On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 20:35 -0500, Robert Krawitz wrote: > Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:42:49 -0500 > From: Daniel Falk <daniel-gimpdevlist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > >> Please do something to get in touch with users, I could never > >> honestly ever say theGimp could be a replacement for photoshop > >> ever if this continues. > > > Gimp may or may not be a Photoshop replacement. That depends on > > the user. For me, it's a replacement because since I'm using it > > I'm not using Photoshop. But certain people want to keep using > > Photoshop. If your plan is using Photoshop for free, then Gimp > > it's not for you. If you need an image manipulation program, be > > welcome. If you want Photoshop for Linux, which is a valid > > desire, you should start asking Adobe to port it, not Gimp coders > > to create a feature by feature clone. > > > > Anyway, I also think that a better communication between existing > > coders and users would be nice for certain situations. But > > non-users-wanting-photoshop aren't gimp users. And I understand > > when a coder pisses off if one of these guys say "Gimp sucks > > because it hasn't X feature" and threatens not using Gimp if the > > coders don't do what he wants. > > I understand such things can piss off the people who are devoting > their own time to the project. But if I'm understanding you right, > you're suggesting that users shouldn't hope for gimp to be as > feature-filled as photoshop. But why not? As a believer in > open-source, I want gimp to be the best it can be and I'm willing > to submit feature requests and bug reports to help get it that way. > I'd rather spend my time doing that than getting a proprietary > software package ported to linux by Adobe (not gonna happen!) > > Don't confuse feature counts (my product has 101 features and yours > has 100, so mine's better) or specific individual features that might > or might not matter to a few people with overall product utility. In > particular, just because GIMP and Photoshop do some things differently > doesn't make one better or worse than the other, just "different". > > The GIMP developers aren't (at least for the most part) interested in > building a Photoshop clone. Nothing's stopping someone else from > taking the code base and doing just that, but the GIMP team has its > own vision. Totally agree. When I say as feature-filled, I'm not suggesting that those features be implemented the same way. That's what I would see as a clone. But if photoshop has useful features that solve a certain problem, then I think the gimp team should want to solve the problem as well, so long as it fits within the scope of the project. Of course the gimp team may have a totally different idea on how to solve that problem. That's where it stops being a clone. > > Submitting feature requests by itself isn't usually a very productive > endeavor for most projects. There's no shortage of people with ideas; > what's needed are people who can and will realize those ideas. That > doesn't mean that participating in discussions isn't useful, but if > you want to help GIMP move along, you need to find more active ways of > doing so -- programming is only one such way. That's true. There's probably not a shortage of people with ideas, but I think there is often a shortage of people who have ideas that are good and are practical. But otherwise, I know what you mean. Coming up with the ideas is faster than programming those ideas, especially when no work is done to actually to refine the idea. > > Finally, to address more specifically your point about nested-window > MDI (aka "window in window"): that paradigm may work on Windows > (although it quickly grew tedious a dozen years ago when I used > Pagemaker), but on Linux/UNIX it doesn't work. One reason why that is > specific to X (the X window system) is that the windows inside the > parent window can't (at least at present) be managed by the window > manager running under X: they have to be managed by the application > itself. > > There are a lot of different window managers available, and most of > those window managers can be customized almost endlessly, and there is > no one standard. Not just decorations -- basic window behavior can be > varied. Not everyone likes "click to focus and raise" (i. e. you have > to explicitly select a window, which raises it to the top). For > example, I use its polar opposite, focus strictly follows mouse with > no raising of windows except on my explicit request (i. e. whatever > window the mouse is in is the one that's active, even if it's > partially buried under other windows). What all this means is that > the windows inside the container may behave very differently from what > the user is accustomed to, which is very distracting (try using the > newest version of acroread with multiple PDF files using focus follows > mouse, and you'll see what I mean -- and yes, I know how to turn that > off, but I've simply switched to kpdf instead). > > Nested windows are also a pain to use if you want to have multiple > applications in use simultaneously, because the big container hides > all the other windows. I prefer to either just live with the mess or > use multiple virtual desktops. But if you want to implement nested > windows, go ahead -- if the GIMP folks don't want to accept the patch, > you can distribute it yourself. I think you either misunderstood me or misdirected your reply. I agree with you. I really like gimp's system. > > I think it is important to open source projects that they value > their users and reach out to potential users. It's good for a > project to have many people interested in it, even if those people > don't code. I'm not saying that the GIMP doesn't value and reach > out. I just want to establish the point that those are actually > good things to do in the first place. > > Well, free software or open source isn't simply about freedom without > responsibility. You certainly have the freedom to use and modify the > software without restriction, to redistribute it (in the case of GIMP, > under exactly the same terms as the original) with or without > modification, and so forth. But with that freedom comes the > responsibility to help the project along if you can, or at least to > understand that if you're not going to actively help your ideas along > that nobody else has the responsibility to do it for you. > What you said here seems right. I'm missing how it is a response to my statement though. _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
