4 ms·

The challenge is that there's only so many volunteers contributing to GIMP, and lots of people with requests. The loudest/most frequent ones tend to be addresse

The challenge is that there's only so many volunteers contributing to GIMP, and lots of people with requests. The loudest/most frequent ones tend to be addressed first (as volunteers are able). For instance, I worked on non-destructive editing because so many people said it was an essential missing feature that also needed to be there 20 years ago. Now that it's implemented, I've seen a lot of happy people who appreciate it and what it does for their workflow. At the same time, that means there are new requests for the next "essential missing feature". :)

James_K 2y ago
The idea that you can never make a good piece of software is backwards and wrong. There should come a point where your software has the essential features and reasonable UX. Producing software which does what the user wants without being actively hostile to them is the bare minimum. It doesn't take 20 years, it's not an endless process. If you spend 20 years doing it, you are managing your time badly. GIMP is managing their time badly. The "loudest/most frequent" requests is not a good metric to use because most of those issues are filed by software developers and not users.
- cmyk_student 2y ago
  To clarify, I wasn't talking about the developers' priorities as a whole. I personally get inspiration for "big" projects to work on by scrolling various platforms and seeing what the most frequent complaints are, but that's not how development decisions are made. And I can promise you, non-destructive editing was repeatedly requested by users, not just software developers. I have also seen a large number of users happy about the feature being implemented, as well as videos and screenshots of it being used effectively. It was a net positive in my opinion, even if there's more work to do in addition. That's not to say your particular issue won't be addressed of course! You're just the first person I've seen to make that specific complaint, compared to the larger number of users asking for more CMYK support, shape tool, built-in Resynthesizer etc. What's been really nice about the RC1 release is that more members of the community are willing to try out 3.0 (compared to the various 2.99 releases) and give feedback. People use GIMP in lots of different ways, and if we don't use it in those ways then we don't see their specific problems.
  - James_K 2y ago
    > compared to the larger number of users asking for more CMYK support, shape tool, built-in Resynthesizer etc This is because people with the complaint about text tend to open the software, see how bad moving text is, then close it and never open it again. They aren't the ones going onto your forums to complain. And when they do the bug stays open for 8 years (and counting) with the best response currently being to tell users that they're wrong for not knowing how to do it. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=768667 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=768667 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/933 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/933 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/8399 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/8399 However GIMP gets feedback from users, it's producing bad outcomes. Out of "CMYK support, shape tool, built-in Resynthesizer", I think users want a shape tool. But they'll get CMYK support. Here's the shape tool issue and it's 23 years old. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/12 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/12 Issue 12. Over 10,000 issues later and it hasn't been added. The existing solution to this is to select a shape and fill it. Why can they not add a tool which does both of these things in sequence? Again, perhaps a small change of code saves every new user of GIMP the annoyance of having to look up on google "how to draw circle in GIMP". Development should be prioritised in areas like this, where small changes to the code produce big wins in terms of UX. Instead, they focus on things like CMYK. I'm guessing that's a big change that won't affect most users. There's no point in developing these parts of the software if your UI has put off all the potential users. Look at Photopea, it has just one developer but eats GIMP's lunch on everything I just mentioned. GIMP needs to find a way of managing its devs to outdo a single person working on their own. > I personally get inspiration for "big" projects to work on by scrolling various platforms and seeing what the most frequent complaints are, but that's not how development decisions are made. A better approach would be to find someone who uses Photoshop, ask them to try GIMP, and record it. Then take the issues they ran into, and those are the most important things. If you want people to use any piece of software, you need to make them stick around long enough to actually do stuff in it, and that doesn't happen if the first thing they experience is bad. Basic things like they decided to put the button to search menus in a menu, so you might not be able to find it if you didn't already know it was there.
    - 2y ago

James_K 2y ago

The idea that you can never make a good piece of software is backwards and wrong. There should come a point where your software has the essential features and reasonable UX. Producing software which does what the user wants without being actively hostile to them is the bare minimum. It doesn't take 20 years, it's not an endless process. If you spend 20 years doing it, you are managing your time badly. GIMP is managing their time badly. The "loudest/most frequent" requests is not a good metric to use because most of those issues are filed by software developers and not users.

cmyk_student 2y ago
To clarify, I wasn't talking about the developers' priorities as a whole. I personally get inspiration for "big" projects to work on by scrolling various platforms and seeing what the most frequent complaints are, but that's not how development decisions are made. And I can promise you, non-destructive editing was repeatedly requested by users, not just software developers. I have also seen a large number of users happy about the feature being implemented, as well as videos and screenshots of it being used effectively. It was a net positive in my opinion, even if there's more work to do in addition. That's not to say your particular issue won't be addressed of course! You're just the first person I've seen to make that specific complaint, compared to the larger number of users asking for more CMYK support, shape tool, built-in Resynthesizer etc. What's been really nice about the RC1 release is that more members of the community are willing to try out 3.0 (compared to the various 2.99 releases) and give feedback. People use GIMP in lots of different ways, and if we don't use it in those ways then we don't see their specific problems.
- James_K 2y ago
  > compared to the larger number of users asking for more CMYK support, shape tool, built-in Resynthesizer etc This is because people with the complaint about text tend to open the software, see how bad moving text is, then close it and never open it again. They aren't the ones going onto your forums to complain. And when they do the bug stays open for 8 years (and counting) with the best response currently being to tell users that they're wrong for not knowing how to do it. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=768667 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=768667 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/933 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/933 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/8399 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/8399 However GIMP gets feedback from users, it's producing bad outcomes. Out of "CMYK support, shape tool, built-in Resynthesizer", I think users want a shape tool. But they'll get CMYK support. Here's the shape tool issue and it's 23 years old. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/12 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/12 Issue 12. Over 10,000 issues later and it hasn't been added. The existing solution to this is to select a shape and fill it. Why can they not add a tool which does both of these things in sequence? Again, perhaps a small change of code saves every new user of GIMP the annoyance of having to look up on google "how to draw circle in GIMP". Development should be prioritised in areas like this, where small changes to the code produce big wins in terms of UX. Instead, they focus on things like CMYK. I'm guessing that's a big change that won't affect most users. There's no point in developing these parts of the software if your UI has put off all the potential users. Look at Photopea, it has just one developer but eats GIMP's lunch on everything I just mentioned. GIMP needs to find a way of managing its devs to outdo a single person working on their own. > I personally get inspiration for "big" projects to work on by scrolling various platforms and seeing what the most frequent complaints are, but that's not how development decisions are made. A better approach would be to find someone who uses Photoshop, ask them to try GIMP, and record it. Then take the issues they ran into, and those are the most important things. If you want people to use any piece of software, you need to make them stick around long enough to actually do stuff in it, and that doesn't happen if the first thing they experience is bad. Basic things like they decided to put the button to search menus in a menu, so you might not be able to find it if you didn't already know it was there.
  - 2y ago