On Thu, 2011-11-10 at 14:23 +1100, Mathew Oakes wrote:

I hope this is a suitable place to post this.

2.8 is shaping up as a great release!

Opening the 2.7.3 distribution crystallised in my mind, the core problem inhibiting greater acceptance of the GIMP.

Note that the splash screen with the cage is for the developer release, and not for the wider community.

Liam

On Thu, 2011-11-10 at 14:23 +1100, Mathew Oakes wrote:

I hope this is a suitable place to post this.

2.8 is shaping up as a great release!

Opening the 2.7.3 distribution crystallised in my mind, the core problem inhibiting greater acceptance of the GIMP.

Note that the splash screen with the cage is for the developer release, and not for the wider community.

Liam

Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/

Hi Mathew

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 02:23:24PM +1100, Mathew Oakes wrote:

I hope this is a suitable place to post this.

2.8 is shaping up as a great release!

Opening the 2.7.3 distribution crystallised in my mind, the core problem inhibiting greater acceptance of the GIMP.

The quasi-bestial bondage image on the loading screen is unnecessarily disturbing. As a first impression for all new users, the loading screen needs to highlight features and benefits of the program and help explain to the user what's in it for them.

The whole gimp/bondage pun might have been worth a chuckle years ago, but unfortunately it's not a useful idea for promoting graphic software. The pun distracts away from the important message of what the software is and what it does -- and confuses it with undesirable perverse behaviour. The confused 'brand' becomes is an unnecessary barrier for many people to use the software.

The developer version's splash screen is about the cage tool. It has nothing to do with GIMP's name. Learn about the tool for why it's called 'cage'.

As Liam has also pointed out, this is a developer version splash created by a developer, as a placeholder. Developer version splashes usually are not shipped in stable versions and are not seen by a general user.

From the perspective of new/naive users:

- Is it NSFW? What about a school? - Why should I treat this software seriously?

Stable GIMP which is installed by the majority of its userbase has never shipped with a NSFW splash.

To really get the recognition and use that GIMP deserves, it needs to evolve its identity.

I think this habit of relating GIMP's name to the north american slang 'gimp' time and again has run its due course and we're quite tired of it. Most of GIMP developers and users are outside the USA and aren't familiar with the slang meaning or even the word except the app itself for that matter. If you do a search for the word gimp in any search engine, you'll see GIMP the program.

People involved in GIMP development are diverse and come from varied backgrounds (in every way you can imagine). We are easily the target of bad mouthing (race, country, religion, orientation, etc.). But we all get along as good friends. We're not derogatory. We don't have ill intentions. We're creating something good as free software after all.

It's not that anyone is stuck about a name. It's not a simple change to rename GIMP. It's a _huge_ undertaking. There are also many thousands of third-party scripts, plug-ins, etc. which depend on the name being there. No developer in his/her right mind gives it any more thought after considering the volume of changes necessary. There are issues with higher priority which need to get done.. features that users need right away.

GIMP is about 15 years old. It's got the recognition it deserves.

Mukund

2011/11/10 Mathew Oakes :

I hope this is a suitable place to post this. 2.8 is shaping up as a great release! Opening the 2.7.3 distribution

Hi Mathew,

Sexual affinities aside, the idea of a 'brand' in a marketing sense, implies a whole mess of legal/manufacturing/marketing trickery aside from the consumer's 'brand' perception. It is my belief that in a F/OSS setting a term 'brand' is a blasphemy beyond belief and must not ever be uttered. Shouting: Nobody expects Spanish inquisition! and all... :))

That said, I am 100% with you on this: To really get the recognition, acceptance and use that GIMP deserves, it needs to evolve its identity.

And, if I can continue, that 'identity' comes from more than the splash screen.

The goodies: Many components of a potentially good identity perception and acceptance among the users (and those who will become users), are already there. The devs are creating amazing magic, UI team, too. There is a GIMP 'tradition', too. Furthermore, the setting GIMP is in is a fine setting. GIMP is F/OSS. Meaning, no commercial rat-race, no market competition. Even in F/OSS world, there's really no match for GIMP in that niche.

