Glimpse: A Photo Editor For Everyone | Hacker News Reader

Glimpse: A Photo Editor For Everyone

glimpse-editor.org

63 pointsborisjabes80 comments

Took some clicking to realize this was a GIMP fork -- the author strongly feels that GIMP as a name is offensive.

I’ve never heard the word gimp without reference to the software or the clothing style. Whatever other meanings it might have had in the part are unused anachronism in my experience.

Glad to know I wasn't the only one who felt uneasy with the original name: https://glimpse-editor.org/about/#what-is-wrong-with-the-gim...

> we believe that a joke name some find offensive and distracting presents an unnecessary obstacle to wider adoption

That could be a valid theory if GIMP wasn't the most popular open source raster editor, while none of the forks come even close

Besides, there are at least a few billion people in the world, including me, that haven't watched pulp fiction in English and GIMP for us just means GNU Image Manipulation Program

Anecdotally, I've had three experiences so far where the name "GIMP" got its usage rejected. Two of these were in two different K-12 institutions.

And your case for a _global_ (Hello Americans, you are not isolated, your software is used worldwide) experience is totally irrelevant. We used GIMP in Spain for a lot of time and no one knew the original meaning of "Gimp". Ever. Neither for the BDSM context, nor for the "cripple" one. Just an image editor.

I believe you're arguing against a strawman, as I never made an argument for a "global experience". My experiences indeed occurred in America, where the name GIMP was an obstacle to its adoption. It's a linguistic issue, so it shouldn't surprise anyone if it differs with language.

Do you think that cockroachdb, squid, seamonkey, wine, f-spot (talk about jokes...) are better names?

do you know that mist means manure and angel means fishing rod in German, in Swedish kiss means pee, slut means end, final, fart means speed and in Polish fart is good luck.

And I'll let you lookup what smocking, flipper or scotch mean in Italian.

I mean, have you ever considered that many things you say over there could have a complete different meaning here but that didn't stop you anyway?

Why should we stop using GIMP then?

Is not a strawman if GIMP changed it's name, this would effect world users. There is a very odd prudishness in the US. Is somewhat the same in the UK, but the US turns that knob full crank.

I think I’d you were to compare countries of the world, you would find Western Europe to be unusual in its lack of prudishness.

In Europe you are free to do things and not be judged outside your microcosm communities standard. In the US, everyone eventually gets judged by mainstream standards. I would guess that Europe’s history of sectarian violence and war, has lead to this pervasive non judge mental attitude with regards subcultures.

Great point. I'd also add that in the US, individuals that consider themselves to be religous is much higher, by a high margin. As the commenter just above me points out, there are many english names of things that are "rude" words in other countries. Edit: Latin America doesn't have that prudishness.

>Edit: Latin America doesn't have that prudishness.

As an Spaniard, I am sure they are a lot more prude than us, by experience.

I work for a non anglofone fortune 500 and I didn't have to explain GIMP to anybody

When they ask me (rarely) what software is that I simply answer "Photoshop for Linux, but gratis"

I run it on windows!

GIMP was installed on every single computer in my entire k12 education in francophone Canada.

Indeed. It attempts to be a more sensitive name, which I appreciate, but it ends up being a pure negative for the vast majority of the planet save for ~500 million people, as it will lead to appellation and branding fragmentation that will make using and learning the software more difficult, all in order to appease anglophone sensitivities. Anglocentrism in tech as it applies to user facing elements is a very big problem in my opinion.

The name is fine.

The FAQ's page is more useful than the homepage for now, it seems: https://glimpse-editor.org/about/#why-are-you-forking

The name GIMP is awful and it is a shame the maintainers are so stubborn about it.

Unfortunately this seems to be a mostly one person effort and is mostly about changing the name, so I'd be surprised it got far.

It's a shame GIMP has improved so little in the last decade or so. Compare it to Blender, which is an incredibly polished product comparatively.

Gift: A Distributed Version Control System For Everyone

alias gift=git

Right?

The Glimpse project is absurd. Energy wasted to fork an iconic program for obscure reasons. Politically correctness can be so ridiculous sometimes.

Is there progress being made beyond rebranding?

