Re: [Gimp-developer] present xcf as what it is, a gimp project file format

[peter sikking <peter mmiworks net>]

gg wrote:

> I think the whole problem here is that there are two different uses which are being presented as one.
> 
> Save (as gimp internal format) and Export (to original format) is clear , though I would say it's back to front.
> 
> However, the ambiguity is in File | Open


let’s get some facts clear:

- what you see inside a GIMP window is always, always, always in
GIMP format, even if the only thing you did was open (= import, as
it shows in the interaction) a png file and nothing more.

- it is 100% impossible to arrange it for popular non-GIMP files
(png/jpeg/tiff) there would be a mode where one could Open one,
make edits within the limits of the file format, and write the
bits straight back to a file in the same format.

- I would be yanking the chain of one million users if I specced
that the only way to get a non-GIMP file into GIMP is by File->Import...
also drag and drop behaviour of ‘start a new file from a non-GIMP file’
would come into question (at minimum, it would have become a curve ball).

- all we can do is make sure that every bit of interaction in GIMP
communicates that there are no png/jpeg/tiff/etc files inside GIMP.
anything that is not on-message? let me know, it is a bug.

as Kate confirmed, the concept of ‘Work’ that Nicholas brainstormed
his way into is exactly the line of our thinking at the moment.
Work is so much better than Project because projects is an
organisation form of (teams of) GIMP users and a project can
contain many Works.

what bugs me right now is that the interaction of GIMP still
talks about ‘image’ when communicating about GIMP files. This
could right now be migrated to talk about ‘work’, while still
calling all non-GIMP files ‘image’.

    --ps

        founder + principal interaction architect
            man + machine interface works

        http://blog.mmiworks.net: on interaction architecture