Dave Neary (dneary@free.fr) wrote:

Markus Triska wrote:

Also, I find the picture of the wet baby in the "Screen Shots" section rather annoying. I mean, it's not the baby's fault, but I think that with all the stuff going on in Europe (Dutroux), placing a half-naked kid with amateur lightning in this section is not a matter of particularly good taste. Maybe it would be good to show more neutral photographs, like skies and landscapes etc. that are bright and where's much to look at.

The baby is my son, I didn't think of any negative connotations, but indeed I wasn't thinking "that way". Given your comments and the way you saw it, I will take them down. I'm not sure where screenshot submissions should go though - perhaps someone else will pipe up with ideas about that?

I don't think that taking down the screenshot in question is necessary at all. In fact I believe that it would be counterproductive to do so.

The Photo in question is a perfectly normal baby photo. It is funny to look at. It doesn't expose any private parts and I actually don't get how one can make a connection to the Dutroux case. I don't think that we should stop showing baby photos, just because some sick people might get weird ideas when looking at these photos.

When doing so we also should stop using photos of forests, because people could die in horrible fires in there, we should stop using photos of deserts, because people might get exposed there by terrorists and die a horrible death, and we should not show photos of skies, because skies are the things where planes drop out and crash into buildings.

I think that babies are probably one of the most human things out there and we should not stop showing things that basically define humanity, just because there are some people that did horrible things to babies.

That having said: If Dave wants to remove the image he of course can and has the right to. But I think it would be utterly wrong to do it just for the reason given by Marcus.

Thanks for listening. Simon

Hi,

Dave Neary writes:

I have beein playing around with Gimp for some time now, and one procedure I apply every once in a while is to make a copy of each visible layer and merge them to a new one (as a means comparable to "CVS tagging" - to mark and save a stage of development). In fact, I have beein wondering why this is not an option in the layer context menu (like "copy visible and merge those") - is there maybe a better way to do this? I use it also when I need a filter to operater on the whole picture ("all layers").

There is Selection->Copy Visible which essentially does just that.

Also, I find the picture of the wet baby in the "Screen Shots" section rather annoying. I mean, it's not the baby's fault, but I think that with all the stuff going on in Europe (Dutroux), placing a half-naked kid with amateur lightning in this section is not a matter of particularly good taste. Maybe it would be good to show more neutral photographs, like skies and landscapes etc. that are bright and where's much to look at.

The baby is my son, I didn't think of any negative connotations, but indeed I wasn't thinking "that way". Given your comments and the way you saw it, I will take them down. I'm not sure where screenshot submissions should go though -
perhaps someone else will pipe up with ideas about that?

Please don't take the pixture down. It's ridiculous to say that putting such a picture on the internet will cause children to be abused. People who abouse children are sick; not showing them baby pictures won't change that. The picture is in no way offensive and anyone who draws a relation to the Dutroux tragedy is either sick himself or overly cautious.

Of course it's your choice what to do since it's the picture of your son. But I don't think there's any reason to take it down.

Sven

dneary@free.fr (2004-04-21 at 1433.35 +0200):

I have beein playing around with Gimp for some time now, and one procedure I apply every once in a while is to make a copy of each visible layer and merge them to a new one (as a means comparable to "CVS tagging" - to mark and save a stage of development). In fact, I have beein wondering why this is not an option in the layer context menu (like "copy visible and merge those") - is there maybe a better way to do this? I use it also when I need a filter to operater on the whole picture ("all layers").

I don't see a way that this could be nicely implemented in the interface - "duplicate all layers" doesn't seem like an operation which would be very common or useful for most people, but perhaps a "merge visible layers (and keep old layers) option would be useful...

Be creative: duplicate image, merge all visibible layers, paste back the result and discard the temp image. Use shortcuts and DnD and you get the result fast. It can be scripted too.

As an aside, applying a filter to several layers at once works would be useful, and should (in the first instance) work on linked layers, and later work on layer groups (when we have them). The best way to have this scheduled by someone is to create a bugzilla report for it, and bring it up here on the list for implementation ideas and advice.

There is a filter all layers already, provided by perl-fu. But filter all layers does not have to output the same than filter the result.

GSR

On 21 Apr 2004, at 14:33, Dave Neary wrote:

Markus Triska:

Also, I find the picture of the wet baby in the "Screen Shots" section rather annoying. I mean, it's not the baby's fault, but I think that with all the stuff going on in Europe (Dutroux), placing a half-naked kid with amateur lightning in this section is not a matter of particularly good taste. Maybe it would be good to show more neutral photographs, like skies and landscapes etc. that are bright and where's much to look at.

