Raphaël,

It looks like you have a bad opinion of the GIMP developers, but I hope that you will change your mind....

Although it doesn't improve my opinion that you lead with a personal attack misrepresenting my throughts, I do not in general have a "bad opinion" of GIMP developers. I do find some highhanded in seeking to direct me, who am not a GIMP developer, in how I spend my time.

This is wrong. The plan was that Film Gimp and GIMP would merge around version 2.0 (you can check the gimp-dev mailing list archives from 2000 for some statements about that).

I wasn't there, and only have the word of the original Film Gimp developers to go by. I have searched the archives and, except for complaints about it being difficult to locate or build, have found nothing about the HOLLYWOOD branch or Film Gimp.

If you can produce any message from the archives to support your contention I would be interested to see it.

Recently, I have asked for more cooperation between the two teams so that the projects do not diverge too much.

Film Gimp forked at GIMP 1.0.4. When you say "not diverge too much" do you mean to suggest that GIMP has changed little since 1.0.4?

I don't think that anybody
has said that Film Gimp should cease to exist.

Not in those exact words, rather that we should stop wasting our time on it and get behind GIMP instead.

"The GIMP group has a reputation for being unfriendly to operating systems other than Linux."

This is also wrong.

GIMP has documented no official position on what operating systems it supports.

I don't want to misrepresent individuals by reporting a subjective impression of a group, and have rectified that. Regarding your comments about the Windows version of GIMP in the same paragraph, I am checking further.

So the developers are really open to all operating systems (otherwise, there would be no version for Windows, MacOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX and even the venerable OS/2).

Are the FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX and OS/2 efforts truly internal to GIMP, treated more like a cousin as with GimpWin, or totally independent efforts like MacGimp and Film Gimp?

I only find Linux, Solaris, and Windows binaries on ftp.gimp.org. Where on the GIMP Web site is the documenation for Solaris, FreeBSD, Mac, IRIX, and OS/2?

"Not much is known about the MacGimp group. They don't seem to have a public mailing list."

It is true that the Mac version is not advertised as much as the other versions (although it is linked from the GUG page), but you can find a lot of information about it on http://www.macgimp.org/.

No, I couldn't find any. The "about" link was broken when I checked, and is now gone entirely. In looking again I did find the mailing list for them though.

Please tell me what information I could find about macgimp.org if I knew where to look.

So Calvin
Williamson and Caroline Dahllof started to work on GEGL in order to support 16 bits per channel and floating-point channels. This will be used as the core code for pixel operations in GIMP 2.0. That has been planned since the beginning, and it was summarized in December 2000 when Sven and Mitch posted their "future plans" to the gimp-developer mailing list. A copy of that message can be found here: http://developer.gimp.org/gimp-future

There is no mention of the HOLLYWOOD branch or Film Gimp in that document. GEGL is not Film Gimp.

Robin, I hope that you can correct the inaccuracies in the current page.

I always do. Thanks for your clarifications.

Cheers,

Robin --------------------------------------------------------------------------- www.FilmGimp.org
www.LinuxMovies.org
www.OpenSourceProgrammers.org

On 11 Dec 2002, at 13:58, Raphaël Quinet wrote:

[trying to refute ... what?]

As to the distributions thing: www.gimp.org is the place where you get the source. Binaries distributed from that site are just a matter of courtesy. This is not favouring or hating Windows. If anything, www.gimp.org favours Tor's Windows build, as it is available from the site. That is much more than can be said for many Unix flavours.

I am a Windows user, but I can understand the developer's decision to make the site a distribution point for the source, not for binaries. Distributing builds means commiting to these builds, supporting them, and as most developers are Linux users, that just is not feasible.

As to the names WinGIMP and MacGIMP: these are the names of commercial products, both sold by Mat Caughron. His websites manage to totally confuse the issue, as he is suggesting somehow that his are the 'official' GIMPs--which in a sense is true, as he is repackaging and distributing the most popular Mac and Windows builds of the official source. However, he is not the source of the official GIMP.

I think there are more than Tor's builds of the GIMP for Windows, though as far as I can tell, these are mostly for private use by the builder. A non-programming end-user who uses Windows will probable end up with Tor's builds, and a non-programming Mac user with the Fink build.

First, I would like to apologize to everyone on the list. It seems my poking and proding around for 16-bit per channel rendering (which later changed into 32-bit float (spfp) per channel rendering) started a flamewar between gimp and film gimp developers.

