On Wed, 11 Dec 2002 01:40:05 -0800, "Robin Rowe" <rower@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > More docs. > > 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). Here are some parts of your page that are incorrect (IMHO): "Many GIMP people have expressed the opinion that Film Gimp should cease to exist, that Film Gimp developers should instead all work on GEGL or GIMP." 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. Recently, I have asked for more cooperation between the two teams so that the projects do not diverge too much. I don't think that anybody has said that Film Gimp should cease to exist. I wrote that it would be nice if Film Gimp would try to converge rather than diverge so that both projects could benefit from the same features, but this is very different from what you wrote above. "The GIMP group has a reputation for being unfriendly to operating systems other than Linux." This is also wrong. Recently, a single user who had never made any significant contribution to the GIMP has been posting some flames to the gimp-developer mailing list and claiming that the GIMP should be a Linux thing only. Many developers have quickly replied to him, saying that he was wrong. 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). For example, I currently do most of my GIMP testing and development on Solaris and I try to support Windows users whenever I can (e.g., through Bugzilla). "For some time the GIMP site didn't mention the GimpWin project, but they reached an accommodation where GimpWin is mentioned in the GIMP downloads section and its files are hosted in a separate area of the GIMP site." The GIMP for Windows page from Tor Lillqvist has been mirrored on www.gimp.org since February 1999 (or maybe a bit earlier, but that's the earliest reliable timestamp that I found). At that time, the Windows version was still very unstable. Also at that time, the maintainers of the GIMP web site had stepped down, so the updates were very slow except for the news items taken from Xach's site. Despite the fact that www.gimp.org was almost unmaintained, a direct link to the GIMP for Windows page (http://www.gimp.org/win32/) has been featured on the front page of www.gimp.org since November 2000, according to the WayBack Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20001109165800/http://gimp.org/ In September 2001, I volunteered for maintaining the old web site while a new design was being worked on. At that time, I added an additional link to the Windows version on the download page, but it had always been mentioned on the front page. "GimpWin changes are incorporated into GIMP, but GIMP and GimpWin maintain totally separate mailing lists." There is no GimpWin (WinGimp is probably OK, though). GIMP for Windows and GIMP are the same program, using the same CVS repository for development and also using the same Bugzilla for bug tracking. Tor and other developers of the Windows version participate in the development of the GIMP in the same way as other GIMP developers. There are of course some issues that are specific to Windows (installer, different OS, etc.) so it is normal to discuss these on a separate mailing list. There were also some differences that were due to the fact that the Windows version had to use a hacked version of GTK+-1.3 instead of 1.2 (used by the other OS's), but most of these differences have been resolved with the move to GTK+-2.0. Anyway, the discussion about new features or major code changes that are not OS-specific are usually shared among all developers. So it is incorrect to present the Windows version as being totally separate from the other supported platforms. "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/. "The GEGL project is working toward a future version of GIMP, that is, GIMP 2. Some GIMP developers also work on GEGL. GEGL is viewed as part of the GIMP project, even though the code is different." Yes, the code is different, but this is the goal of GEGL and GIMP 2. The goal is to re-write the low-level pixel operations because the current GIMP code supports only three types of drawables: grayscale, indexed (8 bits only) and RGB with 8 bits per channel. 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 Robin, I hope that you can correct the inaccuracies in the current page. This would be in the best interest of both projects. -Raphaël