The baby is my son, I didn't think of any negative connotations, but indeed I wasn't thinking "that way". Given your comments and the way you saw it, I will take them down. I'm not sure where screenshot submissions should go though - perhaps someone else will pipe up with ideas about that?

Dave,

I agree with your comments re: a friendly, welcoming mailing list. This list should not scare people away from asking valid questions. Instead, it should guide people into asking valid questions in a developer friendly way.

Similarly, people should not be scared into omitting perfectly innocent baby photos. Instead, problems like the Dutroux case should be tackled head on, not avoided. People should not be afraid to ask questions or post baby photos, and we as a community (either the GIMP community or the world community) should strive to create an enviroment in which fear becomes a positive katalyst, not an inhibitor.

I for one thought it was kind of cute how all GIMP tutorials seemed to revolve around baby photos lately.

On 21 Apr 2004, at 15:20, Sven Neumann wrote:

anyone who draws a relation to the Dutroux tragedy [and baby

photos] is [...] sick

These kind of remarks may be the reason why somebody like Markus does not feel welcome to post here. You are overgeneralizing and jumping at conclusions while lacking the data that would support those conclusions.

Hi ; ),

Also, I find the picture of the wet baby in the "Screen Shots" section rather annoying. I mean, it's not the baby's fault, but I think that with all the stuff going on in Europe (Dutroux), placing a half-naked kid with amateur lightning in this section is not a matter of particularly good taste. Maybe it would be good to show more neutral photographs, like skies and landscapes etc. that are bright and where's much to look at.

I find that observation rather exaggerated. There is no "special" situation in Europe, at least in the Europe i live in. And a baby picture is just a baby picture, anything else is just on the mind of of those who look at the picture, no matter if it's a professional photograph or a amateur one with you digital camera.

Of course the photo is from Dave's son and he can do whatever he thinks is better with it...

will take them down. I'm not sure where screenshot submissions should go though - perhaps someone else will pipe up with ideas about that?

I think the actual policy is ok, to put good screenshots, not politically correct ones.

Regards,

Hi,

Dave Neary writes:

There is Selection->Copy Visible which essentially does just that.

I would never have found that in a million years. Would it be possible/desirable to duplicate this function in the Layers menu (Layers->Copy Visible or wherever) which creates a new layer which is a combination of the visible ones?

"Selection->Copy Visible" is next to "Selection->Copy". That's IMO the perfect place and it does certainly not belong into the Layer menu. You might not have noticed, but there is no "Layers" menu at all.

Sven

Hi,

Dave Neary writes:

I don't have a "Copy visible" entry in the Selection menu. Is this in 2.0.x or in the HEAD?

Me stupid. Of course it's "Edit->Copy Visible", next to "Edit->Copy". And IIRC it's there since GIMP-1.0. It's definitely in GIMP-1.2 and GIMP-2.0.

Sven

Hi,

"Branko Collin" writes:

anyone who draws a relation to the Dutroux tragedy [and baby

photos] is [...] sick

These kind of remarks may be the reason why somebody like Markus does not feel welcome to post here. You are overgeneralizing and jumping at conclusions while lacking the data that would support those conclusions.

It's you who is interpreting that into the words I've written.

Sven

Aargh, what a mess. Okay, to sum up: it's "Edit->Copy Visible", which is exactly where it should be, in the Edit menu with Copy. Possibly a name like "Copy All Visible" would be better, and possibly it should be next to "Copy" instead of at the bottom, but still inevitably many people will take a while to learn about it.

Regarding hostility, short of booting people from the list when they say hostile things, the best approach is to refrain from saying hostile things or responding to them. And there is no way, under any circumstances, in any situation, to say negative things about baby pictures without provoking hostile responses.

Best, -- Bill

______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Sent via the KillerWebMail system at primate.ucdavis.edu

Dave Neary wrote:

I took the screenshot down, and perhaps I should explain why in light of Simon and Sven's comments... when I read this mail, I got defensive a bit - the thought that someone thought the photo could be viewed sexually kind of turned my stomach. So I took it down.

Things like this always give me the "Then they have won" feeling. I'm not sure who "they" is in this case, and I don't think I want to know these "they".

Anyway - people kind of missed the whole point of me sending that to the list... this person mailed me off-list because he saw me as someone "safe" to talk to. That's not a nice way to have things on our mailing list. What can we do to change that?

