On 11/12/2010 01:59 AM, photocomix wrote:

I see the Van Gogh filter is still in gimp, even in the last git and i fear to see it even in next 2.8

I think nobody use it, also because would be close to the impossible do something definite with it: not only is not clear for what is for, but even after reading its help page, remain basically unusable as it is now because miss even the most rudimentary preview

Much more widely used and interesting filters were removed (i.e. the freetype plugin) Many third party plugin fit much more in the gimp product vision

Do you really think that the Van Gogh filters may fit in the gimp product vision ?

In case at least fix it adding a preview, (but i think nobody will complain for its removal )

GIMP 3.0 will be the release where we remove things that don't fit out product vision. I think we might as well wait until then before we remove it.

Other than that I agree, the plug-in isn't good enough for being included in GIMP 3.0.

/ Martin

Von: Martin Nordholts

Other than that I agree, the plug-in isn't good enough for being included in GIMP 3.0.

What are the requirements for "good enough to be included in GIMP 3.0"? If we don't have them yet, we really should start collecting them.

The docs page about the plug-in suggests that the author didn't really know what's going on, but that's nothing to be ashamed of, in my opinion.

Michael

On 11/12/2010 09:21 AM, Michael Schumacher wrote:

What are the requirements for "good enough to be included in GIMP 3.0"? If we don't have them yet, we really should start collecting them.

I see only one: general usefulness. IMHO the "Filters" menu is getting a bit out of hand. There are plenty of things there that I never use (the same applies to brushes/patterns/gradients). Having the extra ones there isn't free, they get in the way of the people who don't use them (and slow down startup). I would be in favor of a more "barebones" installation, with task-oriented complements:

- art (filters/artistic, filters/decor, filters/render, many brushes/patterns/gradients)
- image (most of the "filters/enhance" part, "filters/photo", de-noise, de-shake, color balance)
- maybe a "beginner's pack" with some of the current stuff.

The docs page about the plug-in suggests that the author didn't really know what's going on, but that's nothing to be ashamed of, in my opinion.

The hover balloon in the menu also says "Special effects that nobody understands" :-)

Michael Schumacher wrote:

Other than that I agree, the plug-in isn't good enough for being

included in GIMP 3.0.

What are the requirements for "good enough to be included in GIMP 3.0"? If we don't have them yet, we really should start collecting them.

The docs page about the plug-in suggests that the author didn't really know what's going on, but that's nothing to be ashamed of, in my opinion.

Michael

The fact somebody do not use something is not enough to exclude that from the program. Many users do not use layer modes. So should they be abandoned?

IMHO if something is not good enough for somebody it should be either improved or leaved untouched.

With respect, Alexander Rabtchevich

On 11/12/2010 09:21 AM, Michael Schumacher wrote:

What are the requirements for "good enough to be included in GIMP 3.0"?

The only thing that matters when it comes to deciding what to include and what not to include in GIMP is our product vision. If something helps us fulfil our product vision, we will keep it in GIMP 3.0. If it doesn't, we will remove it. This particularly applies to things that are part of our plug-in API (like other plug-ins and libgimp* APIs) that we can't remove after GIMP 3.0 has been released.

/ Martin

On 11/13/2010 05:48 PM, photocomix wrote:

The only thing that matters when it comes to deciding what to include and what not to include in GIMP is our product vision. If something helps us fulfil our product vision, we will keep it in GIMP 3.0. If it doesn't, we will remove it. / Martin

that for what doesn't fit in the GIMP product vision

But why wait to eliminate a plugin that doesn't fit in ANY product vision?

this case is crystal clear: nobody use that plugin ,a plugin that quoting his tooltip produce ""Special effects that nobody understands" :-),

This plugin replace all the original pixel of your photo with a abstract thingy, a "special effects", hard to define and unpredictable , ...but that always look as crap (

Why carry its code in gimp 2.8 , just delete the "van-gogh-lib.c file from the code (BTW is in gimp/plug-ins/common ) would took less developer time then a further debates

The never used van gogh filter is in gimp from 1996 and survived all debates and clean up till now

