SUMMARY Currently in Gwenview the ability to zoom out/scale down the viewed image seems to be limited in the way that the image can't be made smaller than the width or heigth of the "image pane" (whose size depends on the window size). There are cases where I would find it handy to be able to zoom out further on an image to preview a small version of the image. As a partitial workaround it is possible to make the image smaller by resizing its window, but that often doesn't feel very convenient and comfortable to me. I have attached two screenshots to illustrate the request: One shows the current state of Gwenview, and the other one shows how it would look like if I could zoom out further (the image is displayed with EoG where this is possible). STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Open an image 2. Try to zoom out as far as possible OBSERVED RESULT The ability to zoom out is limited to the width or heigth of the "image pane" (first screenshot). EXPECTED RESULT I would like to zoom out even further (second screenshot)- SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Distro: Kubuntu 20.10 KDE Plasma Version: 5.19.5 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.74.0 Qt Version: 5.14.2
Created attachment 134720 [details] Gwenview current state
Created attachment 134722 [details] How it would look like if I could zoom out further
Would be nice feature and should not be too complicated to add. Checking the code, there is the following commentary: https://invent.kde.org/graphics/gwenview/-/blob/master/lib/documentview/documentview.cpp#L918 "There is no point zooming out less than zoomToFit, but make sure it does not get too small either" Let's see what others think of this
@Antonio Thanks for the hint to the relevant code snippet - I had searched for this but didn't find it on my fist attempt (mainly because I erroneously thought that "documentview" was not related to viewing images). I seem to get nice results if I divide the value of d->mAdapter->computeZoomToFit() by 3.0 at line 920 in documentview.cpp (git trunk), but this is just a rough proof-of-concept for my personal use.
*** Bug 384857 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
No, please do not implement this! The code comment is right, there is not point for the general case. Suppose your spouse is presenting a slideshow and zooms in on some detail. To zoom out again, she simply scrolls all the way to the end until zooming stops and the image fills the screen. With the proposed change she would have to be very careful not to zoom out too far. That would be fiddly and annoying especially with a touchpad. A small version of the image can already be seen in the zoomable thumbnail/folder view. Gwenview is for normal users not for edge cases. Please please do not break the good user experiences!!
Zooming out is quite useful because it allows getting a sense of how an image will be perceived when seen at a particular size.
Is the feature for web development or normal users? She wants to view the holiday pictures and not "perceive" the small size! Use image editor with scaling function for that or use professional program like digikam. Features are not everything. Good experience important too. Code comment is right. Tip: look at IPad or Samsung tablet: no underzoom available either. Are you better designers than their experts? Probably not! No wonder the year of the linux desktop will never come if you keep adding more obscure features and toggles and forget about the user majority. Sadly Gwenview suffers more and more from this too.
*** Bug 413979 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
You can review logo in thumbnail view, no? And logo review is very special use case, no? dont forget about photo viewer, that's what gwenview is optimized for! use special kde app for icon review, you can ask about it in chat.
To expand on Alberto's comment, I wouldn't say the issue is necessarily only about logo/icon review. Imagine you are browsing a list of photographs to select a subset for social media. Switching to thumbnail view and back repeatedly could be inconvenient. But I agree that zooming out to zoomToFit should still be the default when Ctrl+scrolling. Maybe the buttons in the bottom right corner might gain the ability to zoom out further? Or make Ctrl+Shift+scroll behave differently than Ctrl+scroll? The latter option would be difficult to discover for new users, though.
In reply to mao's comments: For me using thumbnail view would not be sufficent because a) I would like to have just the single image displayed at the centre of the screen and not framed by other images from the same directory at a random screen location, and b) The size you can choose for thumbnails is simply to small. Regarding viewing images on tablets/smartphones: I think the difference is that the screen on such devices is usually significantly smaller than on laptops/monitors, so there is less need to zoom far out of a picture. But e.g. on a 24" screen like mine this is quite different. Nevertheless, I agree that there may be use cases like the one you describe where zooming out smaller than "fit to window" can be undesired. Perhaps it would be possible to make the ability to zoom out further an optional setting that nobody would have to use if they don't want to? Or something like Lukas proposes (zoom out further with Ctrl+Shift) would also be fine for me.
Nobody forces you to maximize the Gwenview window. Just make it smaller -> problem solved. Or maybe what you actually want is a way to increase the border spacing around a picture? This has nothing to do with zoom! Think about it: Here only people with minor use case problem will complain, majority of happy users will not comment. I fear in the future Gwenview will become a Frankenstein program with lots of weird shortcuts and options and bad default user behavior ;(
Tablets and phones are mostly used for content consumption, and computers frequently for content creation. You interact with a car in a predictable fashion, but interactions in a computer are highly diverse and always changing. What makes KDE the most popular desktop is that it understood this principle. You can adapt its interface to different scenarios at the user level, without having to program. For being able to adapt, policies shall be independent from mechanisms. The best policies shall be encouraged by making them default, but never ENFORCED. And fitting the image to the window should be the special case, because that is more surprising.
