Customize GUI (ability to move and resize all UI widgets)

[jordanmcleod]

I'm enjoying layers aside from the inability to change layer order (addressed by #760). On the subject of layers: my names are often truncated by the "Layers" widget (?) in Pinta. I've tried to resize the area but the only resizing that appears to be working is vertically and, only then, between the "Layers" and "History" sections.

I would also like to be able to move the other GUI sections that appear to be set statically. For instance, I would love to be able to move the toolbar (select, shapes, etc.) to the right-hand side of the screen, then move the "Layers" and "History" sections to the left as well as place those two sections side-by-side and expanded to the full height of the allowed.

In general, it would be nice to be able to move and resize all UI widgets in Pinta. The widgets would have a default "docked" location and moving them would undock (dedock?) the UI widget. If the toolbar were resized to be less linear, the icons would change to suit like word-wrap does for text. Widgets would be able to be moved and docked in other locations or used while not docked in a position. Ideally there would exist an option to remember the new locations when exiting Pinta as well as the option to reset to default locations.

[cameronwhite]

It should be possible to resize the layer list horizontally, e.g. as in this screen grab. You're using Pinta 2.1, correct?

layer_resizing.mp4

[jordanmcleod]

Thank you. I was able to resize the horizontal width, which also enabled me to learn of the feature to move layers down or up, which I had previously thought was lacking from Pinta entirely. I am using version 2.1.1.

[cameronwhite]

Pinta used to have more of the docking functionality you described in versions 1.x, since it reused the docking library from Monodevelop. That library was very challenging to port to GTK3 for Pinta 2.0 since it had a ton of custom widgets and very complex functionality, so we ended up having to move to a simpler UI layout. Porting that library to GTK3 (and maintaining it further, e.g. with Pinta also now being ported to GTK4) is not practical with our small group of developers

The future direction is probably to add C# bindings for https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libpanel which looks promising , although I haven't done much testing of it