Never thought to look at a character outside of charmap's symbols Michael. Will do so next time. Still, the sympols, webdings, etc. font issue needs to get patched. :)

...

Entering a small pi character in GIMP 2.8.4 on Windows works just fine for me - it doesn't look that nice in the default Sans font for me, but as it is contained in so many fonts, you got plenty of styles to choose from.

The Times New Roman pi is probably the most pi-ish one.

Lyle, how do you try to enter the letter?

Thought I would have been patched by now (since it's existed for several updates afore), but the text font but remains. I tried to get the pi charater for a render for pi-Day (which was yesterday by the way), but ended up having to use Windows Paint and resized the charater to taste in GIMP. Sad indeed. Not sure why the character render engine doesn't work right at least not in Windows 64-bit GIMP. :)

The bug you've mentioned has been reported against 2.8.0. I recall seeing it in previous versions, too - 2.6.x, 2.4.x, ...

Occasionally, the color picker was working in previous versions - I've seen this happen myself. It could depend on the GTK+ version (as getting colors from the desktop is mainly a matter of GTK+'s GDK component getting this right), but I'm not aware of any real conclusive evidence.

Also, this is rather not a bug that affects the stability of GIMP on a given platform - GIMP doesn't crash (yes, this is about semantics :).

Sorry, but "there are 83 bugs to solve" without adding additional insight doesn't quite cut it for me. Please try to give me the feeling that you have examined those bugs and understood them.

@ Michael
the bug below is introduced to Gimp 2.8.4:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676708

many other bugs else

@Michael

Gimp 2.8.4 is stable but not on windows OS
there is 83 bugs to solve

Yes, 2.8.4 is a stable version.

Very stzable for me (but I've not been able to reproduce most problems in the past, either ;)
Seems to be pretty stable overall though, by what I read everywhere.

Is GIMP 2.8.4 an stable version?

prince, have a look at the status of many of those bugs - NED(INFO), meaning that additional information is required from the original reporter or someone else who can reproduce the problem and/or explain it.

Also, many of those bugs are quite old, already present in 2.6 and apparently do not prevent too many people from using it (as you're using it yourself). Doesn't mean that their removal wouldn't be preferred, but this doesn't make them 2.8-specific problems.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674051 is probably the one exception, as it was introduced in 2.8.x and seems to have a significant impact for some users.

and when i reported a bug
the reply:
we are sorry we ca not solve this bug

75 bugs

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=product%3A%22GIMP%22+os%3A%22Wind%22

i still use gimp 2.6. many other gimpers still use it

what's wrong with your GIMP?

there is any chance to have a fully fonctional version of gimp 2.8 on windows os before the end of this year?

other question
who use gimp 2.8 on windows os?

i love this software