Re: [Gimp-developer] Bring back normal handling of other file formats

[Jay Smith <jay JaySmith com>]

On 06/20/2012 02:50 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> A universally accepted truth is that users don't read warnings. This
> will surely freak out few geeks who do read warnings carefully and
> recite them occasionally over a pint of beer in a pub, but mostly
> people really try to make stupid dialogs go away ASAP.
>
> Alexandre Prokoudine

I have to agree that most users don't read (or perhaps more correctly, 
don't comprehend) warnings.  However, often in open-source development 
there seems to be a general attitude that the "quality" of the software 
should be primary and protecting users from their own stupidity should 
be secondary.  In fact, in my observation of open source conversations 
over the years, including occasionally in the past by only one or two 
people that were on this list, there has been a general attitude on the 
part of a few individuals that "ordinary users" are morons and should be 
ignored.  Yet in this situation, the developers are tripping over 
themselves to protect the users from their own ignorance and inattention.

It just seems so odd... I feel like I have fallen into software Wonderland.

It has been pointed out several times that most of the developers are 
located in Europe.  Europe has a reputation of having much more stifling 
government regulations and rules than North America.  Could this be 
related -- the concept that people must be protected from themselves?

Pretty soon there will be a law that coffee may only be served cold 
because somebody might burn their tongue.

People seem to learn best from adversity.  If you corrupt your own image 
file and did not make a pre-editing backup copy, you just might learn 
something.  However, if that same user is "protected" from doing 
something stupid, then the user will learn nothing.  They will not 
become a better user.  There is a fine line between successfully using 
the software and everything being a "learning by making mistakes" 
experience.  However, if users are coddled, you will simply end up with 
users that become progressively even more ignorant.  If users choose not 
to read warnings or don't take the time to think about and comprehend 
the meaning of warnings, then maybe the users deserve the spanking that 
they will receive as a result of their own action / inaction.  Or is 
spanking illegal now too?

[Not a serious suggestion] Maybe Gimp should, upon opening a file, make 
an archival copy of that file so that he user who fails to make a 
pre-editing backup copy, the user will be protected from his/herself.


The bottom line of this change to best serve a particular "target user 
group" is that *my company* has fallen outside the definition decided by 
the developers.  My company is now outside the "target user group".

IMHO I think the developers meant well to change the save/export 
situation, however, a mess has been made of it.

What's wrong with the Libre Office method: Open a non-ODX file, make a 
change, do a Save, get a dialog box that asks if you want to save in the 
old format (and lose any non-compatible changes) or in ODX format?  The 
'old format' button is already highlighted, so the user just has to hit 
the Enter key.  Why is that approach so terrible?  It seems to be okay 
for those (perhaps millions???) of users?  And certainly users of word 
processing programs may possibly be less sophisticated than users of 
powerful image creation/editing software.


Unless something is done to arrive at a reasonable solution, my only 
remedy for my company is to lock down Gimp upgrades at the pre-change 
(save/export mess) level.  When the time comes when the "old" Gimp will 
no longer run on our workstations, we will have to switch to another 
program ... and retrain staff on that other program.  It is a real 
shame.  I would much prefer that my staff would be able to use one 
SINGLE program for both highly productive workflow (open TIFF, make 
minor tweaks such as Curves, save/close as TIFF) and major 
editing/creation work that does need everything that XCF has to offer.

It is extremely valuable in a commercial environment to train on a 
SINGLE program, rather than duplicate training in multiple programs (to 
say nothing of maintaining, upgrading, etc.).  The needs of commercial 
environments often seems to be forgotten in open source development 
planning.


ONE QUESTION... relating to locking down Gimp upgrades due to this 
situation: As of Gimp 2.6.6 (on Ubuntu Linux), the creation perms for 
TIFF (and I think some other) file types are wrong.  I reported this bug 
(after being told that *I* must be doing something wrong) and the bug 
was quickly confirmed & fixed in development versions (thank you for 
that).  However, what is the most recent (if there is one at all) 
non-development Gimp version (to run on Ubuntu 8.04 or 10.04) that 
contains the creation perms fix AND is BEFORE the new save-export-mess 
version?

Jay