3 ms·

So still no GTK3? I think when GTK4 is released in a few months, it would be a good time to move to GTK3 as they can still be outdated. I know I am being a bit

So still no GTK3? I think when GTK4 is released in a few months, it would be a good time to move to GTK3 as they can still be outdated. I know I am being a bit bitter for an open source project with less funding, but GIMP was supposed to be a poster boy GTK application in the first place.

upofadown 9y ago
The "G" in GTK+ stands for "Gimp". If Gimp is using GTK+ ver 2 who are we to say different? Perhaps ver 2 is the version and the rest are just pointless forks... This is a serious question in general. There will always be s steady stream of significant upgrades/changes of any popular open source project as later developers add in things they consider important. At some point the decision has to be made to stop following those changes. This decision is usually made by default when it turns out that no one can be bothered to follow the changes of a project from another project.
hisham_hm 9y ago
It's the other way around: GTK was created by Gimp -- it was originally the "Gimp Tool Kit". Obviously, the project went separate ways since.
damyyy 9y ago
This is just a myth. You make it sound like there was some purposeful intention to gimp and gtk. There was not. Gimp was created by some kids at berkeley who created gtk because at the time qt and motif had untenable cost and or licensing, or sucked. When the gnome project started years later gtk was chosen due to licensing considerations since ironically qt was “too free” ie pure gpl which limited its use in closed source software without licensing. At the time this was considered a major problem in unseating windows (back in 1998 when there was actually real vested interest that could be a thing)—- visual studio cost a little bit of money (but it was cheap) and you didn’t have to license anything to make closed source windows apps. You could write a GUI app in assembly and not pay ms a dime if you wanted. The Unix side of things was not so good. Motif was thousands of dollars. Anyway, turns out maintaining a professional image editing program is a lot of work. While it is true many fanboys named gimp as some kind of foss and gtk showcase its not like most of them were actively contributing to either gtk or gimp. There was never any longterm large scale commercial investment in gimp similar to how redhat threw massive resources into gnome and gtk.
- hisham_hm 9y ago
  > gtk was chosen due to licensing considerations since ironically qt was “too free” ie pure gpl which limited its use in closed source software without licensing This is wrong. GNOME was already well underway when Qt switched to GPL. Before that it used QPL and before that yet another license.
  - homarp 9y ago
    The GNOME desktop environment - https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/usenix98/freenix/icaza.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedin... "Sadly, the KDE effort is based on the Qt user interface toolkit which is a non-free library. The main problem is that modification of the toolkit is not allowed. The ability to modify the interface toolkit is a requirement of free software[6] and of the Open Source Software Guidelines[17]. Although Qt is released in source form, permission to redistribute changes made to it is denied."
  - yiyus 9y ago
    Indeed, there even was an attempt to produce an open source clone of Qt for KDE when Gnome was still getting started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_(toolkit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_(toolkit)
mrreelmo 9y ago
Looking at the roadmap (https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap) GTK3 or even 4 is planned for the 3.0 release.
yoz-y 9y ago
Note that it is quite fine not to jump on to GTK4, because it will not be stable for at least a year. https://blogs.gnome.org/desrt/2016/06/13/gtk-4-0-is-not-gtk-4/ https://blogs.gnome.org/desrt/2016/06/13/gtk-4-0-is-not-gtk-...
floatboth 9y ago
There is a gtk3 dev branch: https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/tree/gtk3-port-meson https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/tree/gtk3-port-meson — and it actually does work :)
- salamandar 8y ago
  Glad it works on someone else's computer (i'm the branch author). Actually https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/tree/gtk3-port https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/tree/gtk3-port may be more up to date as I'm just manually backporting to the meson port.
jononor 9y ago
The challenge for GIMP is that it exposes a lot of GTK in its API, which is used by lots of 3rd-party plugins. All which will break when moving from GTK2 to GTK3. At the same time there is an ongoing transition to use GEGL as the pixel manipulation API, which eventually plugins also need to be updated for. 2.10 is the release which provides all the new APIs for plugins to use, so they can start updating (but existing code will work). 3.0 will then remove the old pixel manipulation APIs, and also transition to GTK3+. This hopefully keeps the burden on plugin devs to a minimum, and keep the compatibility clear for users (plugins for GIMP2 dont work on GIMP3, and vica versa).

