5 ms·

That inability doesn't only show in not implementing features but also in the way functions are implemented - A good example is the forced save to xcf introduce

That inability doesn't only show in not implementing features but also in the way functions are implemented - A good example is the forced save to xcf introduced in 2.8. Apparently it is more professional. Anyway there is a patch for that by vitalif. You can find prebuild packages here: http://vmx.yourcmc.ru/var/debian/unstable/ http://vmx.yourcmc.ru/var/debian/unstable/ It will fix most problems by removing the save/export filetype restriction and disabling some forced warnings. Another thing I found recently when trying to use GIMP for a simple task was that GIMP is "not a drawing program". You have no good way to handle simple vector shapes and lines. There are some semi-functional workarounds using selections or the drawing tool or even a filter (render/gfig). These all have various downsides in that they cannot be easily adjusted once applied to an image. There is no good reason for simple shape vector editing not being in GIMP since you need some vector functions for say Font rendering. Similar Apps I cannot use in Linux (wine is not an option thanks to DRM) have had functions like that since the early 90ies.

kongin 5y ago
The whole ecosystem around gtk is extremely insular, the devs are hostile and think the users idiots for not doing things the right way. Compare to the qt krita and you see the difference. It's a paint program, but it already works better for most photo manipulation tasks. Give it another few years of development and gimp will only be used in scripting pipelines.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  I think most of the gtk maintainers are European, hence the hostility. I haven't had a lot of luck communicating with any Open Source projects in the EU over the years. I will probably end up forking any projects that are important to me. As I've mentioned before, HN should ban European IP addresses.
trulyme 5y ago
Agree 100%. About save/export debacle, someone made a plugin which makes saving to non-xcf easier [0] - big thank you to them. It allowed me to still use Gimp when I had to manually edit 100s of PNGs. It is incredibly frustrating to see good software (I love Gimp otherwise) tarnished with such rookie mistakes/decisions. [0] https://shallowsky.com/software/gimp-save/ https://shallowsky.com/software/gimp-save/
- jbrnh 5y ago
  Why is shift-ctrl-E for 'export' difficult?
  - blkhawk 5y ago
    Why is entering your car through the back hatch difficult? I mean if you could just leave out the front side door you could use those resources to improve enter-abilty through the back hatch. This could also improve the loading and unloading of goods through the back hatch for more professional uses.
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      I use Ctrl-E myself. Am usually annoyed by little inconsistencies like this, but this one just never registered for some reason.
  - trulyme 5y ago
    Because I'm not exporting but saving, and it doesn't work the same way as Ctrl+S should. If I have opened a file and changed it, I expect Ctrl+S(/E) to override it. What I do not want it to select a file or answer dialogs, asking me if I really want that. And when I close the app I don't want to confirm that I really don't care about xcf and yes, I want my changes "lost". And I especially don't want to lose my changes because I thought that I have pressed (Shift?)+Ctrl+E and that this warning can be disregarded. I might be wrong in some details because it's been a long time since I last used Gimp without this plugin, but the whole process is so brain-dead that it is incomprehensible how anyone could defend it. I am guessing that if one of the core developers had to manually edit 100 PNGs they would revert their position in a blink of an eye. /rant
- blkhawk 5y ago
  GIMP is approaching great in so many areas - its like finding a turd was added on purpose to a great meal - you would get more upset about that than if you learned the same about a pile of dirt.
rleigh 5y ago
Absolutely. For my workflow, the XCF requirement and the need to manually export were completely wrong. In the 23 years I've used it, I've never once needed the XCF file format. I acknowledge that others will need it, but I don't, and the change to the workflow made it significantly less usable for me. This again comes back to the project management and project goals. There is very clearly a desired workflow and feature set that users are expected to use, and deviations from this workflow are not desired or well supported, and accommodations for non-standard workflows are not well received. As a minor developer of open-source software, I've always been surprised at the diverse range of uses people have attempted with my software. Often things I'd never considered. In most cases, I tried to accommodate these uses so long as they could fit within the application design, and occasionally with some refactoring to fit them in. Because in most cases this was of net benefit to the application, widening its appeal and usability, and driving cleanup of the architecture to make it more flexible and more amenable to extension. The unwillingness of the GIMP developers to support fairly basic vector and path operations speaks volumes. There's clearly a demand for it. They would be self-contained and not have any major impact upon the wider application. And yet, they have been repeatedly rejected. If I was the maintainer, I'd have considered and allowed their addition. But it seems that the GIMP developers do not want to expand the remit of their application, even if it would be of net benefit.
- BrightGlow 5y ago
  Please don't blame open source volunteers for not having the right skillset or for not having enough time to address every concern or merge every patch that comes their way. Everyone's got their strengths and weaknesses. I'm sure the GIMP developers would love to make a program that is really good at everything, but reality has a way of making that difficult. If you've got some spare time and can help with reviewing and merging and maintaining patches, maybe you can talk to them and work something out? Remember that any patch that gets merged has to be maintained for several years, so maybe you can see their reluctance there.
  - rleigh 5y ago
    I'm well aware of the constraints of open source development and project management, having been involved in it for nearly 25 years at this point. In the case of this project, I was involved with it for several years as a maintainer of the Print plugin, if you care to read some of my other posts about the history. You're wrong about the GIMP developers wanting a program that is "really good at everything". If that was the case, then they wouldn't have deliberately rejected so many proposals for improving workflows and adding features over the years. Film-GIMP is the most high-profile example, but there are dozens more. This is nothing to do with not having enough time. It's a deliberate design choice, which is theirs to make. They chose not to foster a community of contributors around the project. And they chose not to implement many of the most basic features their user base asked for. Again, their choice. As for "talking to them and working something out", that hasn't happened in the entire history of the project. What is missing here isn't a lack of time or a lack of technical skill. It's a lack of effective project management, a lack of direction, and an inability to delegate.

