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I'm told it's taken them two decades to release this essential feature. What have they been doing for all this time? I think they need to talk to people who edi

I'm told it's taken them two decades to release this essential feature. What have they been doing for all this time? I think they need to talk to people who edit photos, and focus their efforts on the many low-hanging fruit which would drastically improve the UX of their app (much like Blender did). Perhaps they are doing this to a degree, I see mentions of UI changes, but I wonder why they only think of it now and if they're involving the right people.

squigz 2y ago
https://developer.gimp.org/core/submit-patch/ https://developer.gimp.org/core/submit-patch/
- James_K 2y ago
  I fell for this before. Wasted a few weeks' free time adding thumbnails to the GTK file chooser, only to find out that the library itself has bugs which they refused to fix that make it difficult to do. Now I just have a patched version installed locally. The only way to improve these projects is to change how they're managed, which you can't do with a patch.
  - tuna74 2y ago
    There is thumbnails support in the GTK4 file chooser now. That probably required shitloads of fixes in GTK, but now it works. The way to change projects is to write good code and work together with the other devs that made something you wanted to contribute to and then improve it together.
    - James_K 2y ago
      I fundamentally disagree. The problem isn't that there were no thumbnails, but that it took decades to implement them. The cause of that problem can't seriously have been that people weren't programming hard enough. I think lots of code was likely written in that time. If we assume, as you seem to, that the issue was not enough code being written, then GTK would need to increase its count of contributors by 120 times to ship that feature in the span of two months. Your implication here is that it takes thousands of people multiple months to program a file chooser with thumbnails. I think one person should be able to do it in that time, and that the problem was something other than writing code. What has changed about the project to guarantee that the next important feature won't take 20 years to implement?
      - tuna74 2y ago
        There were no thumbnails because no one wrote the necessary infrastructure before some one actually did. One person did most of the work and there were no other problems than actually writing code.
        hulitu 2y ago
        > There were no thumbnails because no one wrote the necessary infrastructure before some one actually did. We are talking about GTK 3, right ? " Why not be honest and resign yourself to the fact that version 0.8 is followed by version 0.8, which is then followed by version 0.8? " jwz
        tuna74 2y ago
        I don't get you comment here.
        James_K 2y ago
        Okay, so what were all the other people doing? If it's one person's worth of work (as I suggested), and there was at least one person working on GIMP, why did they not do it? The fact that it was easy to do doesn't explain why it didn't happen. If anything, it makes it more mysterious. Unless you are genuinely telling me that there wasn't a single person working continuously on GTK for 20 years. It seems to me that they lack a process for deciding something needs to happen and then doing that thing.
        tuna74 2y ago
        The people who are doing the work, or a paying for the work, on GTK think that other tasks are more important or fun to do than the tasks you wish should be done. You might think that they are wrong and that other features are more important than a modern accessibility stack or whatever else the GTK devs have been doing, but the only way to change that is to actually engage in that project.
        2y ago
    - inferiorhuman 2y ago
      > There is thumbnails support in the GTK4 file chooser now. GIMP doesn't use GTK4.
- StefanBatory 2y ago
  If I see a helicopter that crashed down on a tree, I can say something is wrong even if I don't have license for flying.
  - SiempreViernes 2y ago
    If you had to elbow your way trough a big crowd to actually see the crash, positing "A crash!" on social media is not an useful service for anyone.
  - squigz 2y ago
    Possibly true, but it doesn't mean you can talk about the competency of the pilot(s), either.
vanderZwan 2y ago
I was about to leave this as a top-level comment, but it might be more appropriate as a response to your question. "They" are a handful of maintainers doing relatively thankless work. This is not a well-paid full-time job for them. Take Øyvind Kolås, the maintainer and lead developer of babl/GEGL, which is the technology underlying GIMP 3.0. He's barely being paid for this work. Nowadays he has a patreon, which also is directly linked from the gimp.org website, encouraging you to directly support him[0][1]. Right now those patreon donations add up to about... $1300 a month. And the number used to be much lower when I first started donating. A lot of people here complain that we cannot directly give money to, say, the development Firefox. With GIMP you can directly support its core individual maintainer, and almost nobody does. [0] https://www.patreon.com/c/pippin/membership https://www.patreon.com/c/pippin/membership [1] https://www.gimp.org/donating/ https://www.gimp.org/donating/
- James_K 2y ago
  Would giving him more money improve the quality of his output? He also seems to not be in charge of the UI which is the major problem area. It's also worth noting that I could buy a subscription to Photoshop if we're talking about paying money to have software developed.
  - JackSlateur 2y ago
    With more money, he could leave his daily job and work full time on GIMP If you cannot / will not give money, you can also send patches: in most opensource projects, help is welcome
    - James_K 2y ago
      I get that this evangelism is useful, but it's also annoying. I'm also doing things with my life and I don't have the time to fix GIMP. My purpose in writing these comments is not to volunteer my time or money to the GIMP project, but to suggest they improve it by focusing on the many basic UI issues it has, which for some reason they haven't done in the last 20 years. Instead of laying the ground work for non-destructive editing, they should be making it so you can reliably click on text without selecting the thing behind.