The baddies: And somehow, to an uninitiated, GIMP often comes across as a baffling mess. I have noticed last year, as a part of a research, that among the users, there are GIMP 'monks' way up 'above' who seem to know every trick and loophole there is. Then, there are those brave initiates who try enthusiastically. Many of them don't stick for too long, but some do. And then there is a big, big void in the middle. That void is a result of low acceptance, I think. A problem you mentioned.

The users 'in the middle' are a very important part of the ecosystem, since they usually produce the bulk of various outputs valuable for project. Artwork, feedback, ideas, inspirations, frustrations. The 'middle part' are the users who are not wizards neither newbies. They know how things are going and they can use them fairly well for what they're trying to create, and they are capable of voicing the praises and issues in a more-less intelligible fashion within the context. Since the focus of my research is elsewhere, I did not dig deeper into this, but the absence of 'those in the middle' when it comes to GIMP struck me an indication or a symptom that something's off.

Some say, GIMP has an identity and the recognition it deserves. I can agree with that, too. Without sarcasm, GIMP really has the identity and recognition it deserves in both bad and good senses. If GIMP's identity was a character, we could imagine it as an undercover, shady character. Once we get to meet and interact with that character, we see that he/she is a cutting-edge, inconsistently capable, slightly bipolar (multipolar?) character that one must either accept as it is or just move on. But, I am putting my bet on 2.8, too. I believe that the UI redesign will cure this character's bipolar disorder, at least. :) ...

Oui, that splash screen was a genuine, proverbial 'slap on the forehead' moment. I am not trying to put down the author of the image. I think it's smart. A humorous visual recursion applied on a developer version splash-screen. No, it should not be there. Not because of anyone's standards of decency, but because it is unconnected, or cryptic, at best. On the other hand, a dev version splash screen would be a good place to tell the testers what's new, what should be tested, what's still messy, etc.

"It's only a dev version, general users won't see it." is a lame excuse on many levels. Is there 'us' and 'them' in open source? Who is, exactly, this mythical 'general user', or 'majority'? Who should tell 'them' this is not for real. And once we tell 'them', this is what they might think: "Oh, I see! For stable versions GIMP turns 'Im'ma PRO, dude!' face, otherwise, it's just clowning around." After that, it does get a little harder to make 'them' believe that GIMP is an acceptable tool, I think. A brief search on 'Gimp 2.7 splash screen' provided one example of what an odd snowball of personal opinions, preferences and very bad recognition this can create. http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/24351/253284.aspx

In the end, this whole thing is nothing serious or catastrophic at all, but it is a great indication for a few itches. So, how can we scratch them?

Alex

On 11-11-10 12:23 , Mathew Oakes wrote:

I hope this is a suitable place to post this.

2.8 is shaping up as a great release!

Opening the 2.7.3 distribution crystallised in my mind, the core problem inhibiting greater acceptance of the GIMP.

The quasi-bestial bondage image on the loading screen is unnecessarily disturbing. As a first impression for all new users, the loading screen needs to highlight features and benefits of the program and help explain to the user what's in it for them.

The whole gimp/bondage pun might have been worth a chuckle years ago, but unfortunately it's not a useful idea for promoting graphic software. The pun distracts away from the important message of what the software is and what it does -- and confuses it with undesirable perverse behaviour. The confused 'brand' becomes is an unnecessary barrier for many people to use the software.

From the perspective of new/naive users:

* Is it NSFW? What about a school? * Why should I treat this software seriously?

To really get the recognition and use that GIMP deserves, it needs to evolve its identity.

_______________________________________________ gimp-developer-list mailing list
gimp-developer-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer-list

Hi all!

I drew the cage splash:P I drew it because some people were just not getting the clue about us not changing the name and well, the cage tool got merged. Synergy.

