On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 1:36 PM, xianghang liu wrote:

Hi,

I am very interested GIMP and want to join the Gimp project as C developer. I am a first-year PhD
student in computer vision. I would like to start with fixing some bugs and then implement new
features and my final objective is gsoc 2011. Do you have any suggestions?

Have you built GIT already? If not, please do. We like our patches against git version. Selection of bugs waiting to be fixed is listed in the bugzilla you can find at bugs.gimp.org. Please join us in #gimp channel at gimpnet IRC network for a chat if you have picked a bug to tackle. Its less hassle all around if a way to fix a bug has been agreed on before hand. Hoping to see you around. :)

xianghang liu gmail.com> writes:

Hi,

I am very interested GIMP and want to join the Gimp project as C developer. I am a first-year PhD
student in computer vision. I would like to start with fixing some bugs and then implement new
features and my final objective is gsoc 2011. Do you have any suggestions?

Xianghang Liu

This is just a suggestion from a user, so I have no idea how difficult or easy it might be - but if you are interested in adding a very helpful feature to Gimp please consider working on implementing automatic layer boundary management.

I'll explain: currently a layer's boundary is managed by the user. after you create a layer, if you move it, say 100 pixels to the left, there will be a 100 pixel wide area on the canvas that you can't paint on. The user then has to set the layer boundary himself to include all the canvas. It would be great if this was managed by the software, so that whenever a user wanted to draw on an area outside the layer boundary, it would be automatically enlarged to allow him to do that.

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:43 AM, Michael Grosberg wrote:

xianghang liu gmail.com> writes:

Hi,

I am very interested GIMP and want to join the Gimp project as C developer. I am a first-year PhD
student in computer vision. I would like to start with fixing some bugs and then implement new
features and my final objective is gsoc 2011. Do you have any suggestions?

Xianghang Liu

This is just a suggestion from a user, so I have no idea how difficult or easy it might be - but if you are interested in adding a very helpful feature to Gimp please consider working on implementing automatic layer boundary management.

I'll explain: currently a layer's boundary is managed by the user. after you create a layer, if you move it, say 100 pixels to the left, there will be a 100 pixel wide area on the canvas that you can't paint on. The user then has to set the layer boundary himself to include all the canvas. It would be great if this was managed by the software, so that whenever a user wanted to draw on an area outside the layer boundary, it would be automatically enlarged to allow him to do that.

I've presented GIT master for a large audience today (200+ people) - after the presentation, the "most requested feature" at questions time, was also this one.

js
->

On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 01:19 -0300, Joao S. O. Bueno wrote:

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:43 AM, Michael Grosberg [...]
the "most requested feature" at questions time, was also this one.

Luckily, work in this area is planned, with fixed-size layer boundaries being an endangered species. Unluckily, there aren't enough active programmers...

Liam

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Joao S. O. Bueno wrote:

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:43 AM, Michael Grosberg wrote:

xianghang liu gmail.com> writes:

Hi,

I am very interested GIMP and want to join the Gimp project as C developer. I am a first-year PhD
student in computer vision. I would like to start with fixing some bugs and then implement new
features and my final objective is gsoc 2011. Do you have any suggestions?

Xianghang Liu

This is just a suggestion from a user, so I have no idea how difficult or easy it might be - but if you are interested in adding a very helpful feature to Gimp please consider working on implementing automatic layer boundary management.

I'll explain: currently a layer's boundary is managed by the user. after you create a layer, if you move it, say 100 pixels to the left, there will be a 100 pixel wide area on the canvas that you can't paint on. The user then has to set the layer boundary himself to include all the canvas. It would be great if this was managed by the software, so that whenever a user wanted to draw on an area outside the layer boundary, it would be automatically enlarged to allow him to do that.

I've presented GIT master for a large audience today (200+ people)  - after the presentation, the "most requested feature" at questions time, was also this one.

Just noting that we still need the option to manage layer bounds ourselves. In particular, it seems common to paste something with the expectation that after anchoring it will be cropped to the underlying layer bounds, rather than expanding it. That should be straightforward.

Liam R E Quin holoweb.net> writes:

On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 01:19 -0300, Joao S. O. Bueno wrote:

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:43 AM, Michael Grosberg [...]
the "most requested feature" at questions time, was also this one.

Luckily, work in this area is planned, with fixed-size layer boundaries being an endangered species. Unluckily, there aren't enough active programmers...

Liam

Forgive me for my presumption...
I'd like to use this thread to address this lack of programmers. Don't you find it weird that a project like Gimp, which in theory is a very useful application, with a very broad appeal, draws less programmers than, say, Blender or Inkscape?
I think the reason is lack of vision and inspiration. There is a perception that Gimp isn't going anywhere. To attract people, a project must FEEL as if it's going somewhere; people want to see their effort being put to good use. And if they know what the result is going to be in advance, they will be more willing to contribute.

What I'm saying is that Gimp needs a highly visible "restart". A new vision for the road ahead. A roadmap that has no dates, but does have features that would cause excitement. And it must be presented in a compelling manner: It has to be online, and have mockups, descriptions, videos, anything to convince people there is a goal that can be achieved. It doesn't have to be too detailed; it can have as many stages and releases planned ahead as you like. Even a full recode isn't out of the question - Blender did it. A logo and/or website redesign contest might help in engaging the artist user base. The only thing that matters is to get people *excited* again.

What do you think?

On Thursday, July 22, 2010 21:04:13 Michael Grosberg wrote:

What do you think?

I think GIMP IS going places and HAS exciting things happening to it. What we don't have is resources(skills,time,people) tho write such marketing materials. PLEASE do volunteer.