You can't know for sure that no one uses this plug-in in some script somewhere, and if we don't have a good reason to break our plug-in API, we don't do it. Impatience is not a good reason :)

Regards, Martin

On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Martin Nordholts wrote:

You can't know for sure that no one uses this plug-in in some script somewhere, and if we don't have a good reason to break our plug-in API, we don't do it. Impatience is not a good reason :)

Here is a better reason, maybe. It is a good thing if people can learn to use Gimp
by experimenting. When features are included for which experimenting leads only
to confusion, and never to anything useful, users are discouraged from experimenting.
In my opinion, there are two plug-ins that have this property: the "Van Gogh" filter (which
has absolutely nothing to do with Van Gogh), and the so-called "NL Filter".

-- Bill

On 11/14/2010 01:21 AM, Bill Skaggs wrote:

In my opinion, there are two plug-ins that have this property: the "Van Gogh" filter (which
has absolutely nothing to do with Van Gogh), and the so-called "NL Filter".

The NL filter is a different matter. The human factors are abysmal. It should be three different menu entries, with descriptive names. But it's typical of a filter useless for people doing original art, and only useful for photography and scan.

-- Ofnuts

Hi all,

On 13.11.2010 18:13, Martin Nordholts wrote:

On 11/13/2010 05:48 PM, photocomix wrote:

The never used van gogh filter is in gimp from 1996 and survived all debates and clean up till now

You can't know for sure that no one uses this plug-in in some script somewhere, and if we don't have a good reason to break our plug-in API, we don't do it. Impatience is not a good reason :)

Another thought:
cleaning up the menu tree is independent from preserving plugin API compatibility.

Our van gogh could be sliced into two plugins: one plugin which installs just the pdb functions (and resides in GIMP core), and a second plugin which resides in the plugin registry and solely installs the menu entry.

Makes sense?!?

regards, yahvuu

On 14.11.2010 01:21, Bill Skaggs wrote:

Here is a better reason, maybe. It is a good thing if people can learn to use Gimp by experimenting. When features are included for which experimenting leads only to confusion, and never to anything useful, users are discouraged from experimenting.

Doesn't this boil down to "Remove anything that requires any level of education?"

Michael

On 11/14/2010 11:44 AM, Michael Schumacher wrote:

On 14.11.2010 01:21, Bill Skaggs wrote:

Here is a better reason, maybe. It is a good thing if people can learn to use Gimp by experimenting. When features are included for which experimenting leads only to confusion, and never to anything useful, users are discouraged from experimenting.

Doesn't this boil down to "Remove anything that requires any level of education?"

That would be a caricature. Let's face it, the core of Gimp (and of Photoshop, for that matter) requires education. You won't use Gimp efficiently without a good understanding of such concepts as selection, layers & canvas, transparency... If you look at Gimp forums, you see very basic questions. Consider the amateur photographer and Gimp beginner who wants to add some sharpening of a picture. What filter to use? Sharpen? Unsharp mask? NL? Why does Gimp offers the three? What are the differences? That's a bit of a culture shock when one comes from Picasa.Putting the "Unsharp mask" one in a "Photo" submenu would already be a hint.

On Sun, 2010-11-14 at 14:30 +0100, Ofnuts wrote:

[...]

Consider the amateur photographer and Gimp beginner who wants to add some sharpening of a picture. What filter to use? Sharpen? Unsharp mask? NL? Why does Gimp offers the three? What are the differences? That's a bit of a culture shock when one comes from Picasa.Putting the "Unsharp mask" one in a "Photo" submenu would already be a hint.

But sharpen is useful on images that are not photographs.

I haven't done much with NL or Van Gogh myself, but any assertion that "no-one uses them" or that they are "not useful" must be backed up with some real data.

There was a project gathering usage statistics on an earlier version of Gimp, maybe they have some data on that?

Or make the filers crash when used and see if anyone complains :-) :-)

As for, which filter to use on a photograph, it depends on the photograph, on the lighting that was used, on the subject matter... Unsharp Mask is popular partly (I think) because it makes a slight halo effect similar to some darkroom techniques, so that the result is closer to what you see in printed books. "Smart sharpen" is another interesting alternative, but has no preview and is slow.

