Am 28.08.2012 um 10:08 schrieb Michael Natterer <mitch gimp org>: On Mon, 2012-08-27 at 22:02 -0600, Clayton Walker wrote: aha, so I'm kicked out. Why without prior notice, after four years I've maintained the GIMP builds for Mac OS X? Why has nobody asked me why I didn't build a, as you call it, 'native' version? Do you really think I wasn't able to build a version which doesn't depend on X11? It's never been about building, that's quite easy. It's all about having a well working version of GIMP. The now official Mac build still has the usability glitches, which prevented me to release such a version of GIMP: plugin dialogs pop up behind the main windows. Oh, BTW, the color picker doesn't work well, screenshots fail, no support for scanners or digital cameras, the help system doesn't work, even accessing the online manual fails. OTOH, pressure sensitivity for graphic tablets seems to be fixed. (where can I get the source code patches? I can't find them in git.) But, back to the main topic. What's the advantage of a so called 'native' build? The menu bar at the top? Not using X11? From this point of view, even most Linux versions aren't native. Or does a 'native' version magically solve all kind of problems? Is it about toolkits or software layers? Is GTK+ native and XQuartz not? Is the cairo quartz backend a native OS X feature or just another kind of software layer between the application and the OS X graphical libraries and routines? IMO a native version of an application is more than only the use of a specific toolkit or software layer. IMO a native application should use standard native functionality. And yes, the menu bar at the top is one. But does your 'native' version use the native OS X file dialog, the native print functionality and dialogs, or does it use native ColorSync. No. Or new security features like Gatekeeper. No. And even further, having your targeted user audience in mind, the official build lacks functionality Mac users got used to in the past years: a set of plugins offering advanced photo retousching and workflow, locally installable user manuals, support for various OS versions and architectures. Anyway, now that you're providing an official Mac version of GIMP, I'm quite sure that you will give all of these to your Mac users soon, or point them to resources where they can easily get it. Finally, although I'm very disappointed about the current situation, I had a great time being part of the open source community and I'd like to say thanks to all of you for all your lovely mails and your supportive feedback I've received from all over the world in the past few years. Thank you. Now, dear GIMP team, ... so long, and thanks for all the fish. Simone Karin Lehmann |
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