GIMP's Progress In 2016, What's Ahead For 2017

[ldo17]

I guess for some people "good UI" must mean "identical to Photoshop in every detail".

Photoshop—wasn’t that the one that kept rearranging its UI in every major release? That added so many windows, it had to add features to manage all the windows, then add features to manage all the features?

Luckily, that’s all stopped now. By moving to a rental model, they have got rid of the incentive to bring out new versions. They can force their users to keep paying for the same old version of the software forever.

[jacob]

Luckily, that’s all stopped now. By moving to a rental model, they have got rid of the incentive to bring out new versions. They can force their users to keep paying for the same old version of the software forever.

The rental model alone is a reason why it's important to get GIMP up to speed.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

I've got Affinity Designer and Photo, Pixelmator on OS X plus GIMP and Inkscape. I'm covered on OS X and Linux either way with GIMP and Inkscape, and now Krita. There is no way in hell I'll touch a subscription solution. All have a place of use in my world.

[prokoudine]

I think GIMP already has, or at least used to have, a single-window mode. Not sure how you enable it though.

Windows -> Single-Window Mode

Not enabled by default yet, because some fixes should go in first.

ldo17, thank you for the kind words

[Azpegath]

Windows -> Single-Window Mode

Not enabled by default yet, because some fixes should go in first.

ldo17, thank you for the kind words

I have to chime in on the accolades, Gimp is one of the cornerstones of Free Software and you have many, many fans around the globe that relies on your software, daily! Thank you!

[ElectricPrism]

I'm getting tired of defending GIMPs bad decisions.

When it comes to programming a hard as fuck photo editor I guess of the small amount of programmers that CAN do it, no one wants to.

If we could just initiate Plan B where we dump a shitload of money into GIMP to make it not suck and create management to give it a sane name as well as sane UI that would be fantastic.

[Vistaus]

Great trolling. Otherwise Krita and GIMP serve different purposes, one can't make the other irrelevant. As for the UI, I'm not a heavy or advanced user but I don't find GIMP's user interface particularly bad or nonintuitive. I guess for some people "good UI" must mean "identical to Photoshop in every detail". Personally I don't remember ever using PS but I did, I suppose I would find the whole thing just as confusing and impenetrable compared to GIMP. I other words I would much prefer GIMP devs to focus on completing the transition to GEGL and GTK+3 to have a code base in good shape for future developments rather than paying attention to full time whiners who will never contribute anything useful, not even explain what specifically is so "pathetic" or "awful" about the user interface.

I don't even really see the point of GIMP moving to GTK+3 at this point in time. I mean: they still have a long way to go. Meanwhile, GTK+4 is already around the corner. And while GTK+4 will be unstable for some time after the first release compared to +3, by the time GIMP finishes porting to +4 it will be stable and +3 will wither away like +2.

[prokoudine]

I don't even really see the point of GIMP moving to GTK+3 at this point in time. I mean: they still have a long way to go. Meanwhile, GTK+4 is already around the corner. And while GTK+4 will be unstable for some time after the first release compared to +3, by the time GIMP finishes porting to +4 it will be stable and +3 will wither away like +2.

GTK+3 port has already partially been done. There's no going back GTK+4 is on the radar though. In particular, we see some use in GSK

[SpyroRyder]

GTK+3 port has already partially been done. There's no going back GTK+4 is on the radar though. In particular, we see some use in GSK

How far along with the port are you and what sort of stuff would there be left to do with it? I mean with how long your development cycles tend to be would it be worth just changing the goal requirement to gtk-4 and building Gimp 3.0 against that instead just to get the changes brought in with GSK out of the way without changing completely changing to GTK3's way in between?

[prokoudine]

How far along with the port are you and what sort of stuff would there be left to do with it?

It builds and sorta works. There are even people who apparently use it, for their own reasons There still will be a major cleanup and some refactoring. And there's always more refactoring than one wants and/or expects.

I mean with how long your development cycles tend to be would it be worth just changing the goal requirement to gtk-4 and building Gimp 3.0 against that instead just to get the changes brought in with GSK out of the way without changing completely changing to GTK3's way in between?

As far as I can tell, GTK+ 3.90 will be out this March. Depending on when GIMP 2.10 is out, this may or may not be enough to justify switching to GTK+4. The question is: do you really want potentially unstable software that is supposed to be production-ready? Because we care about that sort of thing.