Second, I would like to ask when a either a GEGL enabled Gimp will be released, or a version of either Gimp with spfp/channel support _or_ Film Gimp with a working xcf plugin will be avalible.

Hi,

RaphaXl Quinet writes:

http://filmgimp.sourceforge.net/docs/which.gimp.html

I think that some parts of this article are really inaccurate and are likely to cause some unnecessary damage to the reputation of both projects (GIMP and Film Gimp). It looks like you have a bad opinion of the GIMP developers, but I hope that you will change your mind (and the page).

Raphael, thanks for writing this mail. I agree with all the points you made and would only like to add a few more words about the list of GIMP projects titled "Gimp projects are there?"

This list gives the wrong impressions that there are separate ports of The GIMP to the Windows and Macintosh platforms. This is wrong. These projects use the same source code that is used to compile The GIMP for a large number of UNIX operating systems. The GIMP developers try very hard to write code that is platform-independent. All (or actually most of) the ugly details about different platforms are hidden in GLib and GDK. This is especially true for the current development version. The WinGimp and MacGimp projects (if there are any) are solely providing binary versions of the one true GIMP and I don't think they should be listed as separate GIMP projects. If you want to keep them in the list, you should also add GIMP for FreeBSD, GIMP for OpenBSD, GIMP for Debian Linux, GIMP for Solaris, GIMP for SuSE Linux, GIMP for AIX, GIMP for RedHat Linux, ..., ... and probably even GIMP for OS/2.

The page at filmgimp.sourceforge.net also states:

"GIMP and GIMP for Windows maintain totally separate mailing lists."

It is true that there are different mailing-lists for users of GIMP on UNIX and users of GIMP for Windows. It turned out that this separation makes sense although I never liked the idea of making a difference between the same application running on different platforms. It is however wrong that there are different mailing-lists for the development of The GIMP. The sentence I quoted may however give this wrong impression.

Overall, this new page on the filmgimp site is once more full of wrong facts that I have to try hard to suppress the feeling that Robin is knowingly and willingly spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt on The GIMP and I wonder what's the rationale of this.

Salut, Sven

Sven,

I thank Patrick and Raphaël for the apologies they posted. I think that shows class on their part. And even though the discussion became unnecessarily heated, everyone has learned more about the various projects.

[Robin's] list gives the wrong impressions that there are separate ports

of

The GIMP to the Windows and Macintosh platforms. This is wrong.

The relationship between GIMP and GIMP for Windows is made clear, and everyone seems to agree nobody knows what the MacGimp effort really does.

WinGimp and MacGimp projects (if there are any) are solely providing binary versions of the one true GIMP and I don't think they should be listed as separate GIMP projects. If you want to keep them in the list, you should also add GIMP for FreeBSD, GIMP for OpenBSD, GIMP for Debian Linux, GIMP for Solaris, GIMP for SuSE Linux, GIMP for AIX, GIMP for RedHat Linux, ..., ... and probably even GIMP for OS/2.

If anyone would show me a separate Web site or independent project leader for those platforms I would certainly consider listing them.

It is true that there are different mailing-lists for users of GIMP on UNIX and users of GIMP for Windows. It turned out that this separation makes sense although I never liked the idea of making a difference between the same application running on different platforms. It is however wrong that there are different mailing-lists for the development of The GIMP.

I guess you are unaware of the gimpwin-dev list.

Overall, this new page on the filmgimp site is once more full of wrong facts that I have to try hard to suppress the feeling that Robin is knowingly and willingly spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt on The GIMP and I wonder what's the rationale of this.

Instead of attacking me personally why don't you stick to GIMP issues?

You seem to want to foster the misimpression that GIMP is all just one big project centrally administered. That sophism causes such absurdities as requests to fix Film Gimp bugs being posted to the GIMP list, the status of GIMP bugs being posted to the Film Gimp list as though we should know what that's talking about, and cross-posted flamewar traffic that disrupted developers working on Film Gimp.

My true goal in documenting GIMP-related projects is to stem widespread supposition and misinformation. The total absence of documentation on the GIMP Web site regarding the status and relationships of the many GIMP ports and projects has caused everyone confusion.

Cheers,

Robin --------------------------------------------------------------------------- www.FilmGimp.org
www.LinuxMovies.org
www.OpenSourceProgrammers.org

On 2002-12-12 at 0922.22 -0800, Robin Rowe typed this:

You seem to want to foster the misimpression that GIMP is all just one big project centrally administered.

i for one look for the berkeley seal of approval on things ....

carol

Hey all, its me again.

