Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

gimp.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 86 posts

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#41

Post by iamnothere »

I don’t often do much with image editing, so GIMP has been perfectly adequate for me for decades. I’ve never rented a copy of Photoshop and don’t care about it.

I’ve noticed small but consistent improvements over the years. People who complain about the UX should just go use Photoshop. It’s fine. Layers work well, retouching and filters are easy. I don’t really understand the complaints.

I’m very glad GIMP exists, and I hope it continues to make FOSS haters cope and seethe for the next 50 years. Keep whining about the name please!

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#42

Post by b112 »

tadfisher wrote: post #36
hungryhobbit wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the contrast between this and one of the next comments: >In my honest opinion, GIMP is a horrific piece of software. Both are absolutely true! GIMP has been, for many years, the best free graphics software available. At the same time, it's so horribly anti-user (and anti-usability) that if it wasn't free software, the company behind it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.

"Anti-user' and "anti-usability" are far too harsh. Outdated, yes. A product of 1990s-era UX design, absolutely. But every changelog has some mention of a UX improvement, and actually using the product at version 3.0 is, dare I say, pretty enjoyable once you unlearn things and pretend it's Photoshop 6.0. Single-window mode by default helps a ton . I have used far worse software from commercial outfits. You would not…

My biggest beef is the UI constantly goes through massive changes at each release. Options moved, mysterious new configs, literally it is as if you're using an entirely new piece of software every few years.

For those of you who daily drive GIMP, well you'll be up to speed quickly. For those of us that use it once a month or so, for a day, it quickly becomes exceptionally annoying.

I'm happy if the UI isn't the best. I frankly don't care what the software looks like, or if the GUI is purdy. I just want it to work, work well, and frankly that menu items don't magically disappear, get merged into other sub-menus, or that now you can suddenly close a tool, and never ever get it back without finding some obscure menu item to re-activate it.

And if you use GIMP frequently, and are about to say "But, that's easy, you just..." then you're not a casual user.

There are more casual users than you think.

(this goes right up there with devs who change config options in files from option= to Option=, and configs= to config=.

I mean, leave it alone. Forever.

"Updated config options to bring them inline with StudlyCaps" or whatever turns my day into a ragefest filled anxiety attack on upgrade.

"Changed all config names to US English from British spelling." What?! OK b112, you now have to deal.

I don't want to deal. I want to eat doritos.)

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#43

Post by cmyk_student »

b112 wrote: post #42
tadfisher wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anti-user' and "anti-usability" are far too harsh. Outdated, yes. A product of 1990s-era UX design, absolutely. But every changelog has some mention of a UX improvement, and actually using the product at version 3.0 is, dare I say, pretty enjoyable once you unlearn things and pretend it's Photoshop 6.0. Single-window mode by default helps a ton . I have used far worse software from commercial outfits. You would not…

My biggest beef is the UI constantly goes through massive changes at each release. Options moved, mysterious new configs, literally it is as if you're using an entirely new piece of software every few years. For those of you who daily drive GIMP, well you'll be up to speed quickly. For those of us that use it once a month or so, for a day, it quickly becomes exceptionally annoying. I'm happy if the UI isn't the best.…

It's funny to hear that, because we get a large number of complaints that we haven't changed GIMP's interface at all from 2.10 to 3.0 and that's why we're "failing".

We try to be respectful of existing users (and again, we get lots of complaints that doing so "holds GIMP back"). If you have some examples of massive changes you've dealt with (and from what version to what version), I'm happy to look into them further.

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#44

Post by mikolajw »

lynndotpy wrote: post #38
ChocolateGod wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words have different meanings in different languages and regions, also words themselves change meaning over time. I've seen GIMP deployed in British schools with no issues. We should all start being adults and stop fussing because some pixels on our screen might spell out a word that in a certain context and certain part of the world might be seen as offensive

What is the name for this fallacy, "We should all start being adults"? Everyone who is an adult can understand that names matter, especially ones intentionally chosen to cause offense or a ruckus. First, it doesn't matter how much you or I or the commentator above us changes to "be adults". Only the saddest and most lonesome people will be the sole decisionmaker in every context they exist in. Sometimes, you exist in…

There are over 7000 languages in the world, around half of them dying or having already died due to linguistic domination, in large part English, each with its own set of culturally sensitive words.

To follow the above mode of reasoning without advantaging one or few languages, you would have to change an enormous amount of words in all languages, if not basically all. This is obviously not feasible.

If GIMP was a dirty word in a Native American language, or a native African language, there would be no debate. That we are debating this at all is because English has privileged status due to the Anglo-Saxon hegemony.

Hence, you are expecting us to give special, privileged treatment to the linguistic sensitivities of your dominant culture. Which is unfair, especially historically, because the hegemony was achieved by mass land steal and many genocides, which we shouldn't be rewarding by allowing further claims.

So yes, it should be expected from an adult anglophone to tolerate the existence of sordophones, words that are dirty in their dialect but not in others, especially in an international, multilingual setting. This is what it means to abstain from linguistic imperialism. This is what it means to tolerate and respect other cultures.