A better approach long-term might be to make it easier for people distributing gimp to package individual plugins or groups of plugins, and to have away to search and request plugins from within gimp, sort of like CTAN for TeX, CPAN for Perl, CXAN for XQuery. Then the core could have fewer plugins, with perhaps a primary add-on set, or a small group of add-on sets tailored to particular use cases such as "digital painter," "professional photographer," "photomanipulator," "scientific visualization," "scanning" and so forth.

Liam

On 11/14/2010 04:53 PM, Liam R E Quin wrote:

Consider the amateur photographer and Gimp beginner who wants to add some sharpening of a picture. What filter to use? Sharpen? Unsharp mask? NL? Why does Gimp offers the three? What are the differences? That's a bit of a culture shock when one comes from Picasa.Putting the "Unsharp mask" one in a "Photo" submenu would already be a hint.

But sharpen is useful on images that are not photographs.

I haven't done much with NL or Van Gogh myself, but any assertion that "no-one uses them" or that they are "not useful" must be backed up with some real data.

Let's apply Paretos's rule. 90% of users use 10% of the code. 10% of users uses 90% of the code.

There was a project gathering usage statistics on an earlier version of Gimp, maybe they have some data on that?

Or make the filers crash when used and see if anyone complains :-) :-)

I did that a long time ago to clean up a disk full of obsolete utilities. Got very few requests to put some things back :-)

As for, which filter to use on a photograph, it depends on the photograph, on the lighting that was used, on the subject matter...

Yes, proper filtering requires a lot of education. And there is little pupose of giving people a whole toolbox (that they have to carry around) if they don't know how/why they could use some of the tools inside.

Unsharp Mask is popular partly (I think) because it makes a slight halo effect similar to some darkroom techniques, so that the result is closer to what you see in printed books.

It's popular because it's the better bang for the buck. But the Gimp defaults are a bit too much for me :-)

"Smart sharpen" is
another interesting alternative, but has no preview and is slow.

A better approach long-term might be to make it easier for people distributing gimp to package individual plugins or groups of plugins, and to have away to search and request plugins from within gimp, sort of like CTAN for TeX, CPAN for Perl, CXAN for XQuery. Then the core could have fewer plugins, with perhaps a primary add-on set, or a small group of add-on sets tailored to particular use cases such as "digital painter," "professional photographer," "photomanipulator," "scientific visualization," "scanning" and so forth.

We are in full agreement on this.

On 11/15/10 19:01, Ofnuts wrote:

There was a project gathering usage statistics on an earlier version

of Gimp, maybe they have some data on that?

Or make the filers crash when used and see if anyone complains:-) :-)

I did that a long time ago to clean up a disk full of obsolete utilities. Got very few requests to put some things back:-)

That is really a pretty perverted logic.

Due to the all too common lack of repect for backwards compatibility in Linux world most people either conclude that a feature is broken/disappeared and live with it or they just conclude that they can't remember how to do it..

The percentage of users that actually take the trouble to search for help, subscribe to a list and post a bug report is very small. Hardly a useful way of polling the user base.

As for, which filter to use on a photograph, it depends on the photograph, on the lighting that was used, on the subject matter...

Yes, proper filtering requires a lot of education. And there is little pupose of giving people a whole toolbox (that they have to carry around) if they don't know how/why they could use some of the tools inside.

Little "pupose" except _education_ . One sure way to make sure users stay uneducated and don't know how/why to use the tools is to remove them !

/gg

On 11/15/2010 07:53 PM, gg@catking.net wrote:

On 11/15/10 19:01, Ofnuts wrote:

There was a project gathering usage statistics on an earlier version

of Gimp, maybe they have some data on that?

Or make the filers crash when used and see if anyone complains:-) :-)

I did that a long time ago to clean up a disk full of obsolete utilities. Got very few requests to put some things back:-)

That is really a pretty perverted logic.

Due to the all too common lack of repect for backwards compatibility in Linux world most people either conclude that a feature is broken/disappeared and live with it or they just conclude that they can't remember how to do it..

If you look at the 3.0 specs a lot more people are going to be surprised by the new UI than by the absence of some filters. And I'm not advocating to remove anything either, just to move it to optional packages.