First I would like to say Im not trying to start a flamewar here... but will the win32 Gimp target ever support Photoshop plugins, and will the *nix x86 Gimp target ever support Photoshop plugins via Wine?

unknown@panax.com (2002-12-12 at 1550.09 -0500):

First I would like to say Im not trying to start a flamewar here... but will the win32 Gimp target ever support Photoshop plugins,

Seaching in Google you can see http://www.gimp.org/ (scroll down to "GIMP 1.2.3 for Windows Released") or a more precise thing like http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/lists/gimp-developer/2001-December/006179.html

You can try places like http://registry.gimp.org/ too, and you will find that user filter make "filter factory plugins"-kind work too.

So seems at least some kind works, dunno if the factory ones are the same than the 8bf ones, or if there a lot of other kinds, but at least one does, maybe more.

and will the *nix x86
Gimp target ever support Photoshop plugins via Wine?

Dunno, if anybody wants and tries, maybe. Other option is to recode them from scratch (more portable, fixable, probably without money charge, etc).

GSR

Hi,

Patrick McFarland writes:

First I would like to say Im not trying to start a flamewar here... but will the win32 Gimp target ever support Photoshop plugins

iirc, the latest win32 version already does.

and will the *nix x86 Gimp target ever support Photoshop plugins via Wine?

it will if someone hacks it. If I'm right and it already works on Win32, it should be possible to bring this functionality to UNIX x86.

If it is a wise decision to try to support Photoshop Plug-ins is a different question...

Salut, Sven

Hi,

"Robin Rowe" writes:

The relationship between GIMP and GIMP for Windows is made clear, and everyone seems to agree nobody knows what the MacGimp effort really does.

sorry, but I didn't have the impression that your page sheds the right light on the relationship. Instead the reader may get the wrong impression that the the different platforms use a forked codebase. Perhaps it's just me, but that's what I read between the lines.

My true goal in documenting GIMP-related projects is to stem widespread supposition and misinformation. The total absence of documentation on the GIMP Web site regarding the status and relationships of the many GIMP ports and projects has caused everyone confusion.

that is indeed a noble goal but spreading misinformation is not the right way to achieve it. That's why Raphael and me tried to outline a number of mistakes in your page. If you feel personally attacked, that's your very own problem. It was definitely not my intention.

The whole point here is that instead of a collaborative effort to provide some urgently needed information about the GIMP projects, you just went ahead and put something into public space. It would have been a lot better to prepare a draft and discuss it on the appropriate lists before putting this online.

Salut, Sven

Sven,

The whole point here is that instead of a collaborative effort to provide some urgently needed information about the GIMP projects, you just went ahead and put something into public space. It would have been a lot better to prepare a draft and discuss it on the appropriate lists before putting this online.

The point is that it isn't for you to direct how an independent project is run. I've made as much accomodation to you and Raphaël as I can. I won't spin what I write to fit your viewpoint.

If you still have a problem with the Web page at http://filmgimp.sourceforge.net/docs/which.gimp.html, post the truth as you see it on your Web page. Let people judge for themselves.

Cheers,

Robin --------------------------------------------------------------------------- www.FilmGimp.org
www.LinuxMovies.org
www.OpenSourceProgrammers.org

On 13-Dec-2002, Sven Neumann wrote:

First I would like to say Im not trying to start a flamewar here... but will the win32 Gimp target ever support Photoshop plugins

iirc, the latest win32 version already does.

Cool, but this limits me to using win32 =/

and will the *nix x86 Gimp target ever support Photoshop plugins via Wine?

it will if someone hacks it. If I'm right and it already works on Win32, it should be possible to bring this functionality to UNIX x86.

If it is a wise decision to try to support Photoshop Plug-ins is a different question...

I think its a wise decision only because of the fact a lot of good photoshop plugins arnt made by Adobe, and also Gimp is still missing a few things that Photoshop has, including correct Cloud and Differencial Cloud (the one that looks like grey plasma) behavior.

Robin Rowe writes:
> I guess you are unaware of the gimpwin-dev list.

That list is (with hindsight) misnamed, it doesn't in fact have much discussion about GIMP itself at all. But the name goes back to the early days of the GIMP port to Windows, when I had hopes there might be lots of discussion about techincal details of the port.

