GIMP 2.10.28 Released With More Fixes

[prokoudine]

I thought initial HiDPI support was part of 2.10, but not having such a screen myself I don't know whether it's good enough or not.

Regarding HiDPI, v2.10 works more or less okay on smaller displays like 2560x1440 (e.g. my laptop), but people with 4K displays fret a lot. There's a limit to how much you can persuade GTK2 to play along on HiDPI, and it involves hackarounds.

[prokoudine]

There were similar comments about Ardour, yet its development is very active and healthy, despite being based on GTK2.

The amount of GTK features that Ardour relies on has been decreasing for several years now. They are now moving away from using GTK widgets packer in favour of their own solution (see commits from last week). So all is left to be done is adding their own text input and treeview widgets, and their own file dialogs. None of those things are trivial to implement, so it's going to take a while. I'm not even sure if they want to actively get rid of those.

[omer666]

Tell that to whoever has an HiDPI display

I thought initial HiDPI support was part of 2.10, but not having such a screen myself I don't know whether it's good enough or not.

The whole point of v3.0 is porting to GTK3 and revamping APIs to make way for new features coming in 3.2. The fact that people _will_ get new features in 3.0 that are not in 2.10 is simply because some of the new stuff either relies on new APIs or is just too time-consuming to backport to 2.10. So far, it's color management rewrite, multi-item (e.g. layer) selection and accompanying changes (like cloning on multiple layers at once), Paint Select tool, and various smaller things. So no, it's not features first in this dev cycle

I hope so! I am not saying that we don't need GTK3, on the contrary, I really like this API and I can't wait to use GIMP 3.0.
I was replying to negative comments on GIMP's development that no GTK3 doesn't mean no development, and that I'd rather have a GIMP 2.10.28 than a half-baked GIMP 3.0
There were similar comments about Ardour, yet its development is very active and healthy, despite being based on GTK2.

[darkbasic]

The fact is that GTK3 is not a priority whatsoever, features come first.

Tell that to whoever has an HiDPI display

[Sonadow]

You gave up waiting "...5-10 years ago"? Well, at least you learned.
Some people have been waiting twelve years for LibreOffice to deliver, and still are. And keep on sending them money...which LibreOffice' s management does NOT use for any development.

At least you learned...

Precisely the reason I use cloud image editors and web versions of Office 365.

[danmcgrew]

I will be curious as to who is sending them money... If there are people doing that it is a good thing, but I think most users just use it. I dont think Liberffice existed 12 years ago, but it is an amazingly functional office suite.

The majority of commenters these days find it extremely hard WORK at being knowledgeable on the subject at hand, and are only here for the same reason most people are 'on' Facebook'--- to spout personal opinion, and not fact. Your very post attests to this.

And then there's this attempt, by a commenter who has almost 3500 posts here, to lend credibility to your---and his, or her---completely fallacious position, said position(s) indicating how totally ignorant both of you are regarding anything concerning the finances, and development efforts (vis-a-vis LibreOffice) of The Document Foundation:

"That [your comment], plus the fact that most people who *do* donate are sending small amounts of money. Not that there is anything wrong with that - every penny counts - but I'm just saying that development won't magically speed up because they received a small amount of money. Speeding up development is only possible if devs can take some days off off their day job, which requires more than what most people are donating. Again: nothing wrong with that - please keep on donating! - but fact is that small amounts only help so much."

This particular commenter not only indicates how totally clueless he or she is regarding anything LibreOffice or TDF (it is implied that LibreOffice developers are employed by TDF), but then, stupidly--there is NO other word--implores everyone else to engage in the same moronic behaviour.

I have followed LibreOffice and TDF since LibreOffice's inception; since StarOffice and before.
I do not intend to waste my valuable time educating people whose only desire is to spout self-serving opinion, totally devoid of any fact(s)...

...except to point out, that if you are going to hold yourself up as an expert on the subject, you probably wish to be informed of, and REMEMBER, the correct spelling of the subject at hand:

"LibreOffice".

After all, experts are experts, and the most basic of expert skills lies in the correct, expert use of grammar and spelling...most particularly, when one is attempting to convince others of one's expertise.

You two need to go back to your Chromebooks---or, more likely than not, to your DumbPhones---and to Facebook. And, at a minimum, have the intellectual integrity to preface, and end, ANY of your comments in a venue such as this with

"This is strictly my personal opinion".

************************************************** *******

The Document Foundation's charter forbids it from spending any of its money on the payment of developers.

So then, what does TDF spend all that money on--which all you suckers send it in the totally mistaken belief that it is spent on development?
Why, on the astronomical salaries of the TDF's elite management, of course What did you think? And what else could it possibly be?

