Gimp is a wonderful piece of free software that I use often, and I greatly appreciate the work and time the maintainers are putting into it.
It's a hard and very time consuming tax to replace UI within a legacy application.
GIMP has existed long before the entitled generation of Linuxers who wish for everything to be handed to them on a golden plate.
However sometimes that plate is covered in muck that you need to clean yourself.
I've been there before the golden platter, and the Gimp UI was mediocre even back then. And even underneath, Gimp is at best bronze, I wouldn't call it gold :-)
Because if no one would ever complain, there is a lower chance it will change.
GIMP not so. Its an ancient carved releic from the days of GTK2. If you've ever worked with old X you'll know.
Back then UI was in a different world than to what we have now. It's unfortunate that the UI of GIMP just never has been rekindled to the newer century, but that's a you problem not a them problem.
However saying that, nothing is stopping you from spear driving the new GUI design. It's open source after all.
If memory serves, GTK stands for GIMP Tool Kit.
That is to say, GTK exists specifically to give GIMP a GUI.
Krita is old enough to drive, to drink (in civilized places), to vote.
I actually agree with y'all that GIMP's GUI is god damn horrendous, and that kind of extends to anything that GTK is involved with or used in. Something about GTK at a philosophical level does not lend itself to a good, human design.
Anyway, I'm just pointing out that GIMP came before GTK and that GTK exists first and foremost to serve GIMP. I hate when history is altered, whether out of simple ignorance or more ulterior motives.
Also, for Gimp - Gtk, that was true for Gtk 1. Gtk 2 went beyond this to serve Gnome and random apps and Gtk 3 is quite far from the Gimp world.
Gimp 3 is about a port to Gtk 3... 10+ years after the release of Gtk 3.
Yeah... talk about defending a lost cause.
Krita was launched 18 years ago. That's still a lifetime in software years.
Gimp was launched... 25 years ago. 7 years is a reasonably long time in software years, but it does <<not>> excuse a bad UI.
The project started under a different name and team in 1998. But it wasn't as active as GIMP until the current project lead discovered and pretty much saved it from slow death around 2002.
> Blender
What? Blender's codebase is about as old as GIMP's is. Up until recently (IIRC the 2.80 release in 2019), it was also constantly criticized for it's horrible UI/UX compared to its proprietary competitors.
If anything, Blender is a great example of UI refactoring over time gone right, and opens up the question why GIMP isn't able to pull off the same.
Maybe it's a common argument where you come from, but it's a factually false argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP
>GIMP: Initial release: 2 June 1998; 25 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)
>Blender Initial release: January 2, 1994; 29 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kids_on_the_Block
>New Kids On The Block: Years active: 1984–1994, 2008–present
So Blender is actually four years older than GIMP, and a decade younger than New Kids On The Block.
And over all those years, Blender has continuously improved and evolved a huge amount, especially recently. And the developers listen to and respond to the needs of their users.
For in all those years, GIMP has ALWAYS stagnated, and the developers have contempt for their users.
>However saying that, nothing is stopping you from spear driving the new GUI design. It's open source after all.
That's easy for you to say, but what have YOU actually contributed to open source software? How's that new free web browser you wanted to write from scratch going? Stop complaining about Chrome, and finish what you called for other people to do for you for free, yourself!
When you trot out that glib old argument (see what I did there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLib ;), you're just admitting you're wrong, have no better arguments, so you're not arguing in good faith (after you post easily fact-checked misinformation like claiming GIMP is older than Blender).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38238274
DonHopkins 12 days ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
The one worst thing in the universe that you can do to piss off the GIMP developers is to tell them it should be more like Photoshop. It's like telling RMS that he should develop Open Software for Linux, instead of Free Software for GNU/Linux.
prokoudine 10 days ago [–]
"Make it work like in Photoshop because {argument about better usability}" is appreciated.
"Make it work like in Photoshop because Photoshop" is not appreciated.
It's really _that_ simple.
DonHopkins 6 days ago | parent [–]
Not at all, it's much simpler and much worse than that:
The GIMP developers have heard both kinds of arguments MANY times before, as well all the arguments for using pie menus based on usability and scientific measurements of controlled experiments and decades of experience developing and using user interface toolkits and applications, from me and many other people, and at this point they are just cutting off noses to spite their face, not listening to any arguments about usability or anything else, because they have decided that somebody else once hurt their feelings by asking for the exact same thing for the wrong reasons (or as you literally say, simply without extensive justification), so they got permanently huffy with their panties in a twist, and always say no to everyone who ever asks the same question ever again no matter what their arguments about usability or experience with user interface design.
