[Gimp-developer] proposed solution for: protection from protection from data loss

[gg at catking.net]

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:36:39 +0200, Sven Neumann <sven at gimp.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 02:09 +0200, gib_mir_mehl at gmx.net wrote:
>
>> No, i'm thinking of the case where you saved those 25 steps to a jpeg  
>> and the next day,
>> sitting in the plane to your customer, you discover that this curve  
>> should be tweaked a litte bit more.
>
> That is exactly why JPEG should not be offered as a save format. Saving
> to a JPEG file is clearly an export. No one will be surprised that an
> exported file can't be edited again. The user needs to save the file to
> XCF (or whatever the next generation file format will be called).
>
>
> Sven
>
>

Hi,

I agree there is a certain logic to that approach but it should not  
involve constant importing and exporting as extra steps if working on a  
"foreign" file format, png for example.

If open png becomes an import then save will duplicate the file as an xcf  
unless it is explicitly exported again. There's a danger this could all  
cause a lot of duplication of large files and yet more user interactions  
to a simple task of opening, changing and saving an existing image , which  
will almost certainly not be gimp's native format.

Anyone wanting to "undo" changes made to a lossy format like jpeg clearly  
has no understanding of graphics formats anyway. This request does not  
even apply to gimp's target user base.

If it becomes possible to maintain an undo history across gimp sessions in  
the native format that would be a nice feature.

Beyond that the user had better learn what the characteristics of the  
different formats he is using are, and the value of keeping backups of  
different stages of one's work.

/gg