Von: "Michael Trümmer"

What Digg-Users think about The GIMP:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/GIMP_is_more_powerful_than_most_people_think_See_complete_tutorials_here

Some of the comments are actually quite useful. IMO it is easy to tell which users do actually use GIMP or other image editing applications - they are the ones who are able to name advantages and disadvantages of each app beyond general statements. Some is just flamebait, but this has to be expected on public forums, I guess.

Some of the disadvantages of current GIMP versions are going to be addressed in 2.4, but the discussion clearly demonstrates that the plans for it (or even the current state of the 2.3 releases) is not known to the general public.

It would be nice to have more than the NEWS file to tell about new features - an overview with examples, but as anything else this needs a) time and b) someone to do it (volunteers)? Karine Delvare has taken on the responsiblity to provide a more readable news feed (seen at http://developer.gimp.org/), but it is still too textual (Karine, please do not think that I don't value your work). Others are spreading the news as well in articles, mailing lists, forums, ..., but this about all we've got on gimp.org

Personally, the most interesting fact for me in this discussion is that finally the "GIMP is not a clone of Photoshop" is getting across - the GIMP developers did never claim this themselves, people just want (or demand :) it to be.

HTH, Michael

Michael Schumacher wrote:

It would be nice to have more than the NEWS file to tell about new features - an overview with examples, but as anything else this needs a) time and b) someone to do it (volunteers)? Karine Delvare has taken on the responsiblity to provide a more readable news feed (seen at http://developer.gimp.org/), but it is still too textual (Karine, please do not think that I don't value your work). Others are spreading the news as well in articles, mailing lists, forums, ..., but this about all we've got on gimp.org

Now that I'm more familiar with parsing Bugzilla and the Changelog, I could build a more "public" news flow, with much less items and screenshots of the new features. Where would it go? News items in www.gimp.org front page, another feed, ... ?

Karine

Michael Schumacher wrote:

Personally, the most interesting fact for me in this discussion is that finally the "GIMP is not a clone of Photoshop" is getting across - the GIMP developers did never claim this themselves, people just want (or demand :) it to be.

HTH, Michael

Sadly, Windows users, in general, expect any app they use to replace a high priced commercial version to look like and work exactly like the app they want to replace. There are thousands of apps available to Windows users that will lessen the load on their wallets tremendously and will get the job done just as well as their high cost counterpart. Most Windows users are unwilling to learn something new though. They expect the computer to do that for them too. M$ has gone out of it's way to instill that thinking in them for it's own benefit and too increase it's lock on the software market. All this leads to even more dependency on M$ type software and even higher costs to the end user, eventually. This all happens because they are lazy and unwilling to change in order to get what they are looking for. Consequently, what they end up with is even more enslavement to a commercial exploiter. Ironically, that's what they keep crying to get away from. They are their own enemy.

Trapper

Michael Schumacher wrote:

Some of the disadvantages of current GIMP versions are going to be addressed in 2.4, but the discussion clearly demonstrates that the plans for it (or even the current state of the 2.3 releases) is not known to the general public.

What about giving more publicity to Windows development builds? I guess the Linux guys have enough qualification to obtain news or compile and give them a try by themselves :), but the majority of potential users use Windows. And as professionals also use Windows or Macs their feedback could be welcome.

Personally, the most interesting fact for me in this discussion is that finally the "GIMP is not a clone of Photoshop" is getting across - the GIMP developers did never claim this themselves, people just want (or demand :) it to be.

The time goes by, nothing stays unchanged. A voting can be issued via Internet, but I'm almost sure most of the users use GIMP and similar software for photo retouching now. As the digital imaging comes in people's houses, processing of photos becomes a demand. The number of users who need some kind of painting software for content creation from scratch (as Gimp was claimed to be used as designed) increases slowly, but the number of people who needs all-in-one tool for both photo processing and content creation grows.

