the last thing Adobe wants to do is support XCF, it's a competing format belonging to a competing(and competatively priced) app.
Actually, the fact that it comes from GIMP has NOTHING to do with. The fact that few (if any) of theirs users are asking for that feature, is what is driving it (or not).
why would i want to save to a file format that would render my image that's built up of layer masks and vector text layers really badly if opened in a standard viewer
Because at least you COULD open it up in a standard viewer.
Is it better to be able to get at the data in SOME format, but not perfect, using a 3rd party tool - OR not get ANY of your data?!?!
rather than in a format engineered from the ground up for all of the requirements i could have, and that is distinctive as being a GIMP image format, rather than just a really ugly TIFF?
Having a distinctive image format for the GIMP is also an option - one we discussed pre-camp...I was just putting forward other alternatives that have their own advantages and disadvantages.
so why use a format that all consumers would expect to be able to utilise 100%, it would surely confuse the hell out of your average photo$hop users to use TIFF in this way, especially if we're looking at cross compatibility.
Actually, many users already DO use Photoshop and TIFF this way! If you have a multi-layered PSD file, including text layers, layer effects, etc and you save as TIFF, Photoshop writes out all the information necessary for it to coime back into Photoshop with full fidelity. BUT if you open it up in some simple TIFF viewer - of course, you don't get the same effect.
GIMP's use of TIFF would be EXACTLY the same...
in which case you'd have to do something about a workaround, like maybe have an optional pre-rendered version of the image stored in the XCF for viewers that don't support it properly,
Which is what Photoshop does in PSD...
For applications that support layers, you can read them. If you don't, there is an already rendered/flattend version available.
but, at that point it's questionable that you'd want to view an XCFin something other than GIMP, remember,
Except in the case where the user does not HAVE the GIMP - either because they just don't have it, or perhaps it doesn't exist on that OS platform...
GIMP has this handy thing called export, if your target audience wont be able to read an XCF then don't give them one, give then a PNG instead.
Sure, and lose all the extra information that might be useful to them in other authoring environments...
And what about posting things online or to archives??
Leonard -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leonard Rosenthol <mailto:leonardr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> <http://www.lazerware.com>