Quote: "It's only a dev version, general users won't see it." is a lame excuse on many levels. Is there 'us' and 'them' in open source? Who is, exactly, this mythical 'general user', or 'majority'? -----

For developers its clear cut and simple: developer releases are for people capable and willing to do sophisticated bug reporting and working with developers to solve those bugs. And such a person can probably at least recognize wilber and the reference to the cage tool and find it funny. IMHO as a deterrent against use of development releases where it shouldn't be used, ie in production environments like workplace or your granny's computer, the slightly NSFW splash worked just fine. It made more people take a look at what a development release is instead of just shoving it to everyone they knew as if a stable.

Aside all that, by personal firm belief is that we get trolled over the name and other things so much that occasionally trolling back is mandatory for sanity ;) I know Martin disagrees ;)

Best, Alexia

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Aleksandar Kovac wrote:

"It's only a dev version, general users won't see it." is a lame excuse on many levels. Is there 'us' and 'them' in open source?

Come on, you are smarter than that. Of course there is "us" and "them". Using development versions causes cancer, brings 20 year of unluck on your family and kills kittens by thousands. People wo use graphics software professionally tend to use apps that produce _repeatedly_ consistent output. No dev version _ever_ guarantees that. I find it highly distrurbuing that such a simple thing should even be explained.

It's a widely accepted truth that developers tend to make all kinds of jokes during development cycles that get wiped out in a generic public release that is recommended to use. Whoever thinks (s)he is in a position of telling developers what kind of jokes they are allowed or not allowed to make is simply arrogant and should be banned from humanity.

In the end, this whole thing is nothing serious or catastrophic at all, but it is a great indication for a few itches. So, how can we scratch them?

The universally accepted knowledge is that the more you scratch, the more you want to continue to scratch. Stop scratching and visit a doctor :)

Personally, I find the whole topic a horrible waste of time.

Offended by the splash screen? Draw a better one. Want GIMP to be better recognized? Start producing awesome art with it. Sorry to see lack of hi-end features? Get involved with development.

That's the only constructive way of changing things. Yes, it's harsh. No, I'm not sorry about it.

P.S. May I suggest that we introduce a mailing list policy of forbidding (up to banning) discussions on the name change? Those discussions are neither smart nor amusing nor they lead to any constructive decisions, ever. It only results in a boring pile of old lame arguments and distracts everyone from doing real things.

Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

-- cut --

Offended by the splash screen? Draw a better one. Want GIMP to be better recognized? Start producing awesome art with it. Sorry to see lack of hi-end features? Get involved with development.

-- cut --

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Bogdan Szczurek wrote:

-- cut --

Offended by the splash screen? Draw a better one. Want GIMP to be better recognized? Start producing awesome art with it. Sorry to see lack of hi-end features? Get involved with development.

-- cut --

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

W dniu 11-11-10 11:07, Alexandre Prokoudine pisze:

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Bogdan Szczurek wrote:

-- cut --

Offended by the splash screen? Draw a better one. Want GIMP to be better recognized? Start producing awesome art with it. Sorry to see lack of hi-end features? Get involved with development.

-- cut --

On Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:21:16 +0530, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

Using development versions causes cancer, brings 20 year of unluck on your family and kills kittens by thousands. People wo use graphics software professionally tend to use apps that produce _repeatedly_ consistent output.

in general you're correct, of course. exceptions confirm the validity of rules though, and with your development version of GIMP (git master), you created one of those. i do have GIMP stable installed as well, apart from pulling the latest git version on mondays, but, if i remember correctly, i had to use that only once during those 2+ years. every other time GIMP 2.7 miserably failed to crash on me, or misbehave in any other significant way. it's more stable than other software i'm using that's already in their 4th release.

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Alexia Death wrote:

There's also cinepaint that was geared for movie world and the painter fork that seems to be maintained rather sanely as a set of patches on vanilla gimp. There's a few things that Id like to merge from there, but it's a bit tricky and we are too late in 2.8 cycle.

