for the sake of 1 option. Third, the animation involved a lot of extra state that complicated things and made the code a little messy. Fourth, it was very slow and ate a ton of battery power. Fifth, the only reason the animation was there was to ensure contrast regardless of the image's contents -- and that was solved by using a stippled XOR pattern.

Back to the text. Going forward, I simply can't justify doing features or a lot of work for the sake of XP. It's an ancient operating system that is quickly losing tons of market share to Win7. Hopefully someday soon you'll have a system with Vista or Win7 on it. And Win7 will give you a lot more in return that just "a better font handling experience." It's way better than XP.

Agree whit you Rick.
PdN on 7en works fine. I haven't got any problems here. and i think the whole application got much faster..
And yes, i do have a 1,75Ghz computer(with 7en) so what? fast enough
So why not stop asking about the dancing thingy? it's way more better this way (atleast for me that is color blind...)