Trapper escribe:

Sadly, Windows users, in general, expect any app they use to replace a high priced commercial version to look like and work exactly like the app they want to replace. There are thousands of apps available to Windows users that will lessen the load on their wallets tremendously and will get the job done just as well as their high cost counterpart. Most Windows users are unwilling to learn something new though. They expect the computer to do that for them too. M$ has gone out of it's way to instill that thinking in them for it's own benefit and too increase it's lock on the software market. All this leads to even more dependency on M$ type software and even higher costs to the end user, eventually. This all happens because they are lazy and unwilling to change in order to get what they are looking for. Consequently, what they end up with is even more enslavement to a commercial exploiter. Ironically, that's what they keep crying to get away from. They are their own enemy.

Assuming that by "high priced commercial version" you mean Photoshop, two details:

* GIMP developers and many GIMP users are not expecting to replace Photoshop in any way.
* It's very unprobable that you can find a bunch of applications that can replace everything that Photoshop can do.

For many of us, GIMP is free software and Photoshop isn't. Full stop.

Cordially, Ismael

Alexander Rabtchevich escribe:

What about giving more publicity to Windows development builds?

Strangely from a psicological point of view, usually Windows users are very kind to failures of software they pay (luckily they will be solved in the next upgrade I'll have to pay!) and get very impatient with failures of free software. They often confuse it with freeware, and indeed many freeware developers can never be contacted in any way, while free software developers are usually an IRC client away!

Cordially, Ismael

On 12/5/06, Alexander Rabtchevich wrote:

Michael Schumacher wrote:

Some of the disadvantages of current GIMP versions are going to be addressed in 2.4, but the discussion clearly demonstrates that the plans for it (or even the current state of the 2.3 releases) is not known to the general public.

What about giving more publicity to Windows development builds? I guess the Linux guys have enough qualification to obtain news or compile and give them a try by themselves :), but the majority of potential users use Windows. And as professionals also use Windows or Macs their feedback could be welcome.

Personally, the most interesting fact for me in this discussion is that finally the "GIMP is not a clone of Photoshop" is getting across - the GIMP developers did never claim this themselves, people just want (or demand :) it to be.

The time goes by, nothing stays unchanged. A voting can be issued via Internet, but I'm almost sure most of the users use GIMP and similar software for photo retouching now. As the digital imaging comes in people's houses, processing of photos becomes a demand. The number of users who need some kind of painting software for content creation from scratch (as Gimp was claimed to be used as designed) increases slowly, but the number of people who needs all-in-one tool for both photo processing and content creation grows.

OS is starting to hit mainstream.

Von: Alexander Rabtchevich

Michael Schumacher wrote:

Some of the disadvantages of current GIMP versions are going to be addressed in 2.4, but the discussion clearly demonstrates that the plans for it (or even the current state of the 2.3 releases) is not known to the general public.

What about giving more publicity to Windows development builds? I guess the Linux guys have enough qualification to obtain news or compile and give them a try by themselves :)

This is an assumption that can't be maintained anymore, IMO. Linux is no longer the 1337 system it once has been. E.g., there are plenty of Linux users who did never type a single command or have never even seen an terminal window at all.

For all of them, binary builds are what they should use, provided that they know what they are doing. Currently, development builds aren't advertised to the general public because running them might still be a bumpy ride. Anyone who has tried 2.3.12 on Windows probably knows this; if not try to play with some scripts, especially those with gradient selectors.

In my opinion, this could change a bit if we tell users what they can expect from a new development release: new shiny features which should be tested - and bugs which might bite. This would also be interesting for sites which redistribute the installers or links to them and are eager to be the first to publish new releases - it is no fun if you have to contact them and tell them "please add that 2.3 is unstable development, thank you".

but the majority of potential users use Windows. And as professionals also use Windows or Macs their feedback could be welcome.

The Windows GIMP installer gets 10,000 downloads per day right now, so this claim might even be justified. Does anyone have numbers for comparison. maybe the downloads for another platform?

GIMP on the Mac is another problem - AFAIK the default X config on OS X is a bit less than optimal, and I get them impression that the number of GIMP users there is the lowest of all major platforms. Gimp.app seems to be the most popular distro there, but it is behind the stable releases and there is not much activity in the bug tracker (and there are some nasty problems, especially on Intel Macs).

Michael

On 12/5/06, Ismael Valladolid Torres wrote:

Alexander Rabtchevich escribe:

What about giving more publicity to Windows development builds?