squigz 2y ago

https://developer.gimp.org/core/submit-patch/ https://developer.gimp.org/core/submit-patch/

James_K 2y ago
I fell for this before. Wasted a few weeks' free time adding thumbnails to the GTK file chooser, only to find out that the library itself has bugs which they refused to fix that make it difficult to do. Now I just have a patched version installed locally. The only way to improve these projects is to change how they're managed, which you can't do with a patch.
- tuna74 2y ago
  There is thumbnails support in the GTK4 file chooser now. That probably required shitloads of fixes in GTK, but now it works. The way to change projects is to write good code and work together with the other devs that made something you wanted to contribute to and then improve it together.
  - James_K 2y ago
    I fundamentally disagree. The problem isn't that there were no thumbnails, but that it took decades to implement them. The cause of that problem can't seriously have been that people weren't programming hard enough. I think lots of code was likely written in that time. If we assume, as you seem to, that the issue was not enough code being written, then GTK would need to increase its count of contributors by 120 times to ship that feature in the span of two months. Your implication here is that it takes thousands of people multiple months to program a file chooser with thumbnails. I think one person should be able to do it in that time, and that the problem was something other than writing code. What has changed about the project to guarantee that the next important feature won't take 20 years to implement?
    - tuna74 2y ago
      There were no thumbnails because no one wrote the necessary infrastructure before some one actually did. One person did most of the work and there were no other problems than actually writing code.
      - hulitu 2y ago
        > There were no thumbnails because no one wrote the necessary infrastructure before some one actually did. We are talking about GTK 3, right ? " Why not be honest and resign yourself to the fact that version 0.8 is followed by version 0.8, which is then followed by version 0.8? " jwz
        tuna74 2y ago
        I don't get you comment here.
      - James_K 2y ago
        Okay, so what were all the other people doing? If it's one person's worth of work (as I suggested), and there was at least one person working on GIMP, why did they not do it? The fact that it was easy to do doesn't explain why it didn't happen. If anything, it makes it more mysterious. Unless you are genuinely telling me that there wasn't a single person working continuously on GTK for 20 years. It seems to me that they lack a process for deciding something needs to happen and then doing that thing.
        tuna74 2y ago
        The people who are doing the work, or a paying for the work, on GTK think that other tasks are more important or fun to do than the tasks you wish should be done. You might think that they are wrong and that other features are more important than a modern accessibility stack or whatever else the GTK devs have been doing, but the only way to change that is to actually engage in that project.
        2y ago
  - inferiorhuman 2y ago
    > There is thumbnails support in the GTK4 file chooser now. GIMP doesn't use GTK4.
StefanBatory 2y ago
If I see a helicopter that crashed down on a tree, I can say something is wrong even if I don't have license for flying.
- SiempreViernes 2y ago
  If you had to elbow your way trough a big crowd to actually see the crash, positing "A crash!" on social media is not an useful service for anyone.
- squigz 2y ago
  Possibly true, but it doesn't mean you can talk about the competency of the pilot(s), either.

vanderZwan 2y ago

I was about to leave this as a top-level comment, but it might be more appropriate as a response to your question. "They" are a handful of maintainers doing relatively thankless work. This is not a well-paid full-time job for them. Take Øyvind Kolås, the maintainer and lead developer of babl/GEGL, which is the technology underlying GIMP 3.0. He's barely being paid for this work. Nowadays he has a patreon, which also is directly linked from the gimp.org website, encouraging you to directly support him[0][1]. Right now those patreon donations add up to about... $1300 a month. And the number used to be much lower when I first started donating. A lot of people here complain that we cannot directly give money to, say, the development Firefox. With GIMP you can directly support its core individual maintainer, and almost nobody does. [0] https://www.patreon.com/c/pippin/membership https://www.patreon.com/c/pippin/membership [1] https://www.gimp.org/donating/ https://www.gimp.org/donating/

James_K 2y ago
Would giving him more money improve the quality of his output? He also seems to not be in charge of the UI which is the major problem area. It's also worth noting that I could buy a subscription to Photoshop if we're talking about paying money to have software developed.
- JackSlateur 2y ago
  With more money, he could leave his daily job and work full time on GIMP If you cannot / will not give money, you can also send patches: in most opensource projects, help is welcome
  - James_K 2y ago
    I get that this evangelism is useful, but it's also annoying. I'm also doing things with my life and I don't have the time to fix GIMP. My purpose in writing these comments is not to volunteer my time or money to the GIMP project, but to suggest they improve it by focusing on the many basic UI issues it has, which for some reason they haven't done in the last 20 years. Instead of laying the ground work for non-destructive editing, they should be making it so you can reliably click on text without selecting the thing behind.