Cinepaint hasn't made releases in years (and two of the last releases don't even have source code tarballs) despite of endless promises. The only thing that is alive is Kai-Uwe's Git tree where occasional development happens, again, without releases.

Out of curiousity, what exactly would you like to merge from Cinepaint? :)

Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 12:31 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Alexia Death wrote: Cinepaint hasn't made releases in years (and two of the last releases don't even have source code tarballs) despite of endless promises. The only thing that is alive is Kai-Uwe's Git tree where occasional development happens, again, without releases.

Out of curiousity, what exactly would you like to merge from Cinepaint? :)

Painter fork, not cinepaint ;)

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 12:27 PM, phanisvara das wrote:

in general you're correct, of course. exceptions confirm the validity of rules though, and with your development version of GIMP (git master), you created one of those. i do have GIMP stable installed as well, apart from pulling the latest git version on mondays, but, if i remember correctly, i had to use that only once during those 2+ years. every other time GIMP 2.7 miserably failed to crash on me, or misbehave in any other significant way. it's more stable than other software i'm using that's already in their 4th release.

While gimp in its development form is quite stable compared, you have gotten lucky and have not strayed from beaten path too much;) Ive lost at least once about 4h worth of painting to a crash ;) Crashes itself are not that big of an issue tho, they are easy to find and fix. There are more subtle ways a developer version can misbehave ruining your art. Crashes are easy to catch, unintended behavior in some cases can not.

On 10/11/2011 09:51, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Aleksandar Kovac wrote:

"It's only a dev version, general users won't see it." is a lame excuse on many levels. Is there 'us' and 'them' in open source?

Come on, you are smarter than that. Of course there is "us" and "them". Using development versions causes cancer, brings 20 year of unluck on your family and kills kittens by thousands. People wo use graphics software professionally tend to use apps that produce _repeatedly_ consistent output. No dev version _ever_ guarantees that. I find it highly distrurbuing that such a simple thing should even be explained.

I'm an 'average user' and I'd usually stick to stable releases of stuff like GIMP, but come on - 2.6 is two years old now with no single-window mode. Of course I'm using 2.7. I have no problem with the dodgy splash screen using GIMP at home because I'm not uptight, but thinking about it I might be a little bit uncomfortable installing it at work. ;-) I'd agree with those saying such splash screens should probably be avoided, even for development versions.

Speaking of 2.6 being old, how accurate is this tasktaste graph? http://tasktaste.com/projects/Enselic/gimp-2-8

It would seem to suggest there are maybe 1-2 weeks of work left but I get the feeling there is more than that. :-)

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Jeremy Morton wrote:

Speaking of 2.6 being old, how accurate is this tasktaste graph? http://tasktaste.com/projects/Enselic/gimp-2-8

Martin updated it last week, so it's pretty accurate. Up to a point :)

It would seem to suggest there are maybe 1-2 weeks of work left but I get the feeling there is more than that.

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 1:34 AM, Aleksandar Kovac wrote:

The baddies: And somehow, to an uninitiated, GIMP often comes across as a baffling mess. I have noticed last year, as a part of a research, that among the users, there are GIMP 'monks' way up 'above' who seem to know every trick and loophole there is. Then, there are those brave initiates who try enthusiastically. Many of them don't stick for too long, but some do. And then there is a big, big void in the middle. That void is a result of low acceptance, I think. A problem you mentioned.

The users 'in the middle' are a very important part of the ecosystem, since they usually produce the bulk of various outputs valuable for project. Artwork, feedback, ideas, inspirations, frustrations. The 'middle part' are the users who are not wizards neither newbies. They know how things are going and they can use them fairly well for what they're trying to create, and they are capable of voicing the praises and issues in a more-less intelligible fashion within the context. Since the focus of my research is elsewhere, I did not dig deeper into this, but the absence of 'those in the middle' when it comes to GIMP struck me an indication or a symptom that something's off.

The same could be said for any complex piece of software. I would disagree that there are many "middle ground users" anymore - and they shouldn't be a a target audience.