The percentage of users that actually take the trouble to search for help, subscribe to a list and post a bug report is very small. Hardly a useful way of polling the user base.

As for, which filter to use on a photograph, it depends on the photograph, on the lighting that was used, on the subject matter...

Yes, proper filtering requires a lot of education. And there is little pupose of giving people a whole toolbox (that they have to carry around) if they don't know how/why they could use some of the tools inside.

Little "pupose" except _education_ . One sure way to make sure users stay uneducated and don't know how/why to use the tools is to remove them !

See above about optional packages. And I am not convinced that the intractable VanGogh or the pre-cooked Alpha-to-Logo filters are very educative.

I see the Van Gogh filter is still in gimp, even in the last git and i fear to see it even in next 2.8

I think nobody use it, also because would be close to the impossible do something definite with it: not only is not clear for what is for, but even after reading its help page, remain basically unusable as it is now because miss even the most rudimentary preview

Much more widely used and interesting filters were removed (i.e. the freetype plugin) Many third party plugin fit much more in the gimp product vision

Do you really think that the Van Gogh filters may fit in the gimp product vision ?

In case at least fix it adding a preview, (but i think nobody will complain for its removal )

Hello!

I have read this message in GIMP lists:

http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/lists/gimp-developer/2010-November/025817.html

I think that You are wrong. Did You asked to all GIMP users before saying that something is not useful and nobody uses it?

I haven't been asked. Please, don't say that nobody uses it, because You don't know it. Also, It could be filters (scripts) that uses this filter, and They would be broken.

I have a better idea: If You don't like something, don't use it.

I prefer the proposed idea of packages of filters (artistic, photo, 3D & textures, pixelart...). It would be much better that just removing things.

Also, I will make a backup copy of all filters, and I will reinstall them if some of them is removed in the next release. Also, I will install GIMP 2.8 and GIMP 3 simultaneously, because GIMP 2.8 has some functions that I need (and I use) that would be removed in GIMP 3 (like indexed colour model).

Bye!

About Van Gogh filter:

It's useful to modify photos. It can be combined with other filters or layer modes. It blurs the image, but without producing too smooth results, because It includes some hard edges.

Maybe It could be named "noisy blur" or something like it.

Find a good placement and name It's better than just removing it.

On 11/16/10 14:07, photocomix wrote:

On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Martin Nordholts wrote:

You can't know for sure that no one uses this plug-in in some script somewhere, and if we don't have a good reason to break our plug-in API, we don't do it. Impatience is not a good reason :)

In this case i'm ready to bet 100 Euro that till now any bundled or even third party script or plugin has Van Gogh as a dependency,

i see most on replies are focused on the general matter

But this IS a big exception, it is a insult to the Gimp product vision that such filter is ,after 14 years that nobody use , and not because is too complex but because is too crappy to be used

More 1)from 14 years this filter is misplaced in a totally wrong gimp menu (Artistic submenu in filter but the filter has nothing to do with a artistic filter Would fit better in a RENDER menu

2)IT is misnamed the effect has nothing to do with Van Gogh, or any other painter,nothing to do with a paint or draw effects. Obviously 1 is consequence of 2,
since was misnamed as "Van Gogh" somebody tough was a artistic filter, so ended up to be not only in gimp by mistake for 14 years but also from 14 years mislabelled and misplaced

And no i will not report to bugzilla because as no bug to be reported It is impossible prove that doesn't work properly since is impossible guess what should do

The only BIG bug to report is the fact that such thingy is still in Gimp

PS If has to be preserved till 3.0 i may hope at least to be relabelled,moved in the right submenu and with a more descriptive tooltip ?

as example CRAPPYFIER -tooltip_ this filter will replace all the pixels of your image with crap

I can't recall having used this filter but since this seems to be such an important (!) issue I had a try on a randomly selected photo.

default settings just seemed to give a slight blurring. Not especially interesting but nothing to start a war over.

Then taking the time to experiment a bit, I selected convolve with white noise and upped a couple of parameters. The effect was somewhat like an impressionist rendition of my scene though with a bit too much regularity in some areas.