[...]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332975
DonHopkins 4 days ago | parent | context | favorite | on: GTK: Introducing Graphics Offload
The problem with the GIMP team is not that they're enormously opinionated, but that they're WRONGLY opinionated.
It's not that they're the evil party, it's just that they should stop feeling so sorry for themselves that so few people want to use their image editor because of its terrible user interface caused by the fact that they refuse to listen to their users, and it has a terribly offensive name that they refuse to change.
At least they still have a fanatical following of MAGA incel edgelords and ESR sycophants who love it BECAUSE it has an offensive name, so they still have that hard core fanbase to appeal to.
They're as self-sabotaging as RMS himself, and they don't deserve to play the victim or to have a pity party, especially when they try to throw it for themselves.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233793
luqtas 12 days ago | parent | context | flag | favorite | on: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
NO! WE SHOULD USE RE-DO WITH PIE-MENUS ONLY :P Universal Search? Like F3 in Blender? Sure! just do it...
i studied for a year advertising and marketing degree at an university and i was at the best grades on photograph and any other class that required some creative stuff. all done in Gimp... i don't know how the late game is but certainly some company wanting the proprietary .blob of your work in Photoshop lang binaries exists. but i also think that if you are highly creative, there's so much to-do with simple tools
edit: not that Gimp can't do complex stuff but i remember clear sizing the boobs of a woman once at Photoshop and having some trouble on how-to with Gimp at home...
DonHopkins 12 days ago [–]
Agreed! ;)
I know you're joking about "ONLY", but actually, linear drop-down menus are just an edge case of pie menus with multiple items in only one direction: down. So you can also make drop-down, -up, -left, -right, and other direction menus with a decent pie menu editor, like the Blender pie menu editor add-on.
Pie menus are much more useful if users can edit and create their own, especially in feature-rich extensible configurable applications that different people use in different ways like Gimp and Blender.
Blender has great pie menu support, and there's a nice pie menu editor add-on, but it really needs a built-in WYSIWYG pie menu editor, supporting on-the-fly direct manipulation WYSIWYG drag-and-drop pie menu editing, like Simon Schneegans's brilliant Gnome-Pie and Fly-Pie.
By "direct manipulation WYSIWYG drag-and-drop" I mean that ideally you should be able to put any existing menu into edit mode on the fly, and edit the circular pie, linear, or hybrid layout directly by dragging items around to different slices, instead of with an indirect linear scrolling list or outline in a separate window.
You need to be able directly and immediately edit them as they will appear to the user, not as some abstract linear tree outline (or god forbid, raw xml).
[...]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237328
DonHopkins 12 days ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
Sorry, but the number of people who have seen Pulp Fiction, plus the number of people who know derogatory terms for disabled people, is much greater than the number of people who know technical biological terms of art.
If the GIMP developers really want to score an edgy rhetorical point about how society should get over its uptight wokeness and let them use any word they want whenever they want, and that's the hill they choose to die on, then how about they go all in, and try convincing society to re-signify the n-word by using it IN ALL UPPER CASE as the name of a hard-to-use paint program with an overly complex incomprehensible user interface for TempleOS, then come back to me after a few years and let me know how well that went.
Prejudice by Tim Minchin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw
At least the Blender developers finally listened to reason, admitted they made a mistake, and switched the left and right mouse button behavior, which wasn't nearly as offensive to as many people as "GIMP", whose name makes it kind of hard to evangelize around the school or office without coming off like a flaming MAGA asshole.
Donald Trump appears to mock a reporter's disability:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdLfkhxIH5Q
By stubbornly refusing to change the name, the Gimp developers have lost the right to whine and feel sorry for themselves about how unpopular it is and how nobody takes them seriously. Because in the intervening 25 years since 1998, 4chan and GamerGate and MAGA and Q-Anon and January 6 and Elon Musk have kind of spoiled the coolness and originality of that rebellious "edgelord" attitude.
If you have to explain to people, "I'm not really ableist, but I am simply participating in performance art to resignify a derogatory slang term for handicapped people or submissive S&M sex slaves as the name of a paint program!" you have already lost them.
Slow pace but surprisingly going well, thank you. Taking tkhtml as the basis and going for a non-js approach.
> what have YOU actually contributed to open source software?
What does this mayter, are we to have a dick measuring competition? Most stuff that isn't for the normal user. A library that controls my hexa robot is a cool lib. among other things. I'm not a programmer nor developer.
All i know is that we live in a shitty world with shitty internet and from many browsers we are now down to two. Which are both as shite.