Look at a modern word processing program. Anecdotally, 95% of users would be happy with a simple Rich Text editor and use no features beyond those provided....Most will use a full blown package though, as it is expected, provided, or available.

In the graphic application market, You have a small group of power users who understand the program well, and use it as a tool daily. Then you have the unwashed masses who are making sigs and renders for no reason I can understand, and don't even know what layers are for. The so called middle-ground users never get around to a product like PS or Gimp because they simple give up on the complexity and would rather sacrifice capability for convenience. They use one-click software to make their pictures look better, drag and drop software to create their scrapbooks, or whatever simple to use, dumbed down demo application was bundled with their printer....

-Rob A>

On 10/11/2011 12:47, Rob Antonishen wrote:

The same could be said for any complex piece of software. I would disagree that there are many "middle ground users" anymore - and they shouldn't be a a target audience.

So take the power users then. They might want to use a recent development version at work... still worth having a professional looking product.

On 11-11-10 18:51 , Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

Using development versions causes cancer, brings 20 year of unluck on your family and kills kittens by thousands. People wo use graphics software professionally tend to use apps that produce _repeatedly_ consistent output. No dev version _ever_ guarantees that. I find it highly distrurbuing that such a simple thing should even be explained.

It's the curiosity that kills all those kittens and other fluffy critters and leads astray to various 'deviances' that I will consider perfectly 'normal' and highly desirable in due course. :)

No, I really think 'a general user won't see it' is a lame excuse. It would make many people happy, me especially, and make the world a nicer place, if only someone could come up with a solid working definition of 'a general user' so that we can finally integrate the little creep in design processes. As I see it, 'a general user' is a myth occasionally used to allegorically describe 'those who don't code/contribute'.

Despite the friendly warnings, easy-to-understand user-friendly version labeling intricacies and the aforementioned looming misfortune to those who dare, everyone's eager to get their hands on a new GIMP version. I like to believe that there are 'us' and 'them' when imagining who should see which version, but in practice, many of us/them will see it. That's why I don't see that clear cut between 'us' and 'them' in open source.

With Alexia's explanation of the image (thanks!). As an image, I like it even more now. Still, the opening splash is one of those places where you can communicate in short what this version is about and what to expect; in an effort to reduce bad experience, improve information clarity and (w code magic and UI cleanup) contribute to the deserved identity and acceptance.

Might cure asthma, too...

The universally accepted knowledge is that the more you scratch, the more you want to continue to scratch. Stop scratching and visit a doctor :)

Personally, I find the whole topic a horrible waste of time.

Offended by the splash screen? Draw a better one. Want GIMP to be better recognized? Start producing awesome art with it. Sorry to see lack of hi-end features? Get involved with development.

Exactly those itches. No doctor for that, but the self-therapy you mention... And you busted my carefully crafted closing maieutics I was so proud of. :) Thank you... now I'm gonna go and kill kittens and them fluffies! Gimme that red hot dev version, I have a deadline to meet! ...
Till today, I didn't even know that there's another kind of gimp. There goes my carefully crafted deviance, too. Ah well...

On 11-11-10 21:47 , Rob Antonishen wrote:

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 1:34 AM, Aleksandar Kovac wrote:

The same could be said for any complex piece of software. I would disagree that there are many "middle ground users" anymore - and they shouldn't be a a target audience.

I agree, they should not be the target audience. The users in the middle I was referring to are not in the middle based on their expertise, but a 'natural phenomena' :). I don't know how to call them properly. All those somewhere in between mastery and newbism, but active, learning, going upwards towards the mastery of the particular piece of software. Those people can be a valuable resource.

Those girls and guys were missing in GIMP and it struck me. Maybe it is a different case by now.
My guess was that the early users became masters a long time ago, and for some reason the unwashed masses did not catch on for a long time, or that there was a period when very few people adopted GIMP. Its just my guesswork, sorry.

