6 ms·

Plans for Gimp 2.8 and beyond

58 points by macco 16y ago

pjscott 16y ago
THE FIRST PLAN INVOLVES SHOUTING! And apparently the Gimp people aren't using any sort of actual blog engine, so it's impossible to permalink the post in question, which is rather confusingly hidden on their front page. Rather than complaining about it, I'll just copy and paste the full text here: ---- In the face of all sorts of rumours and interpretations about the future of the project there is a call for clarification regarding development of GIMP. Currently GIMP team is working on finalizing the new stable v2.8 with many improvements such as layer groups, improved brush dynamics, a new unique transformation tool, optional single-window mode and more. There are two big obstacles in our way right now: missing specification on the last change in user interface and broken graphic tablets support in GTK+. We have already invested a lot of time into UI changes and brush dynamics, we treasure your continuous support for the project and thus we are determined to release v2.8 only when it's working out of box as expected for everybody. After releasing v2.8 the focus of development will shift to deep integration of GEGL — our new non-destructive image processing core. Results of this work will enable many features considered critical for use of GIMP in professional environment which is part of GIMP's product vision. It's a lot of work, and currently we don't have enough developers to make this change happen very fast. If you want to help us to get there faster, we encourage you to join gimp-developer mailing list and/or the IRC channel to discuss how you could contribute.
- kissickas 16y ago
  I looked for all caps and didn't find any, then for an exclamation point and found one after "Have fun!" Would you mind clarifying what you meant by your first sentence? I agree about the nonexistent permalink, though, so thanks for the copy-paste.
  - jmillikin 16y ago
    The original HN submission title was in all-caps
    - angusgr 16y ago
      That explains a lot, thank you.
      - pjscott 16y ago
        I was going to go back and edit it once it no longer made sense, but the edit time had expired at that point.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Mithrandir 16y ago
  NOT IN THE NEAR FUTURE.
teilo 16y ago
They have been promising the transition to GEGL for so long, it is practically vaporware. Yes, I realize that there are GEGL-based effects in the current builds - but I don't GEGL replacing the current core for a long time - and I have my doubts it ever will.
- liuliu 16y ago
  Maybe the lack of devs? I cannot imagine which commercial company would be interested in supporting GIMP development. Let's face it, financial support for open-source software development is critical (KDE/Gnome may be the exception, but the financial investment into these two may be justified indirectly). ImageMagick fit the niche that the web needs server-side image processing library and made money from it. But GIMP is client-side, semi-professional image processing software, who have the incentive to financially support it? (Maybe some professional graphic design companies, but again, they may not have the top-dev for image processing software, that is a big investment for them). I may miss something here, please correct me if I do so.
  - stuaxo 16y ago
    They are indeed lacking devs.
  - teilo 16y ago
    I don't disagree with anything that you say. Don't get me wrong. I am not blaming the devs or criticizing them. The work they have done is wonderful. But the state of development and the obstacles to taking this forward are what they are.
  - teyc 16y ago
    There is also a more general problem that Gimp is hard to build. I was doing some JavaFX exporter fixes and getting the environment right took most of the time. Otherwise, I found the code base quite clean.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Let's face it, financial support for open-source software development is critical (KDE/Gnome may be the exception, but the financial investment into these two may be justified indirectly). Well, in the case of KDE there's Qt licensing. I seem to recall some commercial support for Gnome as well.
jcw 16y ago
I could rant about a few things that bug me, but please let 2.8 bring a single-window UI. That would confirm to me that they're slowly getting towards something more usable.
- angusgr 16y ago
  From TFA: "optional single-window mode" (I'm also very excited about this.)
  - macco 16y ago
    You can test single window modus. With Gimp 2.7 - the development version of Gimp
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  I had a thought after the last discussion. As far as I can tell, the present GIMP multiple window mode feels pathologically brain dead because the tool windows get hidden by random windows from other applications (how dumb is that? knocking usability down by something like 90%). If the GIMP was to simply cause the tool windows to appear and disappear "smartly" based on whether a main GIMP window was present, the problem was be much less (I vaguely recall some early versions of some Adobe apps worked this way). I don't know if this is a better solution but it seems like a very easy solution. I.E., one that might have taken at most a month anywhere along the line (though my guess would be a week or less). But what do I know, (other than Linux GUI programing with C++ and QT)?
- hippich 16y ago
  There is single-window option in 2.7-dev. I am using 2.7 dev version for more then 6 months and it's stable enough IMHO. How to install it on Ubuntu from PPA - http://www.webupd8.org/2010/01/how-to-install-gimp-with-single-window.html http://www.webupd8.org/2010/01/how-to-install-gimp-with-sing...
- stuhacking 16y ago
  I hope they provide the option to disable it though. I'm a mac user - multiple windows per application is my bread and butter. I do agree that there needs to be better management of the tool dialogs though.
skbohra123 16y ago
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/plain/NEWS http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/plain/NEWS <-- list of changes in the current development version i.e. GIMP 2.7.1