Did you ask them why they think you are "safe" to talk to - and maybe even more interesting, why others don't seem to be "safe"?

Michael

Michael Schumacher (schumaml@gmx.de) wrote:

Dave Neary wrote:

Anyway - people kind of missed the whole point of me sending that to the list... this person mailed me off-list because he saw me as someone "safe" to talk to. That's not a nice way to have things on our mailing list. What can we do to change that?

Did you ask them why they think you are "safe" to talk to - and maybe even more interesting, why others don't seem to be "safe"?

Well, talking to a potentially huge audience is always a hurdle, especially when you might feel uncomfortable expressing yourself in a non-native language.

And also unfortunately gimp-devel does not have a reputation as a particularily friendly list. People on this list will happily pin you down on your errors as well as brusquely discarding ideas as dumb or non-productive.

Ok, I admit that mentioning errors or discussing the pros/cons of an idea is important, but frequently I am bothered by the tone of these responses.

Ok, this is a bit of a rant and I am unsure on how to turn this into a productive mail (except repeating known recipes on how to write good mails). So please bear with me :-)

Bye, Simon

Hi,

"William Skaggs" writes:

Aargh, what a mess. Okay, to sum up: it's "Edit->Copy Visible", which is exactly where it should be, in the Edit menu with Copy. Possibly a name like "Copy All Visible" would be better, and possibly it should be next to "Copy" instead of at the bottom, but still inevitably many people will take a while to learn about it.

Since "Copy Visible" is a script, it can't be moved next to "Copy". At least not with the current menu system. Mitch is currently replacing it with GtkUIManager. We will see if it offers a better solution.

Regarding hostility, short of booting people from the list when they say hostile things, the best approach is to refrain from saying hostile things or responding to them. And there is no way, under any circumstances, in any situation, to say negative things about baby pictures without provoking hostile responses.

Well, it was definitely a bad idea of Dave to forward this stuff to the list since the author more or less asked for keeping it private. It would have been better to ask the author of the mail to resend the question to the list himself. It would have been his choice then whether to include this statement or not.

Sven

Hi,

Sven Neumann wrote:

Well, it was definitely a bad idea of Dave to forward this stuff to the list since the author more or less asked for keeping it private.

That is really badly missing the point, then.

Here are the questions that we need to consider -

1) What makes the mailing lists a hostile environment? 2) What can we do to change that?
3) If finger-pointing would help, who are the biggest offenders, and how is their behaviour/language intimidating? 4) What is the minimum standard we expect from people before they are considered worthy to make propositions? I ask this because it is an impression that comes across that certain contributions are dismissed rather too easily.

For my part, some of the things I don't like are the comments like "Everybody knows that...", or "that has been planned for some time now", or worse "don't waste your time doing that". I think that we should try and avoid saying that things are easy or planned until there has been some planning work done or someone has claimed a task.

A few years ago I had an awful habit of starting questions where I had an idea what needed to be done with "Why don't you just..." - it's a habit which annoyed my co-workers who had spent some time thinking about things, and for whom the "just" wasn't trivial, as well as implicitly belittling them.

It would have been better to ask the author of the mail to resend the question to the list himself.

That is really missing the point of why I sent the mail to the list.

Despite the fact that this is something that we have known about for years, and have discussed at length on several occasions, contributing the the GIMP is in general extremely frustrating, and not particularly rewarding in terms of kudos. It's one of the reasons that I've been making less effort to make the time to contribute for the last month or so. If we do not change that, soon, then this project is a dead duck.

Cheers, Dave.

Markus Triska wrote:

Anyway - people kind of missed the whole point of me sending that to the list... this person mailed me off-list because he saw me as someone "safe" to talk to. That's not a nice way to have things on our mailing list. What can we do to change that?

As a first step, you could treat private mails as such. For me, this would have been enough.

Since the mail is public now (I'd assumed that Dave did ask you first), I'd like to ask:

Do you have problems with posting to the list in general (because there is someone or something you cinsider "unsafe") or just because of the rather difficult topic?

Michael

Dear Dave!

Sorry if this message appears somewhere outside the original thread - I could not figure out how to use the list properly, although I really tried this time.

Anyway - people kind of missed the whole point of me sending that to the list... this person mailed me off-list because he saw me as someone "safe" to talk to. That's not a nice way to have things on our mailing list. What can we do to change that?

As a first step, you could treat private mails as such. For me, this would have been enough.