... Or maybe they are merely a silent generation. :)

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 5:07 PM, Aleksandar Kovac wrote:

No, I really think 'a general user won't see it' is a lame excuse. It would make many people happy, me especially, and make the world a nicer place, if only someone could come up with a solid working definition of 'a general user' so that we can finally integrate the little creep in design processes. As I see it, 'a general user' is a myth occasionally used to allegorically describe 'those who don't code/contribute'.

http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/User_Scenarios

Simply put, I don't expect an average pro who _always_ works on deadlines to suddenly feel like installing dev version. The relative stability of 2.7 is a bonus, not a rule.

Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

On 10/11/2011 13:45, Alexia Death wrote:

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Jeremy Morton wrote:

On 10/11/2011 12:47, Rob Antonishen wrote:

The same could be said for any complex piece of software. I would disagree that there are many "middle ground users" anymore - and they shouldn't be a a target audience.

So take the power users then. They might want to use a recent development version at work... still worth having a professional looking product.

They are NOT SUPPOSED TO do exactly that! Ever! They may want to, but its not a good idea from anybody's perceptive. Development versions may for example write incompatible or corrupt files may have features that will not be in the final stable release etc... Concrete sample: At the beginning of 2.7 cycle layer group masks were enabled. They sort of worked but were buggy and deemed too buggy to be fixed in this cycle aand thus were disabled. Now people who used that version in some place they shouldn't have have files that no longer work as intended in current version of GIMP. No functionality present in dev release is guaranteed to be there in a stable version. Arguing that we should use nice splashes so people could shoot themselves in the foot is silly.

Well if you want advanced users to use final releases, perhaps release them more often than once every 2 years? ;-)

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Jeremy Morton wrote:

Well if you want advanced users to use final releases, perhaps release them more often than once every 2 years?

On Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:19:00 +0530, Jeremy Morton wrote:

They are NOT SUPPOSED TO do exactly that! Ever! They may want to, but its not a good idea from anybody's perceptive. Development versions may for example write incompatible or corrupt files may have features that will not be in the final stable release etc... Concrete sample: At the beginning of 2.7 cycle layer group masks were enabled. They sort of worked but were buggy and deemed too buggy to be fixed in this cycle aand thus were disabled. Now people who used that version in some place they shouldn't have have files that no longer work as intended in current version of GIMP. No functionality present in dev release is guaranteed to be there in a stable version. Arguing that we should use nice splashes so people could shoot themselves in the foot is silly.
Well if you want advanced users to use final releases, perhaps release them more often than once every 2 years?

martin nordholts, in a blog post from 2009 ( http://www.chromecode.com/2009/12/best-way-to-keep-up-with-gimp-from-git_26.html ) :

"The more people that use the latest GIMP code from git the better. It keeps the required effort to contribute code upstreams small, which in turn increases the likelihood of upstream contributions, and it makes bugs more vulnerable to early discovery which minimizes their impact."

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 4:05 PM, phanisvara das wrote:

martin nordholts, in a blog post from 2009 ( http://www.chromecode.com/2009/12/best-way-to-keep-up-with-gimp-from-git_26.html ) :

"The more people that use the latest GIMP code from git the better. It keeps the required effort to contribute code upstreams small, which in turn increases the likelihood of upstream contributions, and it makes bugs more vulnerable to early discovery which minimizes their impact."

Keeping up with git is not the same as installing a dev version for production use! People who build and use git are good the same way as people using dev versions with full awareness of the caveats are good. But if somebody suggested installing git at work, the same objection would apply. Even more so than for dev releases. People who build and use git need to be at least somewhat aware what is going on in development and be ready to interact with developers up on finding bugs. A git snapshot from two hours ago may be obsolete...

"The more people that use the latest GIMP code from git the better. It keeps the required effort to contribute code upstreams small, which in turn increases the likelihood of upstream contributions, and it makes bugs more vulnerable to early discovery which minimizes their impact."