Certainly, the list does not have (cross-platform) GIMP development discussion. It is nowadays mostly about issues related to building and running GTK+-using software other than GIMP on Windows.

I agree that with Sven that it's wrong to call GIMP for Windows a separate project. The distribution for Windows has its own webpage, but if something about it should be called a "project", it involves just the building and packaging of a distribution. I.e. not really much more than the building and packaging of a Debian, Red Hat or Solaris GIMP package, for instance.

--tml

On 14-Dec-2002, Tor Lillqvist wrote:

I agree that with Sven that it's wrong to call GIMP for Windows a separate project. The distribution for Windows has its own webpage, but if something about it should be called a "project", it involves just the building and packaging of a distribution. I.e. not really much more than the building and packaging of a Debian, Red Hat or Solaris GIMP package, for instance.

Well, from what I heard, it can load photoshop filters too. Something I wish the *nix version could do with wine =/

Tor,

I agree that with Sven that it's wrong to call GIMP for Windows a separate project.

What makes it seem a project is that it has a separate Web page, separate mailing lists, and a well known project leader (you). However, as you now say otherwise, I have updated the Web page accordingly.

Thank you for the clarification.

Cheers,

Robin --------------------------------------------------------------------------- www.FilmGimp.org
www.LinuxMovies.org
www.OpenSourceProgrammers.org

Hi,

Patrick McFarland writes:

Second, I would like to ask when a either a GEGL enabled Gimp will be released, or a version of either Gimp with spfp/channel support _or_ Film Gimp with a working xcf plugin will be avalible.

when it is ready. Sorry, we never give any time scales for releases. In this particular case, it migth take a while longer since we haven't even started to work on GEGL integration and are currently trying to push development towards the end of the 1.4 development cycle.

Salut, Sven

Hi,

RaphaXl Quinet writes:

This is wrong. The plan was that Film Gimp and GIMP would merge around version 2.0 (you can check the gimp-dev mailing list archives from 2000 for some statements about that). This did not mean that any project would cease to exist, but rather that one tool (or at least a common codebase) would support the features that are necessary for both projects.

actually there was no plan to merge the two projects. Instead the idea was to provide a framework for image manipulation that fits the needs of both still image and movie editors. The basis for this framework is supposed to be GEGL and the Pupus rendering pipeline. A rich set of widgets to build a user interface from should be provided as well as a plug-in architecture and other useful things. Several applications could be built on top of this architecture. Perhaps there would be one large customizable GIMP application, but I can imagine that some people might prefer to create a more specialized user interface and call it Film GIMP, Video GIMP or Icon GIMP. There's nothing wrong with having different applications for different needs.

This idea is however very different from the approach taken by the current Film GIMP developers which seem to prefer to work on a stone-old code base. I see a lot of effort wasted here and will continue to discourage people to join this effort. The Film GIMP developers shouldn't take this as a personal offense; it's their choice and I will certainly not dictate what other people should do. It's just my very own personal opinion that we could be so much further towards GIMP-2.0 if more people would share this vision.

Salut, Sven

On 16 Dec 2002 12:33:39 +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:

RaphaXl Quinet writes:

This is wrong. The plan was that Film Gimp and GIMP would merge around version 2.0 (you can check the gimp-dev mailing list archives from 2000 for some statements about that). This did not mean that any project would cease to exist, but rather that one tool (or at least a common codebase) would support the features that are necessary for both projects.

actually there was no plan to merge the two projects. Instead the idea was to provide a framework for image manipulation that fits the needs of both still image and movie editors. [...]

Well, this is more or less what I meant when I wrote the statements above. I knew that the old Gimp16 (Film Gimp) core would not be merged into the current GIMP because the work had already started on GEGL. The "merge" that I had in mind would have involved the migration of the Film Gimp frame manager and film-specific plug-ins to the new GIMP core based on GEGL. And as I wrote above, this did not mean that any project would cease to exist.

But as I have already explained in a previous message, the exact plans for Film Gimp and GEGL were not discussed on the mailing list. They were mentioned by non-developers, but not by those working on GEGL and Film Gimp (except for the mentions on the film.gimp.org home page in 2000). So I would have to check with Calvin Williamson or Caroline Dahllof and ask them what they had in mind for Film Gimp and the film-specific code and plug-ins when they started working on GEGL. But I doubt that they intended to drop all film-specific stuff once GEGL and GIMP 2.x would be ready, so they probably planned some kind of merge later.

