[Gimp-developer] GIMP PDF export plugin

[Andrew A. Gill]

On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, Graeme Gill wrote:
>
> As I understand it, Scribus is not a pixel editor, it is
> a page layout package, rather a different thing altogether.

For the record, Scribus does allow pixel editing.

When you right click on an image and select Edit Image, it opens 
the image in GIMP.

I think that's pretty strong evidence that there's no intent to 
do raster editing in Scribus itself.

> I really don't think people working in the graphic
> arts are going to want to master two different pixel editing
> packages, simply because one of them doesn't support anything
> other than RGB. If they're in the Linux sphere, then I guess
> they need to go and look at using Krita instead.

FYI, Krita is extremely buggy.  It has an SDI, which some people 
(e.g. me) don't like, but the code will improve and there may be 
improvements in the interface.  Krita may indeed surpass GIMP. 
Sad, really, since I think GIMP can be the better product.

[from here out, `you' refers to core GIMP developers]

We want you to succeed, and all you need to do to succeed is to 
address some of the issues that users need.  If you're telling us 
that GIMP has no intention of ever providing those things, we'll 
find another product.  Maybe Krita when it becomes vaguely 
stable, or maybe a fork.

But you've got the time to do it before the others catch up, and 
you've got GEGL, the toolset to do it right.

Here's a thought: I can code.  I'm sure others on this list can, 
too.  Why don't you tell us what you would require for a CMYK 
mode to be incorporated into the trunk of GIMP.  We can all read 
the API, but you can tell us what coding standards we need, what 
toes we can't step on and why other attempts to add similar 
functionality (like Cinepaint nee FilmGimp) foundered, and what 
we can do to avoid making those same mistakes.

If you tell us what we need to do, we can do it.  That's the 
point of Open Source!

If you don't, people are going to get sick of the excuses and 
simply move on to develop this functionality somewhere else.

>From the outside, GIMP is seen as a shining example of what open 
source is capable of.  Inside the OSS movement, it's seen much 
like the XFree86 guys--constantly bickering about the same 
issues.  I'm sure that you'd have no trouble getting developers 
to work on a flagship product if they were convinced that it 
would end some of the internal conflicts in OSS.

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