Best regards, Markus Triska.

hi, i was offline for the whole thread. also, i have only read through half of it. i was delighted when dave neary shared this tutorial with me and was willing to put it online. so often, there is so much trouble because people do not see this world to be as wonderful and nice in the same ways i do.

i dont know if it is the software or that i wasnt taught enough about the harm that can come to people or that i am unable to imagine it until someone clearly explains it to me -- but sometimes i see different things than everyone else does.

On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 02:33:35PM +0200, Dave Neary wrote:

Hi Marcus,

I'm forwarding your mail to the developers list for two reasons.

First, it's a major problem that people feel obliged to mail people off-list because they are "safe" to talk to and this is something that we need to talk about urgently. For the benefit of the people on the list, this is not the first time this has happened. It seems like I get mail from people weekly from people who have valid points to raise, but are intimidated by the list.

i was intimidated by this list. i was intimidated by the talent and my heros and the very eloquent writing skills and ways of all the different educational and locational backgrounds.

i was afraid that i would offend them or make an idiot of myself or well, the list goes on. i wrote anyways and fullfilled most of these fears.

i dont blame people for being intimidated.

bolsh should have remained intimidated for longer as well (just my opinion).

Markus Triska wrote:

Dear Dave!

First, let me explain my greatest thanks and admiration for Gimp 2.0. You all did a great job.

I'm writing you because from following the mailing list I got the impression that you are someone that I can contact "safely" with my issues:

I have beein playing around with Gimp for some time now, and one procedure I apply every once in a while is to make a copy of each visible layer and merge them to a new one (as a means comparable to "CVS tagging" - to mark and save a stage of development). In fact, I have beein wondering why this is not an option in the layer context menu (like "copy visible and merge those") - is there maybe a better way to do this? I use it also when I need a filter to operater on the whole picture ("all layers").

this is a three step event for me. as you can read from the other thread, there have been several different ways to do this and it moves around often in the menus.

try this: -->Image -->Merge Visible [ok]
-->Edit -->Copy
-->Edit -->Undo
-->Edit -->Paste

okay, a few more than three steps, but this has not failed to work since gimp-1.0 and the options have never moved.

Also, I find the picture of the wet baby in the "Screen Shots" section rather annoying. I mean, it's not the baby's fault, but I think that with all the stuff going on in Europe (Dutroux), placing a half-naked kid with amateur lightning in this section is not a matter of particularly good taste. Maybe it would be good to show more neutral photographs, like skies and landscapes etc. that are bright and where's much to look at.

The baby is my son, I didn't think of any negative connotations, but indeed I wasn't thinking "that way". Given your comments and the way you saw it, I will take them down. I'm not sure where screenshot submissions should go though - perhaps someone else will pipe up with ideas about that?

what i saw when i saw the photo of this baby was a dork who had a good relationship with a beautiful woman. those are the images i saw and the man i came to know while working on gimp development.

now, if i dont google for a scandalous news item that well, i try to fill my time learning about computers and art and history and science and other productive things that i have no time left for these scandals that depress me and cause me to lose touch of the good things that are around me -- if i dont read about the tragedy cited here, i my imagination will run through all the things that i *did not see* when i was delighted to get this photo that was the product of a lovely relationship.

and something went wrong, because my intentions were to show poor shy volunteer developers that they might have a nice relationship with a beautiful woman that produces a beautiful child like the one i watched bolsh have.

so if dorks having productive relationships with beautiful women is too much for the world -- i dunno what to do.

if my honesty about what i saw in this image becomes something that raises the value of that image -- well, this is a screwed up goofy world and i will never get it.

sorry if i have been scary or offensive. i have even scared and offended myself this last year. so we can have a mutual scared and offended pity party ....

carol

Hi,

David Neary writes:

For my part, some of the things I don't like are the comments like "Everybody knows that...", or "that has been planned for some time now", or worse "don't waste your time doing that". I think that we should try and avoid saying that things are easy or planned until there has been some planning work done or someone has claimed a task.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves then why the same questions are asked over and over again. "that has been planned for some time now" is an answer that shows that the question shouldn't have been asked in the first place. Now, why is it asked then? That's the point we should worry about. If questions that appear as badly researched turn up, this is a clear sign that the information isn't easily available. Now that's something that we can try to change. The fact that mailing-lists are a place for random flame-baits and sometimes harsh words on the other hand is probably not going to change ever.

So IMO the things we need to consider are: - how can we make gimp development more transparent? - how can we publish short and long term plans and roadmaps? - why is there no maintained user FAQ? - why is the mailing-list archive not working?

