Originally posted by prokoudine
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The State of GIMP & Its Future
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GIMP is a huge application with little manpower behind it. Some UI change proposals are OK, and we do them, if we have the time.
Some of the proposals we receive make sense and could be done, if there were more developers working on the app.
Other proposals sort of make sense and sometimes even come with patches, but need work before those patches can be applied. This is e.g. where we are stuck with https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759601 where the general idea makes a perfect sense, but unless the original developer of the patch makes adjustments, the feature won't go in.
Then there are proposals by people who think GIMP should work like some other different app. The result, if implemented, would make GIMP actually less consistent. As someone who personally made Ps shortcuts for GIMP, as well as quite a few shortcuts schemes from other apps for Inkscape (Corel DRAW, FreeHand etc.) I can tell you that different apps have matching UX approaches only up to a point. So if you change just one part to work like application X and leave the rest untouched, it only makes things worse. And if you change everything to work like in application X, you will a) disappoint the existing user base, b) will have to adapt your application to what application X does, forever. Good luck with that.
Finally, single-window mode was added in 2009, but 2.8 having it was released in 2012. So check your numbers.
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Originally posted by prokoudine View PostI think you are confusing "receptive" with both "critical" and "not having time to write code".
Originally posted by prokoudine View PostThen there are proposals by people who think GIMP should work like some other different app. The result, if implemented, would make GIMP actually less consistent. As someone who personally made Ps shortcuts for GIMP, as well as quite a few shortcuts schemes from other apps for Inkscape (Corel DRAW, FreeHand etc.) I can tell you that different apps have matching UX approaches only up to a point. So if you change just one part to work like application X and leave the rest untouched, it only makes things worse. And if you change everything to work like in application X, you will a) disappoint the existing user base, b) will have to adapt your application to what application X does, forever. Good luck with that.
As a UI/UX guy, let me remind you: A UI design cannot force a workflow on an unwilling user!
Originally posted by prokoudine View PostFinally, single-window mode was added in 2009, but 2.8 having it was released in 2012. So check your numbers.
(I'd also forgotten how long GIMP release cycles are... which I really shouldn't have, given how much I grumbled about the contributor-discouraging evils of long, heavy release cycles back when I read about them in the wake of the 2.8 release.)Last edited by ssokolow; 03 August 2016, 01:20 AM.
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Originally posted by Kemosabe View Post
There is only 1 modern, stable, and state-of-the art desktop environment available for linux: GNOME. So there is no reason to drop GTK despite the fact Qt's API and tools are a masterpiece of software development.
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Originally posted by ssokolow View PostAs a UI/UX guy, let me remind you: A UI design cannot force a workflow on an unwilling user!
Originally posted by ssokolow View Post(I'd also forgotten how long GIMP release cycles are...
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Originally posted by DDF420 View PostFrom my understanding the don't want Gimp as a drop in replacement for PS anyway.Great for armature's but i cant ever see it becoming the industry standard for at least another 10 years to which they will be another 20 behind PS.
But to this point: I don't know who "they" is/are, but Gimp has alot of potential as a photo editor / Photoshop replacement. True, when I really need to get work done I do it in Photoshop. Mainly because I haven't yet mastered the Gimp UI. But the vast majority of Photoshop's latest features, go unused in every day photo editing/retouching/processing. Everything that existed 20 years ago, will do almost everything you need, with the exception of limits. (64-bit was an absolutely crucial development, as was the large PDB format, as is the ever-expanding 16-bit capability.) Most pro Photoshop users I know, use custom actions or scripts based on very basic transform primitives anyway (e.g. contrast mask). These can be done just as well in Gimp.
Also, while I'm not a fan of the Gimp interface either, and do know Photoshop's like the back of my hand, let's not forget that Photoshop is no masterpiece of UI design either. It too has a very steep and fairly inconsistent learning curve. In fact there are downright awful choices and inconsistencies. (E.g. the dialog interface for newer filters and operations...completely different than the older ones.) It's just that everyone knows it well.
With Adobe moving to their bullsh*t subscription model, I am highly motivated to make Gimp work. Scripting may get me there. (Note that I'm not inherently opposed to the financial aspect of a subscription model. It's the way it is implemented, and the DRM enforced that to me are too bitter to swallow.) My biggest obstacle to moving photo workflow to Linux is not Gimp, but lack of a really solid Adobe Bridge facsimile. (And DNG converter. I use DNG only for it's single-file metadata handling.)
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Originally posted by prokoudine View PostEvery single software out there does enforce a workflow on a user. The question is how much flexibility you get along the way. We focus on users who make complex work with lots of layers etc. So we encourage other developers to make software that appeals to a different user base and provides different workflows. And that's one of the reasons we like the Krita project.
My issue with Krita is that I'm not trying to do digital painting... I'm trying to do some quick photo retouching, using a program I have used for years, and it just so happens that my workflow is centered around one-time editing that takes a PNG or JPEG file and returns a file of the same format.
Moving non-XCF saving to a separate menu entry is a curious choice... especially when there was already precedent in tools like OpenOffice.org for warning if the last save occurred to a less expressive format.
Originally posted by prokoudine View PostYes, we do have a problem with long cycles. Developing features in branches kinda helps, but there's little one can do with unevenly balanced workload in the team while having to introduce massive internal changes and general polishing. Besides, you can't really force a volunteer to do just the boring work on the internals. It's free software, it should be fun. So we end up with new features that also delay releasesLast edited by ssokolow; 04 August 2016, 12:27 AM.
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Originally posted by Delgarde View Post
Funny you should say that, given that over the life of the project, Gnome has had far more investment in UX than pretty much any other open-source project. The people who designed Shell *are* UX folks - I can't say I like all their decisions, but those decisions aren't just the result of a bunch of developers arbitrarily copying Apple.
Here's G3's "User Experience" leads: Jon McCann (https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamjonmccann), Allen Day (despite numerous searches I've been able to find zilch about his background), Jakub Steiner (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubsteiner).
Hopefully you'll notice some differences in backgrounds (i.e.: none of the gnome3 ux people have any formal hci training).
Besides that, it would be worth your while to look at the differences in their approaches (yes, it'll require a lot of searching, but it's worth it if you want to why some people are particularly annoyed with the G3 DESIGN cabal).
Here are a few more links that speak of these things (at varying degrees of separation):
https://people.gnome.org/~halfline/g...esign-june.txt ---- that is one of the few gnome-design logs that I've been able to find (they, esp mccann, don't like having records of their meetings)
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Originally posted by Delgarde View Post
Funny you should say that, given that over the life of the project, Gnome has had far more investment in UX than pretty much any other open-source project. The people who designed Shell *are* UX folks - I can't say I like all their decisions, but those decisions aren't just the result of a bunch of developers arbitrarily copying Apple.
Here's G3's "User Experience" leads: Jon McCann (https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamjonmccann), Allen Day (despite numerous searches I've been able to find zilch about his background), Jakub Steiner (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubsteiner).
Hopefully you'll notice some differences in backgrounds (i.e.: none of the gnome3 ux people have any formal hci training).
Besides that, it would be worth your while to look at the differences in their approaches (yes, it'll require a lot of searching, but it's worth it if you want to why some people are particularly annoyed with the G3 DESIGN cabal).
Here are a few more links that speak of these things (at varying degrees of separation):
https://people.gnome.org/~halfline/g...esign-june.txt ---- that is one of the few gnome-design logs that I've been able to find (they, esp mccann, don't like having records of their meetings)
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