And to enforce tolerance, indeed it may be needed to view those who fail at this as childish.

I feel somewhat sorry to say this, but I need to be assertive here.

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#45

Post by InsideOutSanta »

as1mov wrote: post #12
jrm4 wrote: post #11

[flagged]

If the dev team had a nickel for every time someone complained about the name, there would have enough money by now to fund the development of a UI revamp. Now if they had a nickel for everytime someone complained about the bad UI...

But do they want to do a full UI revamp? My impression is that a lot of people in the gimp ecosystem are happy to be aggressively unwelcoming to a broader audience. They don't see the name or the poor ux as a bug, but as a feature, and actively attack people who want to fix these issue. They call then "snowflakes" and "SJWs" and are gleeful when they fail to make any kinds of improvements.

Some of these people can be found in this very thread.

The problem with gimp is not one of budgets, it's that many of the people involved in gimp see its current state as how things should be.

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#46

Post by jrm4 »

mikolajw wrote: post #24
jrm4 wrote: post #11

[flagged]

>how they are percieved by the outside world The vast majority of the outside world does not perceive the name the way you do. Even the majority of English users doesn't, as most of them learned standard English as second language at school without being taught vulgar Anglo-American slang. If you want to pursue linguistic sensitivity, the just direction is against anglophone domination, even if impractical. We should…

Let me be clear, this has nothing to do with pushing "linguistic sensitivity" for its own sake. Nothing.

Look, the author himself wondered out loud why he wasn't more deservedly popular. I put forth a reason why. PR is real. I understand if you really want to keep the name at the possible cost of popularity; but I don't think it's worth it. I wonder if he understood the possible tradeoff.

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#47

Post by jrm4 »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #21
jrm4 wrote: post #11

[flagged]

Words have different meanings in different languages and regions, also words themselves change meaning over time. I've seen GIMP deployed in British schools with no issues. We should all start being adults and stop fussing because some pixels on our screen might spell out a word that in a certain context and certain part of the world might be seen as offensive

Yes, every time I post this point, I get this sort of "but I'm not offended" response.

I'm not either, personally. But I live in America, a pretty strong force, for better or lately probably worse. And GIMP is very good software, but the name makes it hard to recommend or take seriously. Not even in terms of "I'm offended" but in terms of "if you thought this software was good why would you name it something like that?"

GIMP perhaps could have competed with Adobe stuff, but we will never know because this name doesn't make it out the door for a number of related reasons. Don't shoot me on this fact, I'm just the messenger.

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#48

Post by jrm4 »

mikolajw wrote: post #44
lynndotpy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the name for this fallacy, "We should all start being adults"? Everyone who is an adult can understand that names matter, especially ones intentionally chosen to cause offense or a ruckus. First, it doesn't matter how much you or I or the commentator above us changes to "be adults". Only the saddest and most lonesome people will be the sole decisionmaker in every context they exist in. Sometimes, you exist in…

There are over 7000 languages in the world, around half of them dying or having already died due to linguistic domination, in large part English, each with its own set of culturally sensitive words. To follow the above mode of reasoning without advantaging one or few languages, you would have to change an enormous amount of words in all languages, if not basically all. This is obviously not feasible. If GIMP was a di…

Gonna have to say this a bunch around here, but yours is yet ANOTHER comment shooting the messenger. You (theoretically) are championing an idea of freedom in language or something like that.

Look, people, this is PR. The author wondered out loud "why isn't he more recognized" and a reasonable answer is that "People like me, in America, who love free software and try to get people using it, run into trouble that could have been avoided if the name was changed."

You want your lesson out there on freedom of language, fine, that's what you all got. Just be honest about what you may have missed -- which I genuinely believe could have been a world in which Adobe was nowhere near as annoyingly powerful as it is (or at least had been).

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#49

Post by cmyk_student »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #45
as1mov wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the dev team had a nickel for every time someone complained about the name, there would have enough money by now to fund the development of a UI revamp. Now if they had a nickel for everytime someone complained about the bad UI...

But do they want to do a full UI revamp? My impression is that a lot of people in the gimp ecosystem are happy to be aggressively unwelcoming to a broader audience. They don't see the name or the poor ux as a bug, but as a feature, and actively attack people who want to fix these issue. They call then "snowflakes" and "SJWs" and are gleeful when they fail to make any kinds of improvements. Some of these people can be…

I can't speak for everyone, but as developers we are trying to emphasis UX/UI work more. We have a dedicated repo now for user feedback, designs, and proposed solutions: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/issues We implement from there as we can, once consensus has been reached.

We also highlight UX/UI improvements in each new release post. Just like with coding, we rely on volunteers to help with this (you definitely don't want someone like me deciding on interfaces!) We have a couple active designers assisting us, but we're always looking for more feedback!

Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)

#50

Post by lm28469 »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #23

I love gimp, it is the only “heavyweight” image editor I ever learned to use, and that choice has saved me so much money in software subscriptions! Thankyou maintainers!

You can always pirate Adobe prod cts, it is always morally correct
Post reply on HN