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

[Nathan Summers <rockwalrus gmail com>]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 11:58 AM, peter sikking <peter mmiworks net> wrote:
> Richard Gitschlag wrote:
>
>> So if I may throw an echo into the room and ask why the particular message box CAN NOT provide a yes/no prompt, with "Yes" transferring control to the Export box and "No" cancelling back to the Save dialog?
>
> as I said before: no trip through Save if it is not safe.
>
> it is simply not allowed to ‘feel’ safe. seriously.

If I open a PNG, adjust the curves, and serialize it to the filesystem
as a PNG, and then open that in GIMP, there isn't anything
meaningfully different between that and if I serialized it to XCF and
opened it. So I have a hard time calling one safe and the other not.
In both cases, I get all of the adjusted image data.  In neither case
do I get the curve that I used to adjust the image back, or the old
image data back.

I really don't care one way or another about whether GIMP goes the
"everything is save" route or the "export if it's not native" route.
I've used plenty of software that goes each way.  But let me throw in
a few points of data.

My wife is the kind of person that would be in GIMP's official target
audience.  She's asked me three times how to save something as PNG
since I installed 2.8.  While my living room is hardly a usability
lab, I've been behind the one-way glass in one enough to say there is
probably a discoverability issue there.

Furthermore, even after I showed her how to export as PNG and she
asked why they changed, I tried explaining the rationale and that
other programs did it, and she still seemed unimpressed.  She is quite
aware of the differences between different file formats, and I get the
impression that she finds the distinction between serializing as XCF
and other formats to not warrant different treatment.  On the other
hand, she tends to use several applications in a workflow, and when
your workflow isn't GIMP-centric, the XCF doesn't really contain much
of the state of the workflow anyway.

Rockwalrus