LWN: Comments on "GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)"

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

flussence — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 21:09:21 +0000

More specifically, GTK recognises all my keyboard and mouse buttons. Qt doesn't, and it's more restrictive about which combinations of them are valid.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

nybble41 — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 19:50:46 +0000

Well, it worked for me in The GIMP the last time I tried it, but that was back in Gtk+ 2 days.

According to <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GTK%2B#Keyboard_shor...> it should still work for Gtk+ 3, but you need to add the following option to your $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gtk-3.0/settings.ini file under [Settings]:

gtk-can-change-accels = 1

It's possible that the same is required in ~/.gtkrc-2.0 for Gtk+ 2; I don't remember whether I changed that option or not.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

mbunkus — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 15:49:37 +0000

Are you sure this actually still works? It doesn't for me in Gimp, neither in FileZilla (which uses wxWidgets which uses GTK on Linux). I just gave both a try.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

nybble41 — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 14:36:36 +0000

> I only ever notice GTKA apps rarely let you configure shortcuts ...

While there usually isn't a discrete "Configure Shortcuts..." dialog like in KDE apps, most Gtk+ apps will respond to highlighting a menu item and pressing the shortcut key that you want to assign to it.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

prokoudine — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 12:12:17 +0000

Complex characters? Any examples?

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

jospoortvliet — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 11:30:24 +0000

I don't think it is polite to create a false trichotomy (is that a word?) pretending you can be only for one desktop. I suspect the transmission team wants to create a great app for their users, whatever platform these users wish to use. The GNOME developers seem to care little about that and force that attitude on others. Luckily, more and more projects respond with a big, fat middle finger and move to Qt.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

jospoortvliet — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 11:23:23 +0000

I only ever notice GTKA apps rarely let you configure shortcuts and I haven't figured out how to do complex characters in them. Can you give an example of what you mean? Just curious.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

wazoox — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 18:22:54 +0000

Sounds congruent with what jwz said of GTK/Gnome something like 10 years ago. Well, 12 years (https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html ). And coherent with his latest analysis ( https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/04/i-told-you-so-again/ ). And he's not exactly alone, either: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MT... . I guess there's a real mentality problem among Gnome developers.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

rsidd — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 07:34:20 +0000

Actually the polite comment was: "It is my hope that you are a GNOME app", or, more fully,

I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app unfortunately. I'm sorry that this is the case but it wasn't GNOME's fault that Ubuntu has started this fork... It is my hope that you are a GNOME app.

to which Charles of Transmission responded

*speechless*

Presumably Charles was rendered speechless by the extraordinary politeness of McCann! So unusual these days.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

bronson — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 07:06:07 +0000

I only wish McCann was one more guy on the internet. Then he couldn't have done so much to GNOME 3 in the name of Branding.

It's nice to see GNOME is slowly recovering.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

flussence — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 23:11:02 +0000

OTOH, I'll state that GTK+ has always done one thing better: input handling.

I don't know if the Qt toolkit or the apps using it are to blame, but every single keyboard/mouse shortcut customizing feature I've used in them has been useless whether it's Qt4, KDE4 or Qt5.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

Cyberax — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 18:13:31 +0000

Let's try it!

"It is my hope that you go die and decompose"

Hmm, I like it. Very polite!

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

malor — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 16:47:58 +0000

The last time I tried it, a few years ago, it didn't support my 30" screen very well. It displayed, but if I tried to set the font sizes much larger than standard, it became quite unhappy. My only real option with MATE was micetype fonts, and that got old.

XFCE handles that much better. It's still not perfect; the control panel in particular gets a little wonky with big fonts. But most stuff seems to work pretty well. And resizing the start menu, so that the larger names fit properly, is just a click and drag, which is really nice. I suppose it'd be even nicer if it sized itself, but a one-time drag isn't exactly an onerous burden.

If I could just figure out how to get the NVidia driver to stop flickering during scrolling, I'd be pretty happy with it.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

jku — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:48:59 +0000

McCann is quite clearly presenting his opinion. It's not even an unreasonable one: supporting multiple platforms equally often leads to none of the ports being truly high quality. But even if he was entirely wrong about this: so what? It's just one more guy being wrong on the internet. It's definitely not a reason to start imagining the guy wants to "hurt everyone else".

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

bronson — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:29:24 +0000

You left out, "I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app"

That doesn't sound like a demand to you?

