@nprofile1q... the original GIMP user interface was not THAT bad, but it seems, that people who were adding new features where kind of confused with the original tool box and didn't find a way to integrate it with original "paintbrush" paradigm.
Also, the original trick of menu being invisible and available only on right-click was weird, but maybe consistent with UX of original X11 apps. At least, toolbox was available all the time.
I current version, menu can be found, where you would expect it 20 years ago (funny thing: in browser UX, menu is now not where you would expect 20 years ago and works little but like GIMP worked), but you have to open toolbox as new Window.
This is what I mean that "original GIMP UI was not that bad". I can use GIMP probably only because I started 20 years ago, and I now the features are there, only the new way to find these features is perhaps even more confusing, than the old way.
Speaking about "target group": well, programmers and coders in 1990s had to understand stuff like color channels, indexed colors, and so, even layers. Perhaps, GIMP would be powerful tool for making animated GIFs on Amiga ecosystem (before being adopted by web, GIF format was used by Amiga hobbyists and by BBS scene...)
GIMP is at least very powerful conversion, resizing and cropping tool for many classical image exchange formats. It is not so practical for creative work, perhaps because it was designed by people, who needed other specific tasks to be done.
There are some features, which nobody really wants or uses, but which were relatively easy to implement and other tools of the era had them too.
Speaking about UI... I still prefer Gtk over other toolkits. I use MATE desktop (GNOME 2 fork).
@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q...
