On Mon, Nov 01, 1999 at 10:20:01PM +0100, Olof S Kylander wrote: > Hello Michael, > > On Mon, 1 Nov 1999, Michael J. Hammel wrote: > > > I don't mind waiting around extra three months to make Gimp be the top of > > > the line program when it comes to user friendly UI. I mean if we rush it > > > really we can maybe release Gimp 1.2 in Jan 2000. So how much > > > will it hurt to release it in Mars instead. > > > > Actually, it has a potentially big impact. The Gimp is one of the premiere > > applications in the Linux world. A feature freeze was announced earlier in > > an attempt to schedule a release date. You have quite a few book > > publishers trying to do books on the Gimp and trying to time release of the > > book with the product. End users associate published texts with the product, > > especially when a printed document is not delivered with the product. > > > > I've had at leat 5 different publishers ask me about release dates. I've > > been telling them late December to late January based on the feature > > freeze and goals for the freeze - focus on bug fixing. UI problems can be > > considered bugs, but the truth is they are a design issue. They do work, > > just not as might be desired. > > Well I know that there are people trying to write books, I'm one of them. > And sure my life would be a lot easier if we just said release Gimp 1.2 > on Jan 21 2000. But I tend to look at the user and the community instead. > I think the best goal is to make us (the developers and supporters of > Gimp) and naturally all the users happy, than making one or two > Publishers happy. I agree. It is not about developing gimp in a way that sells the most books. Ii is about making the ultimate graphics tool for Linux/Unix that is free and helps you to make the job done. Books shall follow that. Now, I DO understand, like Olof that it's a cat-and-a-mouse play writing a book about all this, but isn't the application the most important thing? Otherwise we can just stop the development, fix all bugs and release Gimp Final and start writing books about it. But we are talking about a developers version here, which just entered freeze. I do consider the GUI part very important, since I'll be twiddling with that most of the time. Others consider their book important which is perfectly understandable. But does Gimp exist for us to write books about it or to use it? I dont mean this as a flame. But basically Yosh is the maintainer, people here are the developers, and while trying not to break everything, I think the goal is to mold gimp into more usable, more powerful application. Books need to follow the development, not vice versa. > > Additionally, UI changes were not part of the design specifications for the > > 1.2 release. > > There was no design specifications (if I'm not totally out in the sky > flying). We code and write etc. for the fun and joy not to do > specifications (don't interpret me wrong design specifications is a very > good thing most of the time). Right. If we find along the way that some rules are not good anymore, those can to be changed if everyone agrees. Since some good points were raised on the GUI part, why not fix them since people are willing to implement the changes? It would be totally different if nobody would be willing to _do_ the work. Just some thoughts, I dont mean this as a flame against you writing books, those are very important too, especially for new users! After all, we'll get a stable Gimp with, hopefully, also a great GUI :) Tuomas -- .---( t i g e r t @ g i m p . o r g )---. | some stuff at http://tigert.gimp.org/ | `---------------------------------------'