I guess Martin means people who will build GIMP and report bugs. Certainly people that will know how to change the splash screen if they want to :-p

I agree with Alexandre when he says that all this discussion is pointless, but since it reached this point, I'll add my two cents. "What pros want" is so subjective, but I dare to say that real pros are more concerned about high bit depth, non-destructive editing and productivity enhancements, not splash screens, GUI "appearance" or single window mode.

All the ranting about GIMP entering the professional market (as it would be a commercial package that has to compete with others to get more market share) comes usually from people who aren't professional users, but just regular people who think that making a good application means copying successful models from commercial software.

Well, I'm a professional user (I use everyday for my work and I make a living from that work) and I'm still using GIMP 2.6.x for my work because I need stability. I also have the devel version because I like to get involved and see how it works. I know how to change the splash screen if I need to (it's just replacing a single file in PNG format. How difficult can it be?), and I find the S&M splash very funny.
Of course I think it would be questionable to keep it for the final release, but I know that has never been the idea, so... I really don't care how GIMP "looks" if it allows me to do my job. Good appearance is a plus, of course, and I think GIMP already has a more-than-decent look.
I'm more concerned about how GIMP keeps the quality of my images after processing, and I'm really happy to see developers plan to care of that in upcoming versions.
In my honest oppinion, if GIMP can deliver good quality with a good performance, it will be able to make a place for its own in the professional segment, no matter how it looks, its name or whatever.

I hope that we do continue with smart funny developer splashes even if they offend some. I would be sad to find that the overly politically correct (imho) would be the ones that set the bar so low for the rest of us. It's a part of open source to make jokes like that. It always has. Smart people think like that. Please, Martin, don't make the decision not to ever do it again. It would harm GIMP's soul.

Patrick

On 11/10/2011 12:39 AM, Alexia Death wrote:

... elision by patrick ...

Aside all that, by personal firm belief is that we get trolled over the name and other things so much that occasionally trolling back is mandatory for sanity ;) I know Martin disagrees ;)

Thank you. Please carry on. Smart and funny will always offend someone, but please don't change for the lowest denominator. Next thing you know someone will be proposing an HR department for GIMP.

Patrick

Hi Aleksandar,

Am 10.11.2011 07:34, schrieb Aleksandar Kovac:

[..] I have noticed last year, as a part of a research, that among the users, there are GIMP 'monks' way up 'above' who seem to know every trick and loophole there is. Then, there are those brave initiates who try enthusiastically. Many of them don't stick for too long, but some do. And then there is a big, big void in the middle. That void is a result of low acceptance, I think. A problem you mentioned.

The users 'in the middle' are a very important part of the ecosystem, since they usually produce the bulk of various outputs valuable for project. Artwork, feedback, ideas, inspirations, frustrations. The 'middle part' are the users who are not wizards neither newbies. They know how things are going and they can use them fairly well for what they're trying to create, and they are capable of voicing the praises and issues in a more-less intelligible fashion within the context. Since the focus of my research is elsewhere, I did not dig deeper into this, but the absence of 'those in the middle' when it comes to GIMP struck me an indication or a symptom that something's off.

interesting observation. To contrast with Alan Cooper's "perpetual intermediates", cited here by Jeff Atwood:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/10/defending-perpetual-intermediacy.html

best regards, yahvuu

On Thu, 2011-11-10 at 10:09 -0800, Patrick Horgan wrote:

I hope that we do continue with smart funny developer splashes even if they offend some. I would be sad to find that the overly politically correct (imho) would be the ones that set the bar so low for the rest of us. It's a part of open source to make jokes like that. It always has. Smart people think like that. Please, Martin, don't make the decision not to ever do it again. It would harm GIMP's soul.

Thanks a lot Patrick, the first useful mail in this thread.

It's amazing how whenever a topic requires zero knowledge and only opinion, it's getting unbearable. I would hope for that kind of mass-contribution when it comes to actually doing some hacking.

Hate me, flame me, but these kinds of threads simply suck.

I hack for fun, --mitch