All,

I am still trudging through the list of tutorials from the old site and (slowly) migrating them one at a time to the new infrastructure.

I've noticed a couple of things, though. Many of these tutorials are a) copyrighted without notice of a more permissive licensing, and b) really out of date.

So the question is, what should I do with them? My first inclination is to keep them and migrate them, but possibly to not link to them any longer? This way the URI is consistent and stil working, but the pages won't be reachable except through their direct url.

Another option is to simply not migrate some of them, given their copyright limitations.

I am slowly trying to replace older tutorials with new ones that will be free of the copyright issues, but it's slower going than moving the website. :)

Also, I've included the complete list of tutorials, in case anyone wants to point out some that we definitely won't need or care about migrating.

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/3d_Logo/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Advanced_Animations/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Anti-Aliased_Threshold/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Automate_Editing_in_GIMP/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/AutomatedJpgToXcf/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Basic_Batch/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Basic_Color_Curves/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Basic_Perl/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Basic_Scheme/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Basic_Scheme2/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Bezier_Selections/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Blending_Exposures/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Blown_Out_Highlights/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Blur_Overlays/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Borders_On_Selections/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Changing_Background_Color_1/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Changing_Background_Color_2/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Color2BW/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Coloring_A_BW_Sketch/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/ContrastMask/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Creating_Icons/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Custom_Brushes/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Digital_Black_and_White_Conversion/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Draw_A_Paint_Brush/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Drawables/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Drawing_Shapes/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Film_Grain/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Floating_Logo/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/GIMP_Quickies/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Golden_Text/index.html

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Image_Map/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Image_Map/bexcolored.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Image_Map/bexcolorpicker-tuthtml.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Image_Map/bexcolorpicker-tutpop.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Image_Map/imap1.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Image_Map/visibone.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Image_Pipes/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Image_Pipes2/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Layer_Masks/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Lite_Quickies/flips.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Lite_Quickies/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Lite_Quickies/jpegrace.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Luminosity_Masks/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Perl-Debugged/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Perlotine/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Perlotine/nested.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Photo_To_Sketch/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Quickmask/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Red_Eye_Removal/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Reducing_CCD_Noise/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Selective_Color/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Selective_Gaussian_Blur/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Sepia_Toning/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Simple_Animations/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Sketch_Effect/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Smart_Sharpening/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Smart_Sharpening/shortcuts.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Smart_Sharpening/warp-sharp.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Straight_Line/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/template/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/The_Basics/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Tileable_Textures/index.html http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Using_GAP/index.html

On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 8:47 AM Elle Stone wrote:

That's a hugely impressive amount of hard work you've been doing.

Thanks! :) It's lonely work, too.

This seems like a good option. Dead links make a website look bad, and someone who reaches such a link won't know why the article is missing.

If this route is taken, it might be nice to put links to updated/more accurate articles at the top (if available), along with an explanation of why the tutorial was "retired" (copyright, out of date, wrong information, etc).

That's a good idea, and I think I'll go back through and add that when I'm done migrating. I may also put a big(ger) notice at the top of the tutorial pointing out that it is not freely licensed.

"Out of date" and "restrictrive or unclear copyrights" are two serious issues, it seems to me. Another issue is "technically incorrect information".

We do strive to be technically correct. :)

Similar comments apply to the articles' respective discussions of obtaining Luminance/Luminosity using GIMP 2.8.

Part of the problem is from limitations imposed by GIMP 2.8's 8-bit integer processing, which makes it impossible to obtain RGB Luminance and LAB Lightness wihtout also posterizing the RGB data. And any mention of "technically" or "mathematically" incorrect shouldn't be read to imply "aesthetically wrong".

It would be nice if officially hosted GIMP tutorials could be modified to include notes about "technically correct" vs "what can actually be done using GIMP 2.8".

There's a balance that should be struck, in my opinion, where we want to put forth technically correct information while still maintaining accessibility and readability for a possibly non-technical audience. Striking that balance is one of the reasons I am trying to update tutorials and present information in a hopefully approachable manner while not being too overwhelming.

As such, I'd happily accept patches to any material :).

Also, I don't mind adding the "technically correct" disclaimer to the tutorials mentioned. Rather than linking offsite to your reference article, perhaps you could consider licensing it and the images liberally for us to include it on the site?

I will file a bug against the new site for this exact purpose and reference this thread so I remember to add it (I've already moved quite past the referenced articles, so will need a reminder to come revisit this).

I'll gladly help set up the build environment if you wanted to help transfer articles! :)

On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 4:57 PM Jehan Pagès wrote:

Hi,

Do we really need to "update" all these tutos for the new website? My proposition is to scrap all the ones too outdated or without proper copyleft and make a public call for people to propose good tutorials, using recent versions (2.8.x), and copyleft only. I have already met several people who told me they were interested to write tutorials for GIMP (in French and in Korean, which I could translate to English).

With the state of our tutorials, I feel like just going from a blank slate and going for high quality isn't that much a luxury and would be worth it. And rather than trying to "save" all the old stuff, I feel like it would be so much more healthy to involve our community of users more into the upstream gimp.org website.

I couldn't agree more. It was always my intention to migrate all of the old content so that the old URI's didn't return 404 or errors (and without a place to point a 302 to). So, keep the old data in place for old links, but as Elle noted previously, point to updated tutorials with links at the top of the old ones (or notify users they are _not_ copyleft, and are not available to use freely). I'll mock something up soon to demonstrate what I mean.

I love the idea of putting a call out to the community for updating and copyleft only. Just to be clear - you're going to help me go through them and make sure they are good and high quality, right? ;)

On a good note, I'm almost done with the list of old tutorials! So, getting closer!

Ed contacted me to check on the status of the "Basic Perl" tutorial. He licensed it as cc-by-sa for us, and I wanted to post it here for posterity. I'll make the updates this week.

Pat

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Ed
Date: Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 9:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] gimp.org tutorials To: Pat David

Go ahead!

*From:* Pat David *Sent:* Sunday, November 08, 2015 3:30 PM *To:* Ed
*Subject:* Re: [Gimp-developer] gimp.org tutorials Absolutely, I'll make the changes for you. Thank you very much for that! Do you mind if I forward this thread onto the gimp-web mailing list for posterity?

On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 9:16 AM Ed wrote:

I hereby grant a cc-by-as licence for the text and images. Would it be easy for you to edit the text accordingly? I don’t have easy access to the repo right now.

*From:* Pat David *Sent:* Tuesday, November 03, 2015 3:23 PM *To:* Ed
*Subject:* Re: [Gimp-developer] gimp.org tutorials Hi Ed!

I do have a question about licensing. Can you license the tutorial with at least a cc-by-as (or better) license for us to continue using it?

I think the plan forward will be to not host any tutorials or images that are not explicitly freely licensed.

We'd need the text and images to be licensed liberally.

Pat On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 6:05 PM Ed wrote:

Hi Pat,

It certainly is! Was just checking whether you considered it had any licensing or other issues. Evidently you don’t. Thanks for your continuing superb efforts!

Ed

*From:* Pat David *Sent:* Monday, November 02, 2015 2:37 PM *To:* Ed
*Subject:* Re: [Gimp-developer] gimp.org tutorials

Hi Ed!

Not sure what you mean? I've ported that tutorial along with the others: http://static.gimp.org/tutorials/Basic_Perl/

It _seems_ to be ok to me? Any thoughts?

pat

On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 5:33 PM Ed wrote:

Hi Pat,

I'm the most recent updater of the "Basic_Perl" tutorial, is that still good
to go?

Best regards,
Ed J