native rotation setting for the ellipse select and draw tools
Edit by Jehan on 2023-12-16: report repurposed to be only about the third suggested feature because the 2 first points are already implemented in GIMP 2.99/3.0 code.
Original title was: Please allow objects like guides and paths to be placed outside the canvas!
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Description of the feature
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I desperately wish guides could be dragged off-canvas and NOT disappear. It's all about making vanishing points practical. Otherwise I have to start with a ridiculously huge canvas area just to store the exact coordinates of a single pixel's worth of data, as a vanishing point in-file. As is, I'd have to work with an order of magnitude or more canvas area than necessary, wasting a lot of space and degrading ergonomics.
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Paths being available off-canvas would also be really helpful. Can't tell you how many times I've tried 3-point perspective based compositions, only to find I can't produce circular paths beyond the current image boundaries without blowing up the canvas size. Which is painful, because without that circle I can't easily construct 3-point perspective realistically without an unreasonably massive image size. Really bad for comics, in which each panel is certain to have different vanishing point positions.
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(Last and least) Having a native rotation setting for the ellipse select and draw tools. Ie, once the major and minor radii are set, press a modifier button so a protractor appears on screen, allowing you to rotate the ellipse as a final step in its editing. (An attempt to draw a character looking into a mirror in perspective) -->
Use cases
All these in concert would allow anyone to produce perfect 3-point perspective with camera-like curvature, and even realistic hand-drawn fisheye effects. Even if only a handful of people would go that far with it.
In short I'd happily sacrifice dragging guides off canvas as a means to delete them, instead of only manually deleting them in the menu, or even dragging them past the rulers, as long as they stay in place at every point within the ruler GUIs. Guides are abstractions that have incredible utility, even if they don't intersect the canvas. Disallowing all objects outside the canvas is somewhat arbitrary and crippling. Anyway, thanks for GIMP, and thanks for reading!