58 points by macco 16y ago

THE FIRST PLAN INVOLVES SHOUTING! And apparently the Gimp people aren't using any sort of actual blog engine, so it's impossible to permalink the post in question, which is rather confusingly hidden on their front page. Rather than complaining about it, I'll just copy and paste the full text here: ---- In the face of all sorts of rumours and interpretations about the future of the project there is a call for clarification regarding development of GIMP. Currently GIMP team is working on finalizing the new stable v2.8 with many improvements such as layer groups, improved brush dynamics, a new unique transformation tool, optional single-window mode and more. There are two big obstacles in our way right now: missing specification on the last change in user interface and broken graphic tablets support in GTK+. We have already invested a lot of time into UI changes and brush dynamics, we treasure your continuous support for the project and thus we are determined to release v2.8 only when it's working out of box as expected for everybody. After releasing v2.8 the focus of development will shift to deep integration of GEGL — our new non-destructive image processing core. Results of this work will enable many features considered critical for use of GIMP in professional environment which is part of GIMP's product vision. It's a lot of work, and currently we don't have enough developers to make this change happen very fast. If you want to help us to get there faster, we encourage you to join gimp-developer mailing list and/or the IRC channel to discuss how you could contribute.

kissickas 16y ago
I looked for all caps and didn't find any, then for an exclamation point and found one after "Have fun!" Would you mind clarifying what you meant by your first sentence? I agree about the nonexistent permalink, though, so thanks for the copy-paste.
- jmillikin 16y ago
  The original HN submission title was in all-caps
  - angusgr 16y ago
    That explains a lot, thank you.
    - pjscott 16y ago
      I was going to go back and edit it once it no longer made sense, but the edit time had expired at that point.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Mithrandir 16y ago
NOT IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

teilo 16y ago

They have been promising the transition to GEGL for so long, it is practically vaporware. Yes, I realize that there are GEGL-based effects in the current builds - but I don't GEGL replacing the current core for a long time - and I have my doubts it ever will.

liuliu 16y ago
Maybe the lack of devs? I cannot imagine which commercial company would be interested in supporting GIMP development. Let's face it, financial support for open-source software development is critical (KDE/Gnome may be the exception, but the financial investment into these two may be justified indirectly). ImageMagick fit the niche that the web needs server-side image processing library and made money from it. But GIMP is client-side, semi-professional image processing software, who have the incentive to financially support it? (Maybe some professional graphic design companies, but again, they may not have the top-dev for image processing software, that is a big investment for them). I may miss something here, please correct me if I do so.
- stuaxo 16y ago
  They are indeed lacking devs.
- teilo 16y ago
  I don't disagree with anything that you say. Don't get me wrong. I am not blaming the devs or criticizing them. The work they have done is wonderful. But the state of development and the obstacles to taking this forward are what they are.
- teyc 16y ago
  There is also a more general problem that Gimp is hard to build. I was doing some JavaFX exporter fixes and getting the environment right took most of the time. Otherwise, I found the code base quite clean.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Let's face it, financial support for open-source software development is critical (KDE/Gnome may be the exception, but the financial investment into these two may be justified indirectly). Well, in the case of KDE there's Qt licensing. I seem to recall some commercial support for Gnome as well.

jcw 16y ago

I could rant about a few things that bug me, but please let 2.8 bring a single-window UI. That would confirm to me that they're slowly getting towards something more usable.

angusgr 16y ago
From TFA: "optional single-window mode" (I'm also very excited about this.)
- macco 16y ago
  You can test single window modus. With Gimp 2.7 - the development version of Gimp
joe_the_user 16y ago
I had a thought after the last discussion. As far as I can tell, the present GIMP multiple window mode feels pathologically brain dead because the tool windows get hidden by random windows from other applications (how dumb is that? knocking usability down by something like 90%). If the GIMP was to simply cause the tool windows to appear and disappear "smartly" based on whether a main GIMP window was present, the problem was be much less (I vaguely recall some early versions of some Adobe apps worked this way). I don't know if this is a better solution but it seems like a very easy solution. I.E., one that might have taken at most a month anywhere along the line (though my guess would be a week or less). But what do I know, (other than Linux GUI programing with C++ and QT)?
hippich 16y ago
There is single-window option in 2.7-dev. I am using 2.7 dev version for more then 6 months and it's stable enough IMHO. How to install it on Ubuntu from PPA - http://www.webupd8.org/2010/01/how-to-install-gimp-with-single-window.html http://www.webupd8.org/2010/01/how-to-install-gimp-with-sing...
stuhacking 16y ago
I hope they provide the option to disable it though. I'm a mac user - multiple windows per application is my bread and butter. I do agree that there needs to be better management of the tool dialogs though.

skbohra123 16y ago

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/plain/NEWS http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/plain/NEWS <-- list of changes in the current development version i.e. GIMP 2.7.1