Sven

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 02:00:28AM +0000, Markus Triska wrote:

Apparently, Dave has understood my point and has taken the photo off the web. That was in my opinion the only correct behaviour. I think we can agree that we would not show a naked woman in a Gimp advertisement, even if it is perfectly natural. So why would you show a naked baby? I think one should not do this. On a side note, displaying a static photograph does not do justice to the Gimp's functionaliy either. I can use kview for that. Let us both have a look at Adobe's screenshot section of photoshop. I bet they are pretty proud to show off with features and stuff that their PRODUCT is able to provide.

i have looked at the adobe photoshop web site perhaps 4 times. for information to help my friend run her photoshop le.

we did not ever find the information we were searching for.

can you just explain what the differences are and what should matter to us?

carol

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 03:53:18AM +0000, Markus Triska wrote:

we would not show a naked woman in a Gimp advertisement, even if it is perfectly natural. So why would you show a naked baby?

Because that's apples to bananas. Naked woman are sexually attractive to normal people. and babies are not.(*)

Hinting that babies are objects of sexual desire is becoming more and more commonplace nowadays, in certain cultures at least (mostly, but not limited to, the us). I do not believe that this is a good direction.

In other words, people who equate babies (or children) with sexually desirable objects automatically acknowledge that babies _are_ valid sexual objects. They are not, and harassing others to think that way is not, IMnsHO, a direction we should take.

I think this is what Sven wanted to hint at with his comment (that such people were sick). It is not the right thing to do to make yourself a slave of this "babies are sexually attractive" thinking, which is, as you hopefully agree, not normal. If you don't, then photos of babies are just that, and should evoke feelings of joy, especially for the parents :=>

I voiced my opinion on this mainly to not leave Dave in a kind of limbo, as if he did something wrong. What he did was not wrong at all.

(*) pedosexuality is still a mental illness, as defined by most medical associations. (**)

(**) homosexuality was a mental illness back in the seventies, and the attempts by doctors to get pedosexuality off the list of mental illnesses have increased a lot recently, so I do not know what the future brings, maybe that proves me wrong....

Hello, I noticed this moment that Carol wrote this also to the mailing list. Please excuse the confusion, but until recently, it was not necessary for me to be subscribed to the list, so I'm not sure if this mail is attached to the right thread.

I am copying the reply that I wrote to Carol verbatim - it is a pretty safe bet to assume that if I had written the response to be read by all list members, I would have phrased many things of the initial post differently.

This mail hopefully also sheds some light on what I meant with "safe".

--------------------------

Dear Carol!

Thank you for your message.

i dont blame people for being intimidated.

When I said it would be "safe" to ask Dave, I meant he very probably would not come up with the "don't ask me, I'm a developer"-argument that one can (rightfully) expect from a developer. I understand very well the difference between developing and FAQ and documentation teams. It is just that the only list I follow is the developer list, and David seemed to belong at least with one leg (if not with two) to the documentation team too, so it seemed natural for me to approach him instead of, say, Sven.

I understand also that my issues have nothing to do with Gimp development, and THEREFORE I did not send them to the list myself.

okay, a few more than three steps, but this has not failed to work since gimp-1.0 and the options have never moved.

Thank you.

what i saw when i saw the photo of this baby was a dork who had a good relationship with a beautiful woman.  those are the images i saw and the man i came to know while working on gimp development.

Apparently, Dave has understood my point and has taken the photo off the web. That was in my opinion the only correct behaviour. I think we can agree that we would not show a naked woman in a Gimp advertisement, even if it is perfectly natural. So why would you show a naked baby? I think one should not do this. On a side note, displaying a static photograph does not do justice to the Gimp's functionaliy either. I can use kview for that. Let us both have a look at Adobe's screenshot section of photoshop. I bet they are pretty proud to show off with features and stuff that their PRODUCT is able to provide.

Best regards,
Markus Triska.

Again, I am copying the response I sent to Carol a few moments ago verbatim.

------------------

Dear Carol!

i have looked at the adobe photoshop web site perhaps 4 times.  for information to help my friend run her photoshop le.

Meanwhile, I have tried too, and it was indeed a bit hard to get to screenshots.

can you just explain what the differences are and what should matter to us?

Yeah, they show no naked persons, just as I expected. In contrast, the Gimp site was doing so until recently. Fortunately, this has now changed.

Best regards, Markus.

OK, and this is another reply I had meanwhile sent (to Sven, in this case), and I hope the mailing list agent will know where it fits in - apparently some parsing of the quoted text is done to make sure that the thread hierarchy is maintained.