A "glimpse" of the tremendous changes made to Glimpse in the latest release:

Windows Improvements

    Translation files are now included in the MSI installer #240
    Glimpse Image Editor and GNU Image Manipulation Program no longer share the same task bar icon #247
    Windows installer now supports upgrading existing installations #314

UI Improvements

    “Color” icon pack and “Gray” UI theme have been reinstated #232
    The “fun” brushes have now been removed #286
    Upstream contributors and translators are now appropriately credited through the UI #228
    Renamed the “Gimpressionist” plug-in to “Impressionist” #267
    Fixed various problems in translation files #230 #238
    Fixed text color chooser that still used Wilber icon and upstream name #250
    Fixed “legacy” UI theme in Snapcraft #271

Code Improvements

    Moved build folder to build-aux to follow GNOME conventions #233
    Added packaging documentation to the snap and flatpak folders to match windows-msi #305
    Fixed make check so we can produce source tarballs for Linux distribution maintainers #251

A real joke....

GIMP is still working on getting GEGL into everything after 20 years. Glimpse is allowed a little time to discuss and decide exactly what to do. That won't show in a commit log on a project that's less than a year old.

You can see the issue tracker for a better idea of project activity: https://github.com/glimpse-editor/Glimpse/issues

OK thx for the link as it is a factual proof of life for the project. But unfortunatly, this link to the mixed bugtrack/RFC shows the patent pbroblem with this project : after reading the RFC it shows that it is up to the community to provide the most basic goals for this fork, long after the project was initiated, which underscores the original sin of Glimpse. The only reason to fork was the name and the dev team had no other structured strategy to provide other enhancement at the beginning of the project. I do not think this the spirit of the Open Source philosophy and morover I feel sad about the whole story. The numerous people behind GIMP have been giving their time and skills for more than on decade to provide the only decent free alternative to Photoshop to millions of young artists, students and professionals who were not wealthy enough to pay for Adobe products. And then come a bunch of wankers who shame these great people for an obscure US-centered issue about the name of the app...

They plan to use a different UI, which is in progress and as per the FAQ will not be ready for several years.

Is anyone actively working on it? That new UI has been the plan for a very long time now.

Nope.

I haven’t been able to use GIMP a lot yet, but I unfortunately didn’t find it to be as intuitive as similar software, e.g. area selection.

Does Glimpse differ in this area or does it have plans to?

It's a fork of GIMP with a different name, basically.

It'll be good if they can improve on the abomination that is GIMP. Glimpse will be worth using even if all they do is implement a way to draw circles.

You can make a selection, set x and y to the same number in the tool options, then fill it. I would like a dedicated circle tool too.

I've seen some hilarious work arounds to do it. But it's funny to think it's been over 20 years of development, and there's still no circle tool.

There is a circle selection tool. Using that you can also draw circles on the image with the trace selection button.

Alright I'll entertain this. I'm in GIMP right now. Used the circle selection tool to select a circle that I want to make a circle with. I looked under Selection and also under Tools > Selection Tools in the top menu, but I couldn't find a "trace selection button". I don't see such a button in the circle selection toolbox settings either. Genuinely baffled, I almost feel dumb for not being able to find it.

My point though, is in any other image editor, you click the circle tool and start making circles in 2 seconds.

This is great. The response for decades to suggestions to change the name was "fork it if you don't like the name." Someone finally took them up on it and we get to see what happens with two competing open source image editors.

Nice! I can't say no to this project if it indeed has a more visually satisfying UI.

> If you are offended by the fact we renamed the project, we suggest you continue using the GNU Image Manipulation Program instead of annoying our contributors and making more work for our moderators.

Isn’t that ironic

I don't mind the GIMP name and if Glimps is really just a rebranding I see no reason to use it. But if they're actually going to fix its glaring UX problems I'll be all over that.

do closed-source image editors like photoshop have a friendly plugin architecture?

is there an OSS ecosystem already locked onto adobe, or is there an opportunity for gimp / glimpse to become a platform as well as a batteries-included product

How about CHUMPS - a fork of glimpse that benefits from the 20+ years of GIMP contributor effort and the professional UI of glimpse contributors effort (should such a thing materialize) but is being offered as a white-label to be branded for pay to whatever organization or movement that feels like it needs an open-source image editor that uncompromisingly represents its values ?

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