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

bronson — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:23:08 +0000

You selectively quote and then lecture someone about something they didn't say?

Here's the full quote: "The goal in armtwisting Transmission to remove notification support is not about improving GNOME. It's about hurting everyone else." rsidd is talking about "armtwisting Transmission", not "the goal of the GNOME project as a whole" as you imply.

The lament was that Gnome removed an ostensibly useful feature and declared that all other programs must do the same. Sure, "hurting others" is an overly dramatic way of wording this but it doesn't seem out of bounds to me.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

jku — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:18:47 +0000

I doubt we will get anywhere with this discussion but I'll try once. You describe McCanns behaviour as "demanding to remove a feature". Let's look at the phrases he actually used:

* "This should probably..."
* "I guess you have to..."
* "It is my hope that..."

This is not demanding by any definition of the word, but perfectly normal discussion on a feature request bug. McCann presented his opinion and explained the choices GNOME is making in this context. Note how he also did not throw any kind of tantrum or keep posting his opinion over and over when the developers apparently disagreed with him.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

paulj — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:12:55 +0000

Did Ubuntu patch GTK3 for the CSDs for a while? Also, perhaps i3 or Ubuntu has done something to workaround it, a GTK3 theme? As I said, some WMs had to implement work-arounds (WindowMaker did anyway), because even disabling CSD in GTK3, GTK3 still was doing something to tell WMs to not paint decorations.

Googling for i3 GTK3 csd suggests i3 had some issues with GTK3's move to CSD too. E.g.:

https://github.com/shimmerproject/Numix/issues/206

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

rsidd — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 14:58:23 +0000

Well, if I run a GTK3 app under a non-GNOME manager it's screwed up.

I'm curious about this. I use i3 (well, pure i3 on my work desktop, xfce with i3 as wm on my laptop) and a bunch of gnome apps, presumably gtk3 by now, on Ubuntu 15.04 (desktop) / 15.10 (laptop). I have not noticed any issues that you mention. On my laptop there are the weird and annoying Ubuntu floating/disappearing scrollbars, but I think Gnome is blameless there...

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

rsidd — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 14:53:11 +0000

You left out what I was talking about. What other interpretation do you have of the demand to remove a feature that would make it work properly on other DEs, on the grounds that GNOME3 doesn't support it (though GNOME2 did)?

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

paulj — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 13:46:44 +0000

On the rest of your post. Yes, it's sad what happened. The GNOME people seemed to decide their existing users weren't for them. Their prerogative, but the rejected will feel hurt. I guess we, the former GNOME users, didn't treat the GNOME devs well enough. We didn't make them feel appreciated enough. So they went looking for someone else. Pretty much a relationship break-up. :) Blame and sore feelings on all sides.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

paulj — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 13:41:13 +0000

MATE is very likely what you're after.

Works for me. (I must donate to them sometime soon).

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

malor — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 13:37:51 +0000

Yeah, a number of years ago, I realized that the GNOME team was no longer interested in making my life better. I wasn't sure who they were trying to help, but I could definitely see it wasn't me, that they were chasing some other kind of user.

I'm thinking now that their goal shifted to serving themselves and their project. It looks to me like they decided that They Had A Vision, which happened to look a lot like Apple's iPad, and that Their Vision was much more important. Imaginary users became the goal of the project, not the real ones they actually had.

So, a number of years later, it really looks to me like desktop Linux has been terribly damaged. They burned the users they had trying to entice different ones, failed to do so because Their Vision was just recycled crap which didn't work that well on devices with normal screens and mice, and ended up with a much smaller community, and a huge loss of interest in using Linux. The kernel became popular on phones, but that's because of Android, with a totally different and incompatible userspace.

It seems to me that if you've got a user base, telling them to piss off while you go do something else is probably not going to work very well for most organizations.

Instead of focusing on making something absolutely amazing for people who really understood computers, they actively damaged it for that crowd to try to appeal to the non-technical.... and completely failed to do so.

Instead of figuring out how to expose power to the non-technical, which to my mind is the central goal of all UI design, they took the power away because it's so terribly confusing.

For me, personally, it's been all downhill on desktop Linux after Ubuntu 10.04. That version was *awesome*. It was friendly, it was usable, it was centered on mice and keyboards and large screens, and it was there to specifically make my life better. I was perfectly happy using it full time. But then GNOME 3 and then Unity came along, and they're just dismal.

