Re: [Gimp-gui] Gimp purpose

[Michal Vašut <michal vasut gmail com>]

With good intent ... it backfired on me. Well, let's try again different way. 

The main point of my previous post was not losing focus of main goals. (and you already defined those - mentioned above). Do you remember burning SW Nero Burning ROM? From the beginning it was great single purpose application that allowed creating and copying CDs / DVDs. Then they added movie cutting app, photo collection manager and another SW and it started its end. I don't wish to Gimp ending like that.

First time I read that GIMP only "scratches" the surface of the use cases you tell about. This is a pretty accomplished tool for painting as well as for photography.

No doubt about it.

It doesn't do 3D but this has never been its area of activity (though I could see interesting usage of 3D within 2D raster images, so why not).

Hell no, God save us from that. Gimp is 2D manipulation SW not 3D. Its better to use specialized SW for special use cases.

It's even funny that you compare it to Blender which is kind of similar within its own usages (3D) since it has a very wide range of use cases as well. Blender is quite a generic tool in the 3D business (compared to other software which are more into specializing into this or that).

Well the point was, that they are similar in this aspect (many use cases), but Blender handles it better, because it has special perspective for special use case. (ie. you are programmer so you know that for debugging, you need different set of tools than for writing code or designing forms and the same applies for graphics - for creating icons some set of tools [or icon preview form], for painting different set of tools ... well those sets could have some intersections)

Basically GIMP is a generic raster graphics software. It is indeed not trying to specialize as much as others, and personally that's why also which I like a lot, because I consider that many of these use cases in the end overlap in the end. So a lot of the specialized software actually end up also getting the same more generic features as well.

OK that makes some sense.

Ok. How is "animation" geek stuff? GIMP is currently used professionally for animation, by a film director and animator who is paid for this and does this for a living. How is this a "geek stuff"?

As a general fact, I think animation film is quite a big business even, and calling it "geek stuff" is quite hard to understand. Maybe you should tell this to the cinema business that they should stop doing geek stuff.

Also why when the other software implement the same features (2 of the 4 other software you cited have animation features), that would be ok, but when GIMP does it, it becomes "geek stuff"?
I'm really trying to understand the logics.

The "geek stuff" thing was more for some file loaders (and other functionality), that will be used by minority of people, than for animation.

About my comment about animation. Why would somebody make animation in Gimp when there are more suited apps for this task? Yes definitely some postproduction work on rendered frames ( as part of production pipeline) or simple GIF animation (there are some addons that helps with that and please leave it that way - as addon not as core functionality). But what profi animation could be possibly done in Gimp?!? Can you provide link or more info about profit animation you mentioned?

features (why Gimp needs this?)

GIMP does not "need" anything. GIMP is not a person.

You are wrong ;-) it needs love and care :-)

or HGT file importer (what is the
percentage of users that will use it?)

Indeed, how many? No idea. Does it bother you that the feature is in because you don't need it? Is the presence of this feature actually bothering you or preventing you from doing things in GIMP?

Well one thing is some random work (let's say request hunt - no problem with that) and other is core team coordinated work (to move Gimp closer to desired state)

someone needed this feature and made a feature request which stayed in our bug tracker for about a year.

This is another thing that interests me. Do you have some system how you choose what user request to implement  (let's say some polling system (wishlist) where users can get you some feedback about what needs to be done (priority)) or random dev picks something from Bugzilla (attention >>>BUG<<<zilla) and do it?

I'm sorry if I seem a bit snappy on my answer, but you have been questionning a few of the features I have worked on (or am working on) so really I am wondering why you show these as being a problem.
I really don't want any conflict, but I don't see how else I can answer to an email where you are basically asking us to explain (or even "excuse") our actions as though we were wrong doing them.

There is no need for excuses. My questions were also little snappy and I wasn't probably clear enough.

Have a nice day.

Michal