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>Most of the open source tools in the embedded space are just a bit crap. Anyone who sincerely thinks GIMP can replace Photoshop or is otherwise good will neve

>Most of the open source tools in the embedded space are just a bit crap. Anyone who sincerely thinks GIMP can replace Photoshop or is otherwise good will never understand why professionals eschew open source software when there's work that needs doing.

regularfry 2y ago
It's interesting to compare Blender and Gimp on this axis. And to a certain degree Emacs and VS Code; or Gnome and KDE; or gcc and clang. It's easy for a certain sort of open source project to get so distracted by the point it is trying to prove that it forgets that it has to actually be good.
- SirHumphrey 2y ago
  The only unfair comparison here is Emacs and VS Code, because their goals are a bit orthogonal. VS Code is meant to be easy but extendable code editor, while Emacs dropped the easy part at least 20 years ago.
  - ginko 2y ago
    Eh, it's not that hard. Just completely different from anything else.
    - SirHumphrey 2y ago
      I agree, but it’s definitely not meant to be beginners friendly.
    - regularfry 2y ago
      "Hard" is subjective, and part of good UI design is reusing visual cues and affordances that the user has already learned elsewhere. A good UI should be discoverable. Emacs is not that. Nor, for that matter, is FreeCAD.
      - chefandy 2y ago
        Discoverability is a huge problem in lots of FOSS interfaces. Most end users will read exactly zero lines of dedicated software documentation in their entire lives because they don’t have to, and that is a good thing for end users. I find most developers don’t even notice the great interfaces in their lives. Compare how clunky online shopping was in the 90s with a modern food ordering terminal. How many people learn to use Slack without consulting the manual? Now how about IRC? Keep in mind that slack is vastly more complex, and for many things, uses the same command technique and notation as IRC... slash commands, hash tag channels, etc. The designers knew that was a brilliant part of IRC so they embraced it knowing advanced users would be right at home, and new users had alternatives, but would probably come around to the advanced way of doing things eventually. One of the reasons chefs rarely have anything to do with cookbooks they write past the initial set of recipes is because it’s really hard to see things from an inexpert perspective. People ask us things like “how long do I cook [something] and we often have no idea how to answer that question. Knowing how much that can change depending on the heat source, initial ingredient temperature, how long it’s been unrefrigerated, the water content of the pieces you’ve got, the shape of the pieces, etc etc etc, we just say “uh, until it’s done?” But it takes a lot of skill and experience to realize when most things you need to cook are done, so recipe developers and cookbook writers do a ton of testing to figure out about how long it takes to get you 80% of the way there and then give some simple ways to approximately gauge doneness in that context. If they’d learn a few simple things that “aren’t that hard”, they’d have precise, bang-on results like I do, every time. But unless you cook the same things so the time, you’d need to repeat that across all of the different cooking scenarios that require specialized knowledge. Chefs run into that because people want us to tell them how to cook things all the time, so the skill gap is apparent, and we see the value in someone who knows how to address that. It was never really shown to me like that as a developer, so I see why so many get stuck in the “come on, it’s not that hard” mindset, generally. Interface design is conceptually harder, because you need to really consider many skill levels that have different needs. The answer isn’t developers reading some article to “make nicer looking interfaces” or “dumb things down”— which we’ll just piss people off in the end and many of them will be developers assuming it’s an interface designer’s fault. The answer is to deliberately enfranchise designers into the FOSS process to figure out who would benefit from the software, and make an interface that can serve everyone’s needs: inexpert and advanced users alike, if that make sense. You do not have remove advanced functionality to make it useful to non-developer users. So the first step is to put aside the dev nerd machismo for a minute and recognize that designers serve a crucial purpose that isn’t “dumbing things down” or “making things look nice” and that most developers have no idea how to do it themselves. Once that’s a thing, figuring out how to enfranchise designers into FOSS will be the next step.
nubinetwork 2y ago
Then maybe they should help make gimp better... I'm no "professional" but it works just fine for what I want it to do. /shrug
wink 2y ago
GIMP is kinda odd insofar as for me (who learned to use Photoshop 25y ago) that it (just like every other tool) just seemed cumbersome and clunky with the shortcuts. I couldn't even use German Photoshop because some shortcuts are different. Some other tools were barely usable for what I tried to do, so I think it's unfair to single out GIMP, although the old multi-windowed interface was just something else. The functionality wasn't even the biggest problem. And JFTR, I'm not talking about anything that came to Photoshop in the last... 15 years or so, I was just slicing PSDs for table layouts and making wallpapers, not actually editing photos like a pro :P
- KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
  > although the old multi-windowed interface was just something else Well, it's pretty good for multi-monitor setup. Dedicating the whole monitor for the image without endless panels in the way is convenient.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Yeah, considering how common dual-monitor setups are these days, I'm surprised people haven't revisited the Gimp's UI. Why put everything into a single window when you can put parts of it on the 2nd monitor?
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      >I'm surprised people haven't revisited the Gimp's UI. The most likely reason is the GIMP devs don't consider it a use case.
      - KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
        It still works.
        Dalewyn 2y ago
        NOTABUG WONTFIX WORKSFORME

regularfry 2y ago

It's interesting to compare Blender and Gimp on this axis. And to a certain degree Emacs and VS Code; or Gnome and KDE; or gcc and clang. It's easy for a certain sort of open source project to get so distracted by the point it is trying to prove that it forgets that it has to actually be good.