Fortunately, Xubuntu is decent. I don't use Linux full time anymore, but with the advent of Windows 10, it looks like I will be again, and that's a reasonable alternative.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

jku — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 12:53:07 +0000

The goal ... is not about improving GNOME. It's about hurting everyone else. That's what GNOME has come to.

After a sentence like this maybe it's time to step back and try to get a different perspective -- to consider the possibility that instead of being evil, the "others" might just be trying to accomplish a goal of their own that has _nothing_ to do with you. Accusing other people of malice just because they don't set their goals based on your needs and wants is part of why the open source culture is sometimes seen as hostile.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

jospoortvliet — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 12:35:46 +0000

Luckily many third party apps move away from GTK, the latest convert is wireshark. I'd really appreciate it if Inkscape would consider this, too.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

paulj — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 09:27:49 +0000

Well, if I run a GTK3 app under a non-GNOME manager it's screwed up. GTK3 apps suppress the WMs decorations and implement their own - but don't offer resize handles anywhere. There is no easy way to undo this (there is some obscure setting to turn off its own WM decorations, but nothing to turn off the suppression of the WM's decorations - the WM has to be updated to detect GTK3 apps and just paint the WM decorations anyway).

GTK3 appears to be actively hostile to anything !GNOME.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

cortana — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 23:56:58 +0000

The phrase that spuring to mind X years ago, when this happened, was 'colossal arrogance'.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

prokoudine — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 22:00:31 +0000

Wouldn't say it was shocking stupid, but it was rather irresponsible indeed.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

epa — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 16:49:37 +0000

I remember Mark Shuttleworth's suggestion that GNOME should move to Qt. It sounds more sensible with each passing year.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

error27 — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 09:12:57 +0000

Yeah. Wow, that link really triggers the anger button... The gnome devs caught a lot of flack because it wasn't just stupid in retrospect, it was shocking stupid at the time as well. Unbelievable levels of stupid.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

jensend — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 05:48:18 +0000

I really should have pointed out the age of the rant when linking to it, as it appears people ignored the 3.5 year old timestamps and are taking this as a new development. Sorry.

Many, possibly all, of the technical problems mentioned in the rant have long since been addressed in one way or another. But the concerns about the attitude taken by GNOME and GTK developers are still relevant today. The concerns about the suitability of GTK as a solid foundation for serious programs outside of the core GNOME suite are still relevant today. The concerns about whether or not GTK has a long term future worth sticking around for are still relevant today. Plenty of folks have looked at those issues in the past several years and decided to switch to another toolkit.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

malor — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 04:24:46 +0000

Given how they treated him, I think the credit is 110% with the Transmission dev.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

rahulsundaram — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 03:47:58 +0000

> Doesn't look like GNOME gets any of the credit.

Only to the extend, there is a GTK3 frontend. Transmission independently deserves credit for being a solid torrent client and much of that is not desktop environment specific.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

rahulsundaram — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 03:00:52 +0000

It is not true though. Transmission has both a GTK and Qt frontend for a long time.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

malor — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 00:20:41 +0000

>It's that Transmission keeps working beautifully on GNOME 3

Doesn't look like GNOME gets any of the credit.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

bronson — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 23:02:20 +0000

Well that's good news. Although, it's not like McCann gave them any choice.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

flussence — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 21:19:53 +0000

>"I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app unfortunately. [...]"

It looks like Transmission already chose their future: Qt5. Just like Audacious, LXDE, Wireshark...

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

prokoudine — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 19:36:10 +0000

The funniest bit is not that GNOME haters have been carrying this offence for years. It's that Transmission keeps working beautifully on GNOME 3, with both fully functional notifications and system tray support.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

rsidd — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 13:56:25 +0000

The article doesn't spare Ubuntu/Unity and KDE either, but the level of malice in the GNOME interactions doesn't compare.

Worth noting: KDE4 came out well before GNOME3, and got huge amounts of flak, yet GNOME3 repeated all the same mistakes and then some, while KDE embarked on an extensive course-correction.

My speculation: W J McCann most certainly knows what XFCE is. The goal in armtwisting Transmission to remove notification support is not about improving GNOME. It's about hurting everyone else. That's what GNOME has come to.

GIMP is 20 Years Old, What’s Next? (Libre Graphics World)

malor — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 10:39:24 +0000

You know, I've been thinking for a long time that the GNOME developers had lost their collective minds, but that link absolutely solidified for me. What a fustercluck.

They care more about their brand than about the people using their software.