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Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

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Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#21
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, haven't the gimp team been working on refactoring/modularization of all of the tools? I think this is part of an effort to modernize. I haven't been keeping up with it but I think I read this several years ago. They stated in 2018 "GIMP 3.0 will be relying on GTK3, a much newer version of the toolkit." not sure if that ever happened? https://www.gimp.org/news/2019/01/02/gimp-and-gegl-in-2018/

They're trying. And I appreciate that. Unfortunately it's still on-going in 2023.

Seems they are very close though in the latest release candidate for Gimp 3.x

"GTK+3 port officially done

GIMP 3.0 has been known as the GTK+3 port version, so you will be happy to read that this port is finally over. To be fair, we still have a few minor deprecation warnings here and there, but nothing like the hundreds we used to have."

https://www.gimp.org/news/2023/07/09/gimp-2-99-16-released/#...

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blender has something else. Loads of money compared to Gimp.

Did the money come first? Or the redesign? I remember using Blender back in the day and it was really confusing. It seems amazing that anyone would have poured so much money into it back then.

Good question. Blender lead and community created a huge innertia with projects and conquest to raise funding. So having a vision comes first, then the funding, and after that a redesign.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blender has something else. Loads of money compared to Gimp.

Did the money come first? Or the redesign? I remember using Blender back in the day and it was really confusing. It seems amazing that anyone would have poured so much money into it back then.

[deleted]

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#25

If Blender could radically update their UI and UX after 25 years of the initial conception, I feel like any (FOSS) project could do it too, no matter how many options and technical details the software has.

Blender is also really careful to NOT needlessly break existing workflows and also doog-foods their own software through having their own studio.

This is in stark contrast to the vast majority of UI-redesigns which tend to break existing workflows, remove features and are just ego-driven projects. You need to be a user of your own software.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#26
post #14

Universal search in UI is cool, and I’m all for it, but it shouldn’t be the only/primary way of accessing tools as tool discoverability is very low. The author tries to deal with this by putting the a menu next to a search bar and putting hints in the bottom menu (which I don’t think would really work here, as raster tools are less selection-specific than 3D tools). Search fixes the speed-of-access issue, but doesn’t…

> Universal search in UI is cool, and I’m all for it, but it shouldn’t be the only/primary way of accessing tools as tool discoverability is very low. This is the core point made in the article.

How do you support discoverability, sleek work areas with minimal interfaces such as search, and power users at the same time? What does that look like?

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#27
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blender has something else. Loads of money compared to Gimp.

Did the money come first? Or the redesign? I remember using Blender back in the day and it was really confusing. It seems amazing that anyone would have poured so much money into it back then.

Yeah a few studios started picking it up prior to the redesign because it was free and a lot of new animators/designers knew it because it was a free tool they could learn. That was all pre-redesign.

Their support got the ball rolling and then eventually Amazon and a bunch of big studios threw their weight in but I'm not sure how many of them were involved in the redesign.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#30

This is a terrible idea. The menu bar works great, integrates with shortcuts, and gives 100% discoverability. Anyone who wants to get rid of it is a bad developer and a bad person.

Meanwhile gimp probably has lower % usage rate than it did 20 years ago. Improvements are needed, and this is just menus in a popup box anyway
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