Strangely from a psicological point of view, usually Windows users are very kind to failures of software they pay (luckily they will be solved in the next upgrade I'll have to pay!) and get very impatient with failures of free software. They often confuse it with freeware, and indeed many freeware developers can never be contacted in any way, while free software developers are usually an IRC client away!

Cordially, Ismael

There are two types of people - those who are willing to change, and those who aren't.

Michael Trümmer wrote:

What Digg-Users think about The GIMP:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/GIMP_is_more_powerful_than_most_people_think_See_complete_tutorials_here

You know, it's funny. Discussions about GIMP and it's interface (as compared to PS) so often seem to lead to statements like "GIMP is only bad because you are used to PS, I used GIMP first for x years and when I tried PS I thought it was horrible." I have used GIMP for the past 4 or more years, and have watched it grow and improve; I have used PS only a couple of times at the college I went to in the computer labs, and was unwilling to buy it. I had this personal interest in trying to find open source alternatives for every task I needed to accomplish. Anyway, contrary to the claims that others have made, I did not find photoshop difficult or time-consuming to use. I picked it up in a snap, despite my years of experience with GIMP, and having used paintbrush most of my life b4 that. Perhaps a real graphic artist using complex techniques might have a different story to tell, but in my experience I don't agree.

I still like GIMP, and was perfectly willing to try to work with the SDI interface, regardless of my personal preferences, but my experience with GIMP-win has been difficult. Gimpshop does not solve the problem either. There are no settings/plugins in GIMP (to my knowledge) that provide either a reliable MDI interface or a truly usable SDI interface. New settings recently added like "transient windows" have quirks, and "always on top" is not a good alternative either. I understand that developers are saying (I'm sure justifiably) that Windows is the real problem. Be that as it may, on Windows, GIMP does not achieve a truly usable interface. While you may not like Photoshop's use of MDI, you must concede that Photoshop does have a reliable interface that is actually MDI (so do many other graphic programs). GIMP on windows does not get SDI right. When it does, then you can make a better comparison. Somebody will probably tell me that a virtual desktop is the best solution in Windows and that's probably true. No, I can't use Linux right now, and yes, I have tried.

I will probably do some experimenting and file a bug report or two describing in detail the quirks that I mentioned. Now these quirks do not (as others would claim) make it impossible to use GIMP, but they can make it irritating at times. I still use GIMP and enjoy it, and prefer it because it is free and always being developed and is does not create files that you can't view without spending money.

I am sure GIMP's biggest need is more developers. Being an outsider in that regard, I am not sure why GIMP doesn't seem to have the same level of dedicated developer support as some other projects. In my opinion, GIMP is more exciting and has more potential than most of it's free competitors. I would love to see the open source world gather round and give PS a run for the money. Hopefully soon I will start helping out somehow myself, I am trying to plan for that.

Ben W.

Hi,

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 11:13 -0500, Ben Walker wrote:

There are no settings/plugins in GIMP (to my knowledge) that provide either a reliable MDI interface or a truly usable SDI interface. New settings recently added like "transient windows" have quirks, and "always on top" is not a good alternative either. I understand that developers are saying (I'm sure justifiably) that Windows is the real problem. Be that as it may, on Windows, GIMP does not achieve a truly usable interface.

You are perfectly right here. The problem is however that we don't have much, if any, active developers that contribute Win32 specific code to GTK+ and GIMP that would address this problem. There is almost no contributions from Windows users, but lots of complaints. Now tell me why we should even care about them?

We would accept patches. There is a lot to do to improve the user experience on the Windows platform. Same holds true for Mac OS X. But unless there's active contributions, this isn't going to change. No matter how loud the complaints are.

Sven

On 12/5/06, Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 11:13 -0500, Ben Walker wrote:

There are no settings/plugins in GIMP (to my knowledge) that provide either a reliable MDI interface or a truly usable SDI interface. New settings recently added like "transient windows" have quirks, and "always on top" is not a good alternative either. I understand that developers are saying (I'm sure justifiably) that Windows is the real problem. Be that as it may, on Windows, GIMP does not achieve a truly usable interface.

