carol.gimp.org

This brief how-to is to date, the most difficult I have had to write for TheGIMP, and its new GUI. It is about the history dialog and a nice option that can be found there. The difficult part of the writing is the misuse of the image of Wilber in the dialog. I am using gimp-2.3, and while putting hope on the streets; I am also reserving some towards this image problem being fixed before long.

Allow me first to document this misuse and then proceed with sharing the offending screen shots. This is Wilber. He is the official mascot of TheGIMP. TheGIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program (a useful piece of software) and Wilber is an image drawn by Tuomas Kuosmanen or tigert. The mascot appeared on the original gimp web site and can now be seen within the software itself.

Marking missing images is the wrong place for Wilber. Let us look at how he is being used and the GUI that has been provided to get rid of this.

Dialogs-->Document History will show you the Gimp2 image history. This helpful dialog remembers the images you opened and their location on your computer.

Along with a few other debilitating changes to GIMP, in Gimp2 you are no longer able to delete images. I think the idea is to promote the use of other software (like file managers and such) however, I still work from the commandline. Working this way, with this debilitated gimp2, I use the console to delete images or move them. The effect that this has on these fragile changes poor gimp has gotten is that it does not seem to understand the reason that the image is in its memory and not present at the location it expects it to be at. GIMP marks this by using that icon with the question mark and the smiling Wilber, as seen in the screenshot.

What reason do I not use file management software? My brain takes less space on my hard drive and much less cpu. I suspect that yours would also if you give it even just half a chance. It is nice that gimp will work with file management software. The developers that I began working with made me think that we were working together so that you would not be forced to do anything a particular way. Is gimp safer to use not that you cannot delete images with it? I guess it depends on the user. If you were too stupid to handle such an application before, what reason do you think that you will be any safer with this debilitated gimp?

One method that I have discovered to remove these image entries from the GIMP Document History Dialog is to right click on the file entry in the dialog and select "Remove Dangling Entries".

Another method that I have discovered to remove these image entries from the GIMP Document History Dialog is to right click on the button in the upper right corner of the dialog and select "Remove Dangling Entries".

TheGIMP pauses after you make this selection from the menu. If you have opened many many images with your GIMP, the pause will be noticable. Once it has completed its task of removing mention of images no longer present, your Document History will only show the images that actually are on your computer.