upofadown 9y ago

The "G" in GTK+ stands for "Gimp". If Gimp is using GTK+ ver 2 who are we to say different? Perhaps ver 2 is the version and the rest are just pointless forks... This is a serious question in general. There will always be s steady stream of significant upgrades/changes of any popular open source project as later developers add in things they consider important. At some point the decision has to be made to stop following those changes. This decision is usually made by default when it turns out that no one can be bothered to follow the changes of a project from another project.

hisham_hm 9y ago

It's the other way around: GTK was created by Gimp -- it was originally the "Gimp Tool Kit". Obviously, the project went separate ways since.

damyyy 9y ago

This is just a myth. You make it sound like there was some purposeful intention to gimp and gtk. There was not. Gimp was created by some kids at berkeley who created gtk because at the time qt and motif had untenable cost and or licensing, or sucked. When the gnome project started years later gtk was chosen due to licensing considerations since ironically qt was “too free” ie pure gpl which limited its use in closed source software without licensing. At the time this was considered a major problem in unseating windows (back in 1998 when there was actually real vested interest that could be a thing)—- visual studio cost a little bit of money (but it was cheap) and you didn’t have to license anything to make closed source windows apps. You could write a GUI app in assembly and not pay ms a dime if you wanted. The Unix side of things was not so good. Motif was thousands of dollars. Anyway, turns out maintaining a professional image editing program is a lot of work. While it is true many fanboys named gimp as some kind of foss and gtk showcase its not like most of them were actively contributing to either gtk or gimp. There was never any longterm large scale commercial investment in gimp similar to how redhat threw massive resources into gnome and gtk.

hisham_hm 9y ago
> gtk was chosen due to licensing considerations since ironically qt was “too free” ie pure gpl which limited its use in closed source software without licensing This is wrong. GNOME was already well underway when Qt switched to GPL. Before that it used QPL and before that yet another license.
- homarp 9y ago
  The GNOME desktop environment - https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/usenix98/freenix/icaza.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedin... "Sadly, the KDE effort is based on the Qt user interface toolkit which is a non-free library. The main problem is that modification of the toolkit is not allowed. The ability to modify the interface toolkit is a requirement of free software[6] and of the Open Source Software Guidelines[17]. Although Qt is released in source form, permission to redistribute changes made to it is denied."
- yiyus 9y ago
  Indeed, there even was an attempt to produce an open source clone of Qt for KDE when Gnome was still getting started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_(toolkit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_(toolkit)

mrreelmo 9y ago

Looking at the roadmap (https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap) GTK3 or even 4 is planned for the 3.0 release.

yoz-y 9y ago

Note that it is quite fine not to jump on to GTK4, because it will not be stable for at least a year. https://blogs.gnome.org/desrt/2016/06/13/gtk-4-0-is-not-gtk-4/ https://blogs.gnome.org/desrt/2016/06/13/gtk-4-0-is-not-gtk-...

floatboth 9y ago

There is a gtk3 dev branch: https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/tree/gtk3-port-meson https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/tree/gtk3-port-meson — and it actually does work :)

salamandar 8y ago
Glad it works on someone else's computer (i'm the branch author). Actually https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/tree/gtk3-port https://github.com/GNOME/gimp/tree/gtk3-port may be more up to date as I'm just manually backporting to the meson port.

jononor 9y ago

The challenge for GIMP is that it exposes a lot of GTK in its API, which is used by lots of 3rd-party plugins. All which will break when moving from GTK2 to GTK3. At the same time there is an ongoing transition to use GEGL as the pixel manipulation API, which eventually plugins also need to be updated for. 2.10 is the release which provides all the new APIs for plugins to use, so they can start updating (but existing code will work). 3.0 will then remove the old pixel manipulation APIs, and also transition to GTK3+. This hopefully keeps the burden on plugin devs to a minimum, and keep the compatibility clear for users (plugins for GIMP2 dont work on GIMP3, and vica versa).