You are perfectly right here. The problem is however that we don't have much, if any, active developers that contribute Win32 specific code to GTK+ and GIMP that would address this problem. There is almost no contributions from Windows users, but lots of complaints. Now tell me why we should even care about them?

We would accept patches. There is a lot to do to improve the user experience on the Windows platform. Same holds true for Mac OS X. But unless there's active contributions, this isn't going to change. No matter how loud the complaints are.

Sven

If there was an option in Gimp to dock the windows so that they function as one, that would solve the problem. Ie - bring one to the front, they all come to the front. I don't know about Win32, as I'm on Linux, but that's one feature that I have yet to discover.

Hi,

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 11:38 -0800, Anthony Ettinger wrote:

If there was an option in Gimp to dock the windows so that they function as one, that would solve the problem. Ie - bring one to the front, they all come to the front. I don't know about Win32, as I'm on Linux, but that's one feature that I have yet to discover.

Have you actually tried GIMP 2.3 yet?

Anyway, if you want to dock the toolbox and other windows to the image window, go provide a patch then. Or better yet, ask on the gimp-developer list about the plans that we have for the GIMP user interface after 2.4 is out and check how your request integrates with that.

Sven

Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 11:13 -0500, Ben Walker wrote:

There are no settings/plugins in GIMP (to my knowledge) that provide either a reliable MDI interface or a truly usable SDI interface. New settings recently added like "transient windows" have quirks, and "always on top" is not a good alternative either. I understand that developers are saying (I'm sure justifiably) that Windows is the real problem. Be that as it may, on Windows, GIMP does not achieve a truly usable interface.

You are perfectly right here. The problem is however that we don't have much, if any, active developers that contribute Win32 specific code to GTK+ and GIMP that would address this problem. There is almost no contributions from Windows users, but lots of complaints. Now tell me why we should even care about them?

We would accept patches. There is a lot to do to improve the user experience on the Windows platform. Same holds true for Mac OS X. But unless there's active contributions, this isn't going to change. No matter how loud the complaints are.

Sven

You make a good point. I didn't bring up the topic to complain, but rather to point out that those who think they dislike the SDI interface on Windows might like it if it worked. Usually everyone says "bug off, go use Gimpshop, I like SDI, GIMP is different and doesn't aim to copy, etc..." but miss the fact that there are real problems. I would be happy to submit windows patches if I knew how, but I am not a programmer. I have recently tried playing around with script-fu and was planning to make some scripts. I also do web-design and was thinking of trying to help out that way too. Despite doing QBasic and Word macros as a hobby, and taking one class on C++, I'm afraid my skills in this area are very limited. The amount of help I would need to understand GIMP and provide patches would be so great that developers would no doubt find it easier to simply write the patches instead of helping me write them.

Should I join the developer list to discuss the website, or should I post suggestions, sketches to this list for user input?

Ben W.

Hi,

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 15:37 -0500, Ben Walker wrote:

You make a good point. I didn't bring up the topic to complain, but rather to point out that those who think they dislike the SDI interface on Windows might like it if it worked.

I think we are well aware of the problem and we would like to improve it. A lot of changes in the development version actually deal with it. Unfortunately it turned out that they only improve the situation with window managers on UNIX. We had to turn off most of this on Win32 because it doesn't work. It even made things worse.

Should I join the developer list to discuss the website, or should I post suggestions, sketches to this list for user input?

There's a gimp-web mailing-list. But the website is pretty much unmaintained and I am not sure if the gimp-web list is going to give you the attention you would like to get. I would very much welcome an effort to improve the website.

Sven

On 12/5/06, Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 11:38 -0800, Anthony Ettinger wrote:

If there was an option in Gimp to dock the windows so that they function as one, that would solve the problem. Ie - bring one to the front, they all come to the front. I don't know about Win32, as I'm on Linux, but that's one feature that I have yet to discover.

Have you actually tried GIMP 2.3 yet?

Anyway, if you want to dock the toolbox and other windows to the image window, go provide a patch then. Or better yet, ask on the gimp-developer list about the plans that we have for the GIMP user interface after 2.4 is out and check how your request integrates with that.