Do your homeWORK.

And--quite probably--hardest of all: quit spouting personal opinion, and

read.

Full disclaimer: this is my personal opinion--plus a lot of facts--but does include a lot of conclusions based on facts which can, otherwise, lead to no other conclusions--"circumstantial conclusions", as it were.

READ. COMPREHEND. Own up to your limitations.
Then, and only then, speak.


"There is no such thing as an empty head. [On the contrary, ] 'Empty heads' are filled with garbage. Thus the difficulty of putting anything into an 'empty head'.--Eric Hoffer

“Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes".― Jawaharlal Nehru

"It takes a great amount of work to be an intellectual slob."---paraphrase of Wm F Buckley, Jr.

[prokoudine]

As much as I love gimp and have been rooting for them and love their work on 2.99 -- I really wish they had a more functional organization behind the project that could rally funding organize energy building, team building, and maybe even getting some 100K or million dollar grants to then feed directly into paid programming positions.

We've been discussing this on and off for the past few years. There has been some research done on establishing a foundation. Essentially, one of us has to become a paper pusher to get this going, and none of us is particularly fond of this idea. So while we are generally interested in creating an organization, this is going to take a while.

The fact is that GTK3 is not a priority whatsoever, features come first.

Um, nope, not true

The whole point of v3.0 is porting to GTK3 and revamping APIs to make way for new features coming in 3.2. The fact that people _will_ get new features in 3.0 that are not in 2.10 is simply because some of the new stuff either relies on new APIs or is just too time-consuming to backport to 2.10. So far, it's color management rewrite, multi-item (e.g. layer) selection and accompanying changes (like cloning on multiple layers at once), Paint Select tool, and various smaller things. So no, it's not features first in this dev cycle

All the more reason they shouldn't have released this new GTK2 version, because someone has to maintain this version, which takes up precious time they could've spent on the GTK3 port.

Let's see We released GIMP 2.10.24 in March 2021. Supposing we need another year from now to complete 3.0 development. That would mean that users would not get anything, even bugfixes for 1.5 years straight. Why is this a good thing?

Besides, we only backport changes from the main dev branch if the changes are easy enough to backport. We hold major changes in 2.99 now (see the list above).

[Vistaus]

You know you can have a look for yourself, don't you?

GIMP's situation has been dire for quite some time, but the new co-maintainer, Jehan Pagès, has been doing a really great job and helped getting development back on track.
The fact is that GTK3 is not a priority whatsoever, features come first. There is a lot of software that use a "deprecated" UI framework, and nobody feels like it's an issue whatsoever. Even Adobe on Apple computers didn't use pure native OS X frameworks until Apple forced developers' hands.

I don't disagree with the “features come first” stance, but at this point, they're falling behind on the port, even though GTK3 and esp. GTK4 will be huge improvements. They can take advantage of many more things, which will make GIMP a better product overall and will make for more widespread adoption, so there's a lot to gain from finishing that damn port.
All the more reason they shouldn't have released this new GTK2 version, because someone has to maintain this version, which takes up precious time they could've spent on the GTK3 port.

[Vistaus]

I will be curious as to who is sending them money... If there are people doing that it is a good thing, but I think most users just use it.

That, plus the fact that most people who *do* donate are sending small amounts of money. Not that there is anything wrong with that - every penny counts - but I'm just saying that development won't magically speed up because they received a small amount of money. Speeding up development is only possible if devs can take some days off off their day job, which requires more than what most people are donating. Again: nothing wrong with that - please keep on donating! - but fact is that small amounts only help so much.

[JesseK]

There is a lot of software that use a "deprecated" UI framework, and nobody feels like it's an issue whatsoever. Even Adobe on Apple computers didn't use pure native OS X frameworks until Apple forced developers' hands.

I agree, the problem today is that gtk2 (xwayland) doesn't looks too good on Wayland and soon the majority will use Wayland - with nvidias new drivers. I talked with one of the gimp developers to drop the migration to gtk3 and instead go directly to gtk4. He didn't agree. My reason is:
1. Why migrate from one deprecated UI framework (gtk2) to another (gtk3). There are 2 new functions that the developers has requested from gtk3 - I don't think they will get them in gtk3 - its in maintenance.
2. With gtk4 in active development its more probably that the feature requests will be met.
3. gtk3 will be deprecated in a couple of years, with gtk4 you will get a longer lifetime.
4. gtk4 is faster and will support more new Wayland interfaces.
5. Gimp 2.x is usable now - better to switch to gtk4 and be a couple of month more late.