So at this point I recall that Van Gogh was an _impressionist artist_ and that perhaps some of what this filter can do is intended to look make the image look like an impressionist painting of the subject. Hence V.G. and the "artistic" submenu.

I don't have the time to fully evaluate what it can do since it seems to have a lot of parameters.

Since the subtly of the effect seems a bit unfair on V.G. perhaps it should just be called "impressionist". Artistic does seem as reasonable a place as any. The help bubble seems to have been written long after that filter was written and probably by someone who did not understand what it did and could not be bothered to find out. The comment was probably done light-heartedly and maybe ought to be made more meaningful.

As for "crap, crap, crap . etc" get a life as they say. You don't like to filter don't use it. This is not going to be a major issue at the next presidential nor is it a major issue for 3.0 Stop wasting everyone's time.

There's plenty to be done on Gimp for things that actually _matter_.

End of story.

Hi,

the running "polemical" thread on VG filter has made me aware of what is presumably a new feature on that gimpusers.com blog that allows users of the site direct access to this list via the address forums@gimpusers.com

Would it be a best to simply block this address?

Anyone wishing to discuss gimp-devel can sign up here and join the list. Letting users spam the list with inane comments form a blog is probably not productive.

A request could be made to remove that from the blog but bouncing that address would probably be quicker and easier.

regards, gg

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 2:06 PM, wrote:

I can't recall having used this filter but since this seems to be such an important (!) issue I had a try on a randomly selected photo.

default settings just seemed to give a slight blurring. Not especially interesting but nothing to start a war over.

Then taking the time to experiment a bit, I selected convolve with white noise and upped a couple of parameters. The effect was somewhat like an impressionist rendition of my scene though with a bit too much regularity in some areas.

So at this point I recall that Van Gogh was an _impressionist artist_ and that perhaps some of what this filter can do is intended to look make the image look like an impressionist painting of the subject. Hence V.G. and the "artistic" submenu.

I don't have the time to fully evaluate what it can do since it seems to have a lot of parameters.

Would having better documentation and/or a tutorial affect the perception of usefulness?

And what is the time frame for needing to decide on leaving it in vs deleting it?

I've been doing a little spelunking in the GIMP source code in an attempt to learn how I might contribute (what I really want for myself is full GEGL - nondestructive editing and 16-bit/channel, but that's a pretty deep level of work). I'm willing to look into the VG plugin code to assess the effort for documentation, but not if the core team is saying, "NO WAY".

Pete

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 6:28 PM, wrote:

Hi,

the running "polemical" thread on VG filter has made me aware of what is presumably a new feature on that gimpusers.com blog that allows users of the site direct access to this list via the address forums@gimpusers.com

Would it be a best to simply block this address?

Anyone wishing to discuss gimp-devel can sign up here and join the list. Letting users spam the list with inane comments form a blog is probably not productive.

A request could be made to remove that from the blog but bouncing that address would probably be quicker and easier.

regards, gg

No - we rather let people participate - the amount of messages on that topic is not that overwhelming - and anyone not interested might simply ignore it by subject.

js ->

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Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer

On 11/17/10 17:24, photocomix wrote:

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 6:28 PM, wrote:

Hi,

the running "polemical" thread on VG filter has made me aware of what is presumably a new feature on that gimpusers.com blog that allows users of the site direct access to this list via the addressforums@gimpusers.com

Would it be a best to simply block this address?

ggcarting i fear that will not solve: I found convenient the gimpusers interface but I am registered on this list from long before was a gimpusers interface.

I am sorry to have started such huge debat on such triviality I dont care much of the faith of that filter and the more the debat inflate the less i care about Van Gogh filters

photocomix, I was not suggesting banning _you_. I clearly suggested requesting they remove the feature or blocking forums@gimpusers.com , not you personally. What seems inappropriate is the automated interface on the blog. If anything, it should be following to gimp-users ML.

gimp-devel has always been open to individuals who want to join the list and get the posts. I'm fairly sure no one has even needed to be banned.

This is a new feature on that blog so we can just wait and see. I suspect it will result in frequent user blog-chat polluting the list.

/gg