Please don't drop support for Curve

[Charlie De <charliecoeli yahoo com>]

Hello all,


I've joined up with this list for one single reason: to ask the developers to 
re-consider and reverse their decision to deprecate and eventually remove the 
Curve widget from GTK+.

Recently, I learnt to create Python scripts, and with the help of Glade, created 
a GUI to ImageMagick routines, for my own "proprietary photo editor". The Curve 
widget was absolutely central to this endeavour. The only downside is that it is 
basic and not very well developed.

To me, the reasons given for this widget being deprecated, that it isn't very 
useful and only appeals to a minority of users, sounds disingenuous and hurtful 
to the easy usefulness of GTK+. What do you expect users to do in its absence? 
Do you really expect users to go breaking their knuckles to try and create a 
curve dialog with a drawing area? How could you see such "progress" as anything 
but a step backwards?

So please, hear a busy user who has taken the trouble of registering here to 
offer feedback: do not drop this essensial component of GTK+, and instead of 
deprecating it, continue its development. You can drop Gamma Curve if you like, 
which is too idiosyncratic to be of much use. What is needed instead is the 
Curve offering point data - the points on the curve that the user creates - 
being able to be read and manipulated by other widgets, such as the numerical 
scroll boxes. (Rather like the Curves dialog in Photoshop.) And I'm sure there 
are other improvements that could be made.

If on the other hand you insist on dropping the Curve, then when the time comes 
I guess I'll have to switch to another widget toolset, whichever will still be 
offering a Curve interface element. I can't even begin to image how long it 
would take me to create the widget manually - it frankly strikes me as an insane 
and pointless effort.

Thank you for your attention and best wishes with your continuing good work. 
What you have created in GTK+ (and pyGTK) is greatly appreciated and wonderfully 
useful.

All the best,

Charlie