hi all, the reason I talked myself into the position of 'maintainer of default resources' (is that a title like 'floor manager' at mcdonalds?) at the LGM is that I voiced concern over how they can either enhance or sabotage the product vision: <http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/GIMP_UI_Redesign#product_vision> to give a fictive, crass, but clear example: if somebody checks out GIMP because she is looking for a 'high-end photo manipulation application' and is confronted by 213 (well-drawn) clown face brushes, then we are in fact killing the GIMP project. first of all, resources in GIMP are: - brushes - patterns - gradients - palettes - paint dynamics - tool presets so what are we looking for for each of these resources? well, apart from rule nr.1 formulated above (enhance the product vision? in; sabotage? out) I think it is either 1) the default resource is a 'must-have primitive' for the resource type. simply cannot do without it. this is analogous to that a graphics program 'must have' a way to draw squares, rectangles, circles, ellipses, lines. or 2) the default resource is general purpose, very versatile. example: a brush to paint grass is _not_. a brush that with some tweaking and combining can be used to paint grass, hair, fur, brushed metal and rain _is_. or 3) the default resource showcases the depths and sophistication of the resource type. the stress here is on being educational and a starting point for users to make their own deep, sophisticated resources. I am not having high hopes for these defaults also to be 'must-have primitive' or 'general purpose, very versatile,' so there is not going to be a lot of them and they better be classy. oh, and talking about classy, there is going to be a 'no cheese rule'. a Leopard pattern? no no no. then here some notes for some of the resource types: patterns a first look here tell me that application of the rules above will clear out (almost) the whole section. size matters here, large (thousands instead of 16–128 pix) patterns to avoid visible repetition. the one thing I can think of we need pronto is one or more believable film grain patterns for photo manipulation. gradients similar big cull coming palettes the websafe/visibone stuff looks really deprecated in 2010. something like the Tango Icon Theme palette is an excellent example of a resource the fits with the product vision (GIMP is Free Software and a high-end application for producing icons). paint dynamics paint dynamics are still fully in development, including the actual functionality. it is not useful at the moment to contribute paint dynamics presets. one last thing: we have a green pepper problem. it fails several of criteria outlined above, but the GIMP team seems to be emotionally attached to it. similar to the GIMP name, we seem to wear it as a badge of honour. so I am 50/50 on in/out. this may prove to be the hardest decision of my career >^} --ps founder + principal interaction architect man + machine interface works http://mmiworks.net/blog : on interaction architecture _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