On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 18:04 +0000, Michael Grosberg wrote:

I think the reason is lack of vision and inspiration. There is a perception that Gimp isn't going anywhere. To attract people, a project must FEEL as if it's going somewhere; people want to see their effort being put to good use. And if they know what the result is going to be in advance, they will be more willing to contribute.

Despite the fact that GIMP has a very clearly defined vision and very interesting features on the roadmap, it may be true that this isn't communicated well enough. But this is a matter that should be discussed on the gimp-web mailing-list. What we are lacking even more than programmers is a capable and thrust-worthy sysadmin to overhaul our web services.

Sven

PS: Could you pretty please learn to spell the name of the program properly? It is called "GIMP" or "GNU Image Manipulation Program" and not "Gimp".

Hi,
00ai99@gmail.com (2010-07-22 at 1532.12 +0930):

I've presented GIT master for a large audience today (200+ people)  - after the presentation, the "most requested feature" at questions time, was also this one.

Just noting that we still need the option to manage layer bounds ourselves. In particular, it seems common to paste something with the expectation that after anchoring it will be cropped to the underlying layer bounds, rather than expanding it. That should be straightforward.

Or to be sure you do not have a huge layer wasting memory and causing noise due to some random pixels far away from the zone you really want to keep (the digital version of lens dust, figure which layer has a pixel causing some faint speckles).

But hey, I think this is the Nth the same issue comes up: "auto size increase for layers is need... yeah, but keep manual crop, computers are not infinite... blah blah... it is in the plan". And back to the lack of programmers.

GSR

On Thursday, July 22, 2010 21:32:00 Sven Neumann wrote:

But this is a matter that should be discussed on the gimp-web mailing-list. What we are lacking even more than programmers is a capable and thrust-worthy sysadmin to overhaul our web services.

That mailing list does not work for me and at least one other presumably new member. I registered right after LGM but no mails form there ever get to me and no mails I write ever get there. Its a bit hard to discuss anything on a list that is simply broken for at least some people. And yes, Ive tried writing to the listed admin.

-- Alexia

On 22.07.2010 20:04, Michael Grosberg wrote:

What I'm saying is that Gimp needs a highly visible "restart".

i guess the 2.8 release alone, with its single window mode will come as a blow for the windows world: a clear sign that it now makes sense to contribute code that addresses the other, much smaller itches.

regards, yahvuu

Sven Neumann gimp.org> writes:

Despite the fact that GIMP has a very clearly defined vision and very interesting features on the roadmap, it may be true that this isn't communicated well enough. But this is a matter that should be discussed on the gimp-web mailing-list. What we are lacking even more than programmers is a capable and thrust-worthy sysadmin to overhaul our web services.

Sven

"isn't communicated well enough" Is an understatement. If there is a roadmap or a vision somewhere, it is completely invisible to anyone outside the team.

What I had in mind by "restart" is to present a future vision of GIMP in a manner so attractive that it would find its way into relevant blogs and websites such as slashdot. This vision should be used as a recruitment tool: it should be made clear that the project is actively seeking new developers so people that click the link to see what GIMP has in store. Speaking of which, the current state of GIMP can also be used to raise some excitement, but that won't happen unless you supply easily installed test development builds for Linux and Windows. It took me some time to compile 2.7.1 myself, and while I assume any developer should be able to do that as well, not supplying development binaries can raise some doubts: do you have something to hide? do you distrust your users? do you want to make it hard on them on purpose? It's all a matter of public perception.

PS: Could you pretty please learn to spell the name of the program properly? It is called "GIMP" or "GNU Image Manipulation Program" and not "Gimp".

Ah, capitalization... yes, that is not my strong point. Don't take it personally, I also forget to capitalize sentences and proper names sometimes. I will see to it that I don't make that mistake again. Hey, at least I didn't use a definite article.

On 7/22/10, Michael Grosberg wrote:

Forgive me for my presumption...
I'd like to use this thread to address this lack of programmers. Don't you find it weird that a project like Gimp, which in theory is a very useful application, with a very broad appeal, draws less programmers than, say, Blender or Inkscape?

Inkscape doesn't really draw many more programmers. It's a very small team that is currently in flux.

I think the reason is lack of vision

http://gui.gimp.org

Please read it carefully

isn't out of the question - Blender did it. A logo and/or website redesign contest might help in engaging the artist user base.

There is a website redesign in progress. Check 'html5' gimp-web branch.

What do you think?

I think that you are volunteering to do some of marketing work :)

Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

On 7/26/10, Michael Grosberg wrote:

What I had in mind by "restart" is to present a future vision of GIMP in a manner so attractive that it would find its way into relevant blogs and websites such as slashdot.

Slashdot. Right. That's where GIMP developers are blamed every time whatever they do. What a nice idea :)

As a matter of fact, GIMP is rather regularly and nicely covered by Ars Technica. Check :)

unless you supply easily installed test development builds for Linux and Windows. It took me some time to compile 2.7.1 myself, and while I assume any developer should be able to do that as well, not supplying development binaries can raise some doubts: do you have something to hide?

Michael, dealing with people who have this sort of doubts is not the job for programmers. It's psychiatry. You need a special training for that. Let's not dive into the pool of amusing misconceptions. Providing nightly builds or dev builds is not a programmers job. If somebody wants to do it, let this person speak up and bloody well do it.

It's been stated in public many times that GIMP team needs all kinds of help. In my experience it doesn't make any sense telling the team what to do. Now what *does* make sense is step up and say "Hi, I want to help you by doing this and that. How do I proceed?"

So I'm tempted to ask: do you volunteer to help the team with raising awareness of things?

Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 10:52 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

Michael, dealing with people who have this sort of doubts is not the job for programmers. It's psychiatry. You need a special training for

So true.