I'm using 2.3.10. How do I dock it to the image window?

Anthony Ettinger wrote:

I'm using 2.3.10. How do I dock it to the image window?

Anyway, if you want to dock the toolbox and other windows to the image window, go provide a patch then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_(Unix), i.e. you'll have to write the code for this first.

HTH,
Michael

On 12/5/06, Michael Schumacher wrote:

Anthony Ettinger wrote:

I'm using 2.3.10. How do I dock it to the image window?

Anyway, if you want to dock the toolbox and other windows to the image window, go provide a patch then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_(Unix), i.e. you'll have to write the code for this first.

Thanks.

Since this is all about GIMP vs. PS, I just would like to say that these softwares may be basically the same, the end result depends more on the user. Both softwares have the same tools on their tool bars, or tools menu, and they also they function as good as the other. This is not a factor to some people, those who are not fund of using filters (for PS) or script-fu (for GIMP).

However we cannot deny that most graphic artists or layout editors choose PS over GIMP, for the reason that they are not used to it yet, or that they have faith in PS more. So, with regards to this, I would like to point out that you can always customize GIMP shortcuts to match or to mimic those of PS. This will be much easier for new user. ( I'm sorry I can't find the url where I found the shortcut equivalents, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere).

In my own preference, both softwares are good, but as for this moment, I use PS more than gimp because of this feature which enables you to folder your layers. It runs well under wine, and performs OK.

_____________________________________

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 14:54 +0100, Karine Delvare wrote:

Now that I'm more familiar with parsing Bugzilla and the Changelog, I could build a more "public" news flow, with much less items and screenshots of the new features. Where would it go? News items in www.gimp.org front page, another feed, ... ?

Hi Karine,

I think the release notes are a great way to educate the potential user what GIMP can do. The blender folks do an extremely good job with their release notes, graphically describing new features [1].

I've started to sporadically write something along those lines [2], so if you'd like to join forces we could move this away from my personal dokuwiki space that's hosted on a very unreliable server to somewhere more appropriate.

[1] http://blender.org/cms/Blender_2_42.727.0.html [2] http://wiki.jimmac.net/doku.php?id=gimp:gimp-2-4-releasenotes

cheers

On Wednesday 06 December 2006 20:31, Jakub Steiner wrote:

Hi Karine,

I think the release notes are a great way to educate the potential user what GIMP can do. The blender folks do an extremely good job with their release notes, graphically describing new features [1].

I've started to sporadically write something along those lines [2], so if you'd like to join forces we could move this away from my personal dokuwiki space that's hosted on a very unreliable server to somewhere more appropriate.

That sounds great! The development news are hosted on my gimp webpage and I am currently the only one able to produce them, which is not very bright (there have been some holiday weeks with no news because of that). I also host some new features descriptions with screenshots on my blog, but they are not many and not very visible.

We would still have to decide the format of the public news / release notes (the blender graphical release notes are indeed a very good example), where to publish them, and how to allow several people to contribute to them (you and me, or more people). The Gimp website has a news feature that could fulfill those needs if I remember correctly, but I don't know whether that would be the best place to publish something like that.

Anyway, I'm all for contributing to eye-candy release notes. I'm still undecided about whether these should replace the actual development news or not, I guess it depends on whether there would still be an interest for detailed development news (Sven Neumann proposed to add more descriptions to the rather bland reports I make) once the graphical release notes are there.

Karine

Hi,

On Wed, 2006-12-06 at 22:01 +0100, Karine Delvare wrote:

I've started to sporadically write something along those lines [2], so if you'd like to join forces we could move this away from my personal dokuwiki space that's hosted on a very unreliable server to somewhere more appropriate.

That sounds great! The development news are hosted on my gimp webpage and I am currently the only one able to produce them, which is not very bright (there have been some holiday weeks with no news because of that). I also host some new features descriptions with screenshots on my blog, but they are not many and not very visible.

I would like to suggest that you and Jakub, and whoever else wants to contribute, concentrate on making a nice and comprehensive feature list for the 2.4 release notes. After that we can then use your experiences with this collaborative work to improve the quality of the release notes for the development versions.

Sven