Being able to switch to classical interface

[Lehonti]

I see many complaints about the new interface in Pinta 3.0.

How easy or hard would it be to abstract away the setting up of the interface so that users can choose between the modern one and the classical one (or at least something that has a similar layout)?

I am relatively new to the development of Pinta, so I didn't get to see what was changed in order to move from the classical to the modern interface.

Also, from my knowledge of the code, if this were implemented and the user wanted to switch, it would be easiest to save the his choice through the SettingsManager and then require him to restore the application. Would this be accurate?

[cameronwhite]

Yeah, any setting for this could go under the View menu and would likely require restarting Pinta since the main window would be set up with very different widgets

My memory on the changes is a bit hazy since this was all really early in the GTK4 / libadwaita port, but from what I recall Adw.ApplicationWindow does not allow having a menubar (see note in https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/libadwaita/doc/1.0/class.ApplicationWindow.html). I think this might require using a Gtk.ApplicationWindow instead, with no header bar, but that would certainly testing to see if it works.

There is a skeleton of this code path already for macOS, where we don't use a header bar at all and configure a menubar, but it's converted by GTK into the usual global menu for Mac apps (at the top of the screen) rather than actually being part of the window

The main places to look would be

Pinta/Pinta/WindowShell.cs

Line 50 in 0f68928

if (useHeaderBar) {

and

Pinta/Pinta/MainWindow.cs

Line 342 in 0f68928

bool using_header_bar = window_shell.HeaderBar is not null;

[cameronwhite]

Also some related discussion at #781

[Basis-JVRodrigues]

Not having a way to change back to the old layout is just insane!
After spending a while in the really unfamiliar burger menu for a windows application and realizing there's no such option, I just downloaded the 2.1 version...

[Barkfin]

In my experience a new version is released because there's some kind of new functionality or capability. Occasionally the maintainer might even state what those are, such as "here's a new function or here's a new file type you can edit" or whatever.
If all that was done was to sabotage the interface, yeah don't give me any of this kind of updates please.

[SinOfNature]

Agree with people on here. I really wish we could have an option to go back to the old interface. This new one is not intuitive. Hopefully, someone can add one in the future.

[mertince]

I sometimes think that I was old school or perhaps just plain "old" but after reading so many complaints I'm kinda relieved. Why oh why do you decide to change the UI, which is how people perceive you, so radically in one go!

Dear developers : Please add an option to change the UI to "Classical View". Otherwise a significant number of users shall use the previous version (2.1 I suppose) or stop using this great application.

[DoneWorkin]

I have tried using the new UI but for me it appears to be a step backwards in almost every way.

Actions I regularly use now take more clicks and more menu use than before. Actions which used to be easily discover-able have now been hidden in a hamburger menu.

I will admit that I am a recent convert from Windows to Linux and was previously using Paint.NET - Pinta was an easy Linux compatible application for me to use as a Paint.NET replacement. With this change it feels like a large step backwards.
I guess I will have to revert back to an older version or find another application similar to Paint.NET

For anyone else on Linux who uses the Flatpak - here are the commands I used to downgrade to 2.1.2
sudo flatpak update --commit=eb978f6ae82fc380b1c6b3a1ed7253a9f8f75115798274c4a71168ecc335ae9c com.github.PintaProject.Pinta

Here is the command I used to find the commit numbers to use in the above command (This just displays information)
flatpak remote-info --log flathub com.github.PintaProject.Pinta

[cameronwhite]

We have bug #781 for adding a menubar layout (with a pull request in progress), so I think we can close this discussion now to avoid duplicate threads.