SirHumphrey 2y ago
The only unfair comparison here is Emacs and VS Code, because their goals are a bit orthogonal. VS Code is meant to be easy but extendable code editor, while Emacs dropped the easy part at least 20 years ago.
- ginko 2y ago
  Eh, it's not that hard. Just completely different from anything else.
  - SirHumphrey 2y ago
    I agree, but it’s definitely not meant to be beginners friendly.
  - regularfry 2y ago
    "Hard" is subjective, and part of good UI design is reusing visual cues and affordances that the user has already learned elsewhere. A good UI should be discoverable. Emacs is not that. Nor, for that matter, is FreeCAD.
    - chefandy 2y ago
      Discoverability is a huge problem in lots of FOSS interfaces. Most end users will read exactly zero lines of dedicated software documentation in their entire lives because they don’t have to, and that is a good thing for end users. I find most developers don’t even notice the great interfaces in their lives. Compare how clunky online shopping was in the 90s with a modern food ordering terminal. How many people learn to use Slack without consulting the manual? Now how about IRC? Keep in mind that slack is vastly more complex, and for many things, uses the same command technique and notation as IRC... slash commands, hash tag channels, etc. The designers knew that was a brilliant part of IRC so they embraced it knowing advanced users would be right at home, and new users had alternatives, but would probably come around to the advanced way of doing things eventually. One of the reasons chefs rarely have anything to do with cookbooks they write past the initial set of recipes is because it’s really hard to see things from an inexpert perspective. People ask us things like “how long do I cook [something] and we often have no idea how to answer that question. Knowing how much that can change depending on the heat source, initial ingredient temperature, how long it’s been unrefrigerated, the water content of the pieces you’ve got, the shape of the pieces, etc etc etc, we just say “uh, until it’s done?” But it takes a lot of skill and experience to realize when most things you need to cook are done, so recipe developers and cookbook writers do a ton of testing to figure out about how long it takes to get you 80% of the way there and then give some simple ways to approximately gauge doneness in that context. If they’d learn a few simple things that “aren’t that hard”, they’d have precise, bang-on results like I do, every time. But unless you cook the same things so the time, you’d need to repeat that across all of the different cooking scenarios that require specialized knowledge. Chefs run into that because people want us to tell them how to cook things all the time, so the skill gap is apparent, and we see the value in someone who knows how to address that. It was never really shown to me like that as a developer, so I see why so many get stuck in the “come on, it’s not that hard” mindset, generally. Interface design is conceptually harder, because you need to really consider many skill levels that have different needs. The answer isn’t developers reading some article to “make nicer looking interfaces” or “dumb things down”— which we’ll just piss people off in the end and many of them will be developers assuming it’s an interface designer’s fault. The answer is to deliberately enfranchise designers into the FOSS process to figure out who would benefit from the software, and make an interface that can serve everyone’s needs: inexpert and advanced users alike, if that make sense. You do not have remove advanced functionality to make it useful to non-developer users. So the first step is to put aside the dev nerd machismo for a minute and recognize that designers serve a crucial purpose that isn’t “dumbing things down” or “making things look nice” and that most developers have no idea how to do it themselves. Once that’s a thing, figuring out how to enfranchise designers into FOSS will be the next step.

nubinetwork 2y ago

Then maybe they should help make gimp better... I'm no "professional" but it works just fine for what I want it to do. /shrug

wink 2y ago

GIMP is kinda odd insofar as for me (who learned to use Photoshop 25y ago) that it (just like every other tool) just seemed cumbersome and clunky with the shortcuts. I couldn't even use German Photoshop because some shortcuts are different. Some other tools were barely usable for what I tried to do, so I think it's unfair to single out GIMP, although the old multi-windowed interface was just something else. The functionality wasn't even the biggest problem. And JFTR, I'm not talking about anything that came to Photoshop in the last... 15 years or so, I was just slicing PSDs for table layouts and making wallpapers, not actually editing photos like a pro :P

KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
> although the old multi-windowed interface was just something else Well, it's pretty good for multi-monitor setup. Dedicating the whole monitor for the image without endless panels in the way is convenient.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Yeah, considering how common dual-monitor setups are these days, I'm surprised people haven't revisited the Gimp's UI. Why put everything into a single window when you can put parts of it on the 2nd monitor?
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >I'm surprised people haven't revisited the Gimp's UI. The most likely reason is the GIMP devs don't consider it a use case.
    - KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
      It still works.
      - Dalewyn 2y ago
        NOTABUG WONTFIX WORKSFORME