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Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

theguardian.com

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Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#141

Post by simon83 »

ProAm wrote: post #130
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #97

Pity that they don't open source it. I've gone through multiple image editors on Linux, and none of them have the simplicity of Paint. The layout and functionality is incredibly intuitive. You drop someone into Paint, and even if they've never seen it before, they can start doing stuff within a minute or so. You drop the same person into GIMP, and five minutes later they're still trying to figure out how the hell to…

Pinta has always been my simple go to image editor on linux. Similar to Paint.NET

I just wanted to add that Pinta 1.6 (which is the current stable version in the official Arch repos, for example) has awfully slow rectangle/selection tools on larger images. In my case, selecting something in a 2000x2000 image would freeze the whole program for a couple of seconds. Same with resizing or dragging a selection. It was pretty much useless.

But 1.7 fixes this issue. It's a development version and not considered "stable" yet (though I haven't experienced any issues so far).

Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#142

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

emilsedgh wrote: post #138
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #97

Pity that they don't open source it. I've gone through multiple image editors on Linux, and none of them have the simplicity of Paint. The layout and functionality is incredibly intuitive. You drop someone into Paint, and even if they've never seen it before, they can start doing stuff within a minute or so. You drop the same person into GIMP, and five minutes later they're still trying to figure out how the hell to…

https://www.kde.org/applications/graphics/kolourpaint/

Thanks, I'll give it a look.

I'm a little hesitant about grabbing a KDE app on my Cinnamon desktop, as it will inevitably result in pulling down like 50 KDE libraries. But we'll see.

Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#143

Post by smcl »

emilsedgh wrote: post #138
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #97

Pity that they don't open source it. I've gone through multiple image editors on Linux, and none of them have the simplicity of Paint. The layout and functionality is incredibly intuitive. You drop someone into Paint, and even if they've never seen it before, they can start doing stuff within a minute or so. You drop the same person into GIMP, and five minutes later they're still trying to figure out how the hell to…

https://www.kde.org/applications/graphics/kolourpaint/

I think a few people (some non-KDE users) have an aversion to KDE/Qt tools and avoid them where possible. Certainly it was enough of a pain for me to get consistent look-and-feel across all my applications that I gave up and decided not to use Qt if I could avoid it.

Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#144

Post by tritium »

wang_li wrote: post #95
sjwright wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe as the "dumbing down" of the file system is the inherent consequence of multi-user operating systems, i.e. a bias towards the user's home folders; clearly done to help users better organise their documents. Meanwhile, power users are not even momentarily impeded, with key locations (such as the file system root) readily accessible from the Go menu. Or keyboard shortcuts. Or the terminal. Or from the…

Also abstracting away the local storage device makes a cloud transition a lot easier.

  a cloud transition
I disagree that this is a "good" thing. Cloud being parlance for someone else's computer.

This is not pure "get off my lawn" garbage. Try communicating how to save and transfer a protected zip file with sensitive data to pretty much any non-developer. These are essential tasks, and if you only socialize with technical folks, sure, everybody will be on the same page, but that leaves 90% (or more) of the rest of the world nearly clueless and left out in the cold. Whoops!

EDIT: To elaborate, consider the palpable difference in technical confidence between Ed Snowden and Laura Poitras. Technical people often gasp at the things Snowden had to carefully explain. Realities that are painfully obvious to power users.

This sort of skill differential is extremely common, and the amount of babying and hand-holding ordinary users often require is painful to behold. My claim is that the obscurity of essential activities is the root of this sort of thing. Editing raw pixels with precision, taken as a simple example.

Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#145

Post by slig »

mavhc wrote: post #133
aldanor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Win > "snip" >

Win > snip > wait a bit, now a bit more in case it switches to doing a web search for snip, or finding all files named snip > enter

Is it really that bad? I haven't used Windows since XP, and it seems bizarre that they couldn't emulate macOS's Spotlight yet.

Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#146

Post by jzebedee »

Karunamon wrote: post #115
crispytx wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! Paint was the only Microsoft product that I actually loved.

They did the same thing with the calculator, turning what is probably the simplest app on the entire computer into a Metro-ified flat-design-meme store-dependent mess for absolutely no benefit.

I went to open my calculator this morning and it told me it was in the middle of an update and to try again later. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes later it still wasn't done. I ended up using Google to calculate some basic math! How does Microsoft screw up such a simple application?

Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#147

Post by lightedman »

Karunamon wrote: post #115
crispytx wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! Paint was the only Microsoft product that I actually loved.

They did the same thing with the calculator, turning what is probably the simplest app on the entire computer into a Metro-ified flat-design-meme store-dependent mess for absolutely no benefit.

You don't have a Kensington Keyhub? Calculator built-in, awesome for laptops and desktops.

Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#148

Post by shawnbaden »

I’m surprised no one has mentioned Hal Lasko (The Pixel Painter). Hal started using Microsoft Paint when he got a computer on his 85th birthday until his death at 99 in 2014. He made some great looking art bit by bit.

https://vimeo.com/70748579 - The Pixel Painter

https://hallasko.com/

Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#149

Post by o_o_o »

Sleeep wrote: post #137
Maert wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://imgur.com/a/0oDU7

You're being completely disingenuous, that's absolutely terrible. My use case for Paint is highlighting one off screenshots for clients and the like. Nobody is going to send your sort of screenshot in a professional environment, it looks like it was marked up by a kindergartner. My workflow: I open up snipping tool, take a screenshot, copy it, paste it in Paint, mark it up quickly (arrow tool or circle/rounded corner…

It sounds like you could really take advantage of Greenshot. http://getgreenshot.org

Re: Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

#150

Post by jpswade »

cabaalis wrote: post #12

This is silliness. I Win+R, mspaint at least 10 times a day. I paste in screenshots and quickly cut out just a portion of them. Or leave the screenshot there for later review. Why don't they just remove the file browser? Or how about mouse support?

They know this. It has been deprecated, not removed. That sounds like it's likely to remain for now.
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