Are you saying Gwenview is primarily used for content creation and therefor should be optimized for it? Do you have data to support that claim? Look at bugzilla, you see it is used for lots of photos, only few little images like icons. "For being able to adapt, policies shall be independent from mechanisms." That's what I'll tell my spouse when she struggles to undo the zoom in the presentation, or when she is overwhelmed in the settings page. Surely she will be very happy about this wisdom, thank you. "that is more surprising" No, not going back to the original zoom / overzooming would be surprising.
@mao Sorry, I don't get the same impression. That said software design is my job. Also see that your spouse is not data to backup. You would need the feedback of more people and INTERPRET what does it really mean yourself. Design is not an exact science like 1+1. What is more pleasing to use is not a hard fact, but colored by intuition. The rule is: if plenty of users complain, most of the time there is a good reason. Even when the solution isn't usually exactly what they suggest. My intuition says: for zooming at any level, simply using the mouse wheel is the least surprising thing. The rest: weirdness, trying to be too smart.
Huh? I asked you for data to backup your claim, and instead of answering you claim that my example does not count. Nice try, but did not work! UI design and software design are two different things. KDE's apps are designed mostly by the latter, and it shows (badly). Back to topic: How do you suggest my spouse can reset the zoom? Currently it works very intuitively, which you want to take away from her. Also she is not alone, there a lots of users like her, which KDE devs often forget in their dev bubble.
Perhaps this could be an acceptable compromise? We could make behavior consistent with how zooming works in web browsers (or at least Firefox) and reset zoom with Ctrl+0 and alternatively with the already existing "Fit" button in the bottom right corner.
That would not be a good compromise. If you zoom in with touchpad, you zoom out with touchpad too. The new "feature" would mean overshooting, which is bad. Nobody knows about keyboard shortcuts in this context. In presentation mode there is no zoom toolbar, you forgot that! If at all, overzooming could be an optional feature if you are so keen on making the settings page even more overcrowded.
I think the wheel should zoom in and out as it is, while having a button on the UI to fit to the window.
Are you serious? You are proposing that carefully moving cursor to a tiny button (which must be tiny, otherwise it covers up the fullscreen image) and making extra click is an improvement over simply scroll-zooming back until hitting the "end". You know, there is a reason websites stop scrolling at the bottom. Even if you want to move the last line to the top of the screen you cannot do it. Restricting movement improves user friendliness, not reduces it. Think about zoom slider too. Compare libre office to Gwenview zoom slider, you will see the difference easily with a touchpad. If you are absolutely 100% sure zooming out too much is a must-have feature and under no circumstance it can be done by changing the window size or the sidebar size, do it like so: 1. option to toggle default behavior in settings 2. key modifier for temporary toggle behavior Big caveat: huge maintenance cost, user interface overload, complexity. But again, make user study first to ensure this is needed at all. Actual users, not bugzilla nerd users. Since you said you are a software design expert, you should know how to conduct and design user study properly (not some fake opinion poll).
You know, I have been using Eye Of Mate for a while 🤣 Deal with it 😎
*** Bug 439777 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Hi there, everyone! I use Gwenview to sort out duplicates and find the best images after importing them from my camera's sd card. I am a profesisonal photographer and hell, it makes a lot of sense to view an image less than 100% to see how an image behaves in smaller sizes. It is definately no solution to resize the whole window. That destroyes the workflow. I swear, Gwenview is the best photo viewer to fit the needs of photographer (at least for me), this little feautre would make this fine piece of software perfect. I see the argument, that Gwenview is for normal users and not for special experts or niches. But even those users get larger and larger displays, so they would have an advantage as well. ======================= ATTACHED MY SUGGESTION: ======================= I would welcome the compromise, that scrolling to 100% has a lock on zoomToFit at first and a special shortcut like ctrl+shift+scroll scrolls out further. Additionally there could be a button on the right corner but thats not important to me. The software would stay user-friendly but gets another excellent feature the same way. Even IMHO it would be the best for Gwenview to adapt browser-like zooming, as mentioned before. Zooming like the user wants and resetting the view with ctrl+0. That's the modern way to go and everyone is used to it. Gwenview feels strange in this regard at the moment. But I don't want to grumble! The compromise above should do the trick. Otherwise I would have the need for another software. And that would be a shame because Gwenviews really is very good an nicely integrated with KDE. Come on, mao, the requested compromise doesn't effect normal users the way you described it.
qView is even better.
Hi everyone, is there a new status on this? Is the compromise I described a viable path between the prevailing opinions? When can we expect the implementation? No pressure ;-))
*** Bug 451436 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Came here for opening a bug on the same topic, but fortunately found this one first. Being able to scale the content to sizes smaller than the viewport is something I sorely miss as well. From my point of view that's an essential feature for an image viewer. While I also see the advantages of the current behavior for non-technical users, why not do it the way KDE does best: Give users a choice. I believe making the minimum zoom level a configuration option with the current behavior as its default would satisfy all users.