This idea is however very different from the approach taken by the current Film GIMP developers which seem to prefer to work on a stone-old code base.

In the first message that I posted to the filmgimp mailing list, I saw a great opportunity for Film Gimp to get closer to the current code base when I noticed that one of the top goals for Film Gimp was "Bring the codebase up from 1.0.4 to rendezvous with Gimp 1.2.3". I suggested to aim for 1.3.x instead of 1.2.3, because 1.2.3 is already a bit old and 1.3.x has a much cleaner code (more object-oriented, cleaner separation between user inteface and core, etc.) and has better support for multiple platforms thanks to the new GTK 2.0.

Unfortunately, the result of this proposal and the discussion that followed was that the goal of bringing Film Gimp closer to GIMP was removed from the Film Gimp home page and some rather negative statements about the GIMP were posted on the public web site and on the mailing lists. This is exactly the opposite of what I was hoping for and I feel rather bad about this although I do not know how this mess could have been avoided. I am still hoping, though... There would be so much to gain for the Film Gimp users and developers by porting it to GTK+ 2.0 and aligning its core to GIMP 1.3.x or by aiming directly for GEGL and GIMP 2.x.

-Raphaël

Robin Rowe wrote:

Are the FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX and OS/2 efforts truly internal to GIMP,

treated more like a cousin as with GimpWin, or totally independent efforts like MacGimp and Film Gimp?

I only find Linux, Solaris, and Windows binaries on ftp.gimp.org. Where on the GIMP Web site is the documenation for Solaris, FreeBSD, Mac, IRIX, and OS/2?

Correct on limited flavors of binaries. We are inclined to be source distributors, and leave the making of more specialized binary distributions to folks who know how to make them. For example, the freeware volunteers at SGI build gimp packages from sources originating from the same gnome repository the gimp developers here support, but employ the SGI software packager, and these install fairly effortlessly on the various SGI's I have. They are current to Gimp 1.2.3 with a package dated Jul-01-2002.

http://freeware.sgi.com/index-by-alpha.html

It would be nice if we tell people to where they may find more exotic binaries, such as for SGI, and give such folks a few thank-you's every now and then. Mea culpa. Hopefully this note will correct some of that.

Be good, be well

Garry

Garry R. Osgood wrote:

Robin Rowe wrote:

Are the FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX and OS/2 efforts truly internal to GIMP,

Yes. In theory, at least. However, we do suffer from a lack of developers on those platforms, so it's possible to get into the "all the world's a VAX" syndrome... the Win32 developers keep us somewhat honest (while at the same time we occasionally need to keep them honest). In principle, no code which breaks a build on any of the above platforms (with the possible exception of OS/2) should ever get checked in. Platform-specific stuff should be at an absolute minimum in the gimp code - where it's required, we try to conform to standards (POSIX first, SvR4 and BSD second).

the freeware volunteers at SGI build gimp packages from sources originating from the same gnome repository the gimp developers here support, but employ the SGI software packager,

Similarly, the GIMP is available on Sun's Freeware site in the pkgadd format, on RedHat's ftp server as an RPM, on Debian as a dpkg, and so on.

It would be nice if we tell people to where they may find more exotic binaries, such as for SGI, and give such folks a few thank-you's every now and then. Mea culpa. Hopefully this note will correct some of that.

That would be nice. There are so many platforms and file formats out there, though, that keeping track might be difficult. Who's built the GIMP on Fujitsu SvR4 Unix for example? Or on a Bull? The source, and decent coding practices that minimise unportable code, and source code distribution is the way to go. If, as a service to users, we provide binaries on the gimp.org site for the 2 or 3 most popular platforms, this doesn't mean that the other platforms matter less, it probably means that the website maintainer has access to binaries for the most common platforms :)

Cheers,
Dave.

I think it best that Filmgimp do its own thing for the time being.... I personally use both... If there where any merging I would suggest the 1.3.x branch than the 1.2.x branch simply because the code in the 1.3 branch is so much easier to work with (I say that as someone who is almost completely unfamiliar with the code).

I think that filmgimp want to meet your 16 bit + requirements NOW.... not when Gimp 1.4 or 2.0 rolls out.

Once 1.4 is out and the move comes for 2.0 I would sincerly hope that both projects could merge.... (at least in back end functionality) as I suspect that Filmgimp will have many industry specific patches incorperated...