kongin 5y ago

The whole ecosystem around gtk is extremely insular, the devs are hostile and think the users idiots for not doing things the right way. Compare to the qt krita and you see the difference. It's a paint program, but it already works better for most photo manipulation tasks. Give it another few years of development and gimp will only be used in scripting pipelines.

redis_mlc 5y ago
I think most of the gtk maintainers are European, hence the hostility. I haven't had a lot of luck communicating with any Open Source projects in the EU over the years. I will probably end up forking any projects that are important to me. As I've mentioned before, HN should ban European IP addresses.

trulyme 5y ago

Agree 100%. About save/export debacle, someone made a plugin which makes saving to non-xcf easier [0] - big thank you to them. It allowed me to still use Gimp when I had to manually edit 100s of PNGs. It is incredibly frustrating to see good software (I love Gimp otherwise) tarnished with such rookie mistakes/decisions. [0] https://shallowsky.com/software/gimp-save/ https://shallowsky.com/software/gimp-save/

jbrnh 5y ago
Why is shift-ctrl-E for 'export' difficult?
- blkhawk 5y ago
  Why is entering your car through the back hatch difficult? I mean if you could just leave out the front side door you could use those resources to improve enter-abilty through the back hatch. This could also improve the loading and unloading of goods through the back hatch for more professional uses.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    I use Ctrl-E myself. Am usually annoyed by little inconsistencies like this, but this one just never registered for some reason.
- trulyme 5y ago
  Because I'm not exporting but saving, and it doesn't work the same way as Ctrl+S should. If I have opened a file and changed it, I expect Ctrl+S(/E) to override it. What I do not want it to select a file or answer dialogs, asking me if I really want that. And when I close the app I don't want to confirm that I really don't care about xcf and yes, I want my changes "lost". And I especially don't want to lose my changes because I thought that I have pressed (Shift?)+Ctrl+E and that this warning can be disregarded. I might be wrong in some details because it's been a long time since I last used Gimp without this plugin, but the whole process is so brain-dead that it is incomprehensible how anyone could defend it. I am guessing that if one of the core developers had to manually edit 100 PNGs they would revert their position in a blink of an eye. /rant
blkhawk 5y ago
GIMP is approaching great in so many areas - its like finding a turd was added on purpose to a great meal - you would get more upset about that than if you learned the same about a pile of dirt.

rleigh 5y ago

Absolutely. For my workflow, the XCF requirement and the need to manually export were completely wrong. In the 23 years I've used it, I've never once needed the XCF file format. I acknowledge that others will need it, but I don't, and the change to the workflow made it significantly less usable for me. This again comes back to the project management and project goals. There is very clearly a desired workflow and feature set that users are expected to use, and deviations from this workflow are not desired or well supported, and accommodations for non-standard workflows are not well received. As a minor developer of open-source software, I've always been surprised at the diverse range of uses people have attempted with my software. Often things I'd never considered. In most cases, I tried to accommodate these uses so long as they could fit within the application design, and occasionally with some refactoring to fit them in. Because in most cases this was of net benefit to the application, widening its appeal and usability, and driving cleanup of the architecture to make it more flexible and more amenable to extension. The unwillingness of the GIMP developers to support fairly basic vector and path operations speaks volumes. There's clearly a demand for it. They would be self-contained and not have any major impact upon the wider application. And yet, they have been repeatedly rejected. If I was the maintainer, I'd have considered and allowed their addition. But it seems that the GIMP developers do not want to expand the remit of their application, even if it would be of net benefit.

BrightGlow 5y ago
Please don't blame open source volunteers for not having the right skillset or for not having enough time to address every concern or merge every patch that comes their way. Everyone's got their strengths and weaknesses. I'm sure the GIMP developers would love to make a program that is really good at everything, but reality has a way of making that difficult. If you've got some spare time and can help with reviewing and merging and maintaining patches, maybe you can talk to them and work something out? Remember that any patch that gets merged has to be maintained for several years, so maybe you can see their reluctance there.
- rleigh 5y ago
  I'm well aware of the constraints of open source development and project management, having been involved in it for nearly 25 years at this point. In the case of this project, I was involved with it for several years as a maintainer of the Print plugin, if you care to read some of my other posts about the history. You're wrong about the GIMP developers wanting a program that is "really good at everything". If that was the case, then they wouldn't have deliberately rejected so many proposals for improving workflows and adding features over the years. Film-GIMP is the most high-profile example, but there are dozens more. This is nothing to do with not having enough time. It's a deliberate design choice, which is theirs to make. They chose not to foster a community of contributors around the project. And they chose not to implement many of the most basic features their user base asked for. Again, their choice. As for "talking to them and working something out", that hasn't happened in the entire history of the project. What is missing here isn't a lack of time or a lack of technical skill. It's a lack of effective project management, a lack of direction, and an inability to delegate.