GIMP's Future With 2.8, Then Going Forward With GEGL

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GIMP's Future With 2.8, Then Going Forward With GEGL

At the end of December we talked about GIMP 2.8 struggling to make it out the door and now there's official commentary from the GIMP project...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTAwNg

[BlackStar]

They are still fighting with GEGL? Dear lord, they have been trying to fix this thing for a decade now.

[Yfrwlf]

They are still fighting with GEGL? Dear lord, they have been trying to fix this thing for a decade now.

Not too surprising with not many coders interested in the project. If they can get the UI and over-all quality hammered out to make it a really solid program for the features it has, I think there'd be a lot more attraction in it and more coders might jump in to help with adding features at that point.

At least, that's my guess as to why it might not be so popular both user-wise and coder-wise is the UI. Having three separate windows is fine but not the way they do it. It's just not intuitive and completely different from other programs. Not having a "main" window that is easily accessible and recognisable for opening things and such, having three windows being recognised as separate in the docks/trays/selectors...I just think lumping them all into one with one clearly "main" window and the others easily identifiable as just "tool windows" or whatnot will go a long way to making Gimp more understandable.

Wonderful piece of software though, and I have high hopes that after some UI polish it could take off a lot more than it has as that's the main complaint I hear.

The other one being color accuracy/standards or whatnot.

[etnlWings]

Not too surprising with not many coders interested in the project. If they can get the UI and over-all quality hammered out to make it a really solid program for the features it has, I think there'd be a lot more attraction in it and more coders might jump in to help with adding features at that point.

At least, that's my guess as to why it might not be so popular both user-wise and coder-wise is the UI. Having three separate windows is fine but not the way they do it. It's just not intuitive and completely different from other programs. Not having a "main" window that is easily accessible and recognisable for opening things and such, having three windows being recognised as separate in the docks/trays/selectors...I just think lumping them all into one with one clearly "main" window and the others easily identifiable as just "tool windows" or whatnot will go a long way to making Gimp more understandable.

Wonderful piece of software though, and I have high hopes that after some UI polish it could take off a lot more than it has as that's the main complaint I hear.

The other one being color accuracy/standards or whatnot.

When was the last time you used The GIMP? The toolbox and palette windows have been 'utility' windows for several releases, whereby they don't appear in the tasklists/docks of conforming window managers (Compiz doesn't handle this properly but other WMs do), they disappear when you min/shade all GIMP windows, they're always on top of image windows and their screen position is persistent, unless overridden by an esoteric WM. The multi-window mode is only an issue for Windows users. Moreover, there is a 'main' window: when you close the last remaining image window, it closes the image but keeps that window open. You've always got a normal window with a menubar, along with any toolboxes, or palettes you have open. They fixed that a number of releases ago. The biggest problems with The GIMP's UI are the fact that they've almost completely removed menu tear-offs, dockable palettes tend to interfere with one another (resizing each other when contained in the same window), the menu layout could do with some more love (it has improved but is still a mess), the toolbox should be configurable to show text labels and they need to figure out some of the legacy cruft, like updating buffers so that they're not a PITA to use.

In reality, though, The GIMP's biggest issues are technical, not cosmetic. The ongoing saga that is GEGL rivals Hurd and Duke Nukem Forever in sheer ridiculousness.

[prokoudine]

In last month's article we talked about how this free software graphics program missed its anticipated release date and one of the core developers, Martin Nordholts, said it was about a month and a half away still if it's just a single developer working on the release full-time.

Martin never said that, although the estimation is possibly correct. It would be nice if Phoronix folks checked facts before publishing.

[atldpk]

how funny, i already have this "single-window mode". it's called a tiling window manager. grow up guys, floating window managers just don't work, switch to tiling, or at least dynamic ones.

[devius]

The toolbox and palette windows have been 'utility' windows for several releases, whereby they don't appear in the tasklists/docks of conforming window managers (Compiz doesn't handle this properly but other WMs do), they disappear when you min/shade all GIMP windows, they're always on top of image windows

Not in Kwin, making it a pain in the ass to use. There is a bug filed in bugs.kde.org, but apparently GIMP is doing some obscure thing that's not in the specs of any window manager, and the only reason why some manage it properly is because they added an exception to their window managing magic because of GIMP. That's what the kwin guys are saying.
Everytime I switch back to GIMP, after switching to another application, I have to press Ctrl+B to bring the toolbox back. I configured the interface to have all the tools, palettes and info panels in a single window, but that just means I have two windows instead of three.
I have nothing against the fact that it uses two or three different windows, IF it worked properly and with every window manager. Also, the toolbox stays on top of the image window as you said. That's very fine, but what if I want to have the image maximized? I then have to either constantly pan the image to get to the parts under the toolbox, or keep moving the toolbox from on place to another. Either way it's not acceptable. If there was a mode that automatically placed the toolbox window on one side and prevented the image window from going under it, even when maximized, that would be great.

The multi-window mode is only an issue for Windows

... and KDE...

users. (...) In reality, though, The GIMP's biggest issues are technical, not cosmetic. The ongoing saga that is GEGL rivals Hurd and Duke Nukem Forever in sheer ridiculousness.

Couldn't agree more. If GIMP had 16-bit/channel color support, layer groups and a proper free-transform tool, it would be very close to photoshop in terms of basic funcionality. Still, if they at least manage to make GEGL active by default and implement the single window mode, it will be a very good upgrade.

[etnlWings]

Okay, wasn't aware of those WM issues.

As for the toolbox/palettes being stuck above the image window, it can be disabled (though I just shade them when I don't need them) and you've got the same problem with single-window mode as well (same goes for most such apps). Layer groups are also there in a semi-functional state in 2.8 builds as well.

[yogi_berra]

If GIMP had 16-bit/channel color support, layer groups and a proper free-transform tool, it would be very close to photoshop in terms of basic funcionality. Still, if they at least manage to make GEGL active by default and implement the single window mode, it will be a very good upgrade.

Actually it would be close to Photoshop 6 in terms of basic functionality. They'll never match the CS 5 feature set.

[Wyatt]

Actually it would be close to Photoshop 6 in terms of basic functionality. They'll never match the CS 5 feature set.

And for 90% of what the average user does, that's probably way more than sufficient. Yes, CSn has some nifty bells and whistles, but core functionality is more important.

Anyway, wasn't there some word at some point about GEGL through Gallium?