Sorry if this is getting a bit redundant, but I hope I have now made my point clear.

Best regards,
Markus Triska.

-------------------

It's ridiculous to say that putting such a picture on the internet will cause children to be abused

For the record, I want to note that I did not say that, as you seem to imply in your reply.

The picture is in no way offensive and anyone who draws a relation to the Dutroux tragedy is either sick himself or overly cautious.

I think we can agree that most of us rather would not have a screen-shot of an adult woman or man, half-naked like this, in the screen-shots section, albeit professional models who get paid for their job. I do not know why you make a difference for children. If I had not mailed Dave, how long would the photo still be around? Maybe his children will be thankful some day, when they understand what was going on, that not everyone has a photo of them with no clothes on.

Given that Dave seems to have understood my point and removed the picture, I consider the issue resolved.

I want to thank you again for your efforts. As far as I can tell, you are doing a great job.

Best regards, Markus Triska.

Do you have problems with posting to the list in general (because there is someone or something you cinsider "unsafe") or just because of the rather difficult topic?

No, as I outlined in a previous mail, I used "safe" solely to indicate that I assumed Dave would have no objections to be asked about some apparently simple usability issue (where, in contrast, a "normal" developer could have - rightfully - pointed me to some other place). I deducted this from all the posts in which Dave stated that developers should also answer questions, and that he himself in fact did and had done so.

I can only emphasize again that I know very well the difference between a development and a FAQ and documentation team, and I would never have molested Dave with my question were it not for him pointing out that he had no problem with that and in a sense "begging" for mail.

It certainly has nothing to do with the mailing list (this is only how I came to "know" Dave). If Dave would not exist, or would not post such things to the developer's list, I would have sent the question to some person working on the Wiki, or to the Gimp-User-mailing list, or somewhere else, but never to this place (which I, in fact, have not).

It just happens that the developer's list is the only one I follow, and thus it seemed natural for me to contact Dave, and the quickest way to get a useful reply.

I did not know that it would turn out this complicated and chaotic. I am sorry that I have caused you so much trouble and confusion.

Best regards, Markus Triska.

hi,

this is the part where you get embarrassed about the weird forwarding and spamming.

i am curious as to what news markus follows and software he uses and plug-ins that came with the software. what country and the over all ideas of his teachers and parents.

i just see a different image totally. is it software? is it because i try to have no interest in seeing bad things (unless i have a solution)? is it because i am a product of the evil american culture that i cannot see anything bad about this image?

while i appreciate someone else being the new person to really abuse the mail lists (try cc and one time multiple mailings). ((check to see if it is sent to the list or not)). (((forgive me when i screw up, sometimes -- all i get is mail list mail))) and send the email carefully. more carefully than me.

i am so confused about the problem with the image.

carol

Because that's apples to bananas. Naked woman are sexually attractive to normal people. and babies are not.(*)

This obviously can not be the primary reason why we would not show naked women. The reason, as I understand it, is that the depicted persons easily lose their dignity when they are shown naked. That would be a different thing for an artistic, professional picture. For example, I can remember an advertisment of an afro-american, muscular man, naked, holding a white, naked baby. I have no problem with that, and it would make an excellent screen-shot, if not particularly useful to point out Gimp's features (which you should strive to accomplish). Having a poorly lit, amateur photograph showing a naked child that was presumably just having a bath is to my mind a different story.

As I stated in a previous mail, If I had not mailed Dave, how long would the photo still have been around? Maybe his children will be thankful some day, when they understand what was going on, that not everyone has a photo of them with no clothes on.

We need not delve further into those subjects (although I notice that you raise interesting points), because Dave has decided to take the photo off the web. I think that was a good move, and I'm done with that.

Hinting that babies are objects of sexual desire is becoming more and more commonplace nowadays, in certain cultures at least (mostly, but not limited to, the us). I do not believe that this is a good direction.

I live outside the US, and the first thing coming to my mind when I saw the photo was the alleged criminal. I had no choice of what I wanted to come to my mind, so it was this, of which all newspapers here tell these days. I think that it is unreasonable to assume I am the only person who reacted this way. If I had known that Dave would forward my mail to the list, I would have thought of other reasons that people outside Europe could easily follow. Apparently, Dave could.

I think this is what Sven wanted to hint at with his comment (that such people were sick). It is not the right thing to do to make yourself a slave of this "babies are sexually attractive" thinking, which is, as you hopefully agree, not normal. If you don't, then photos of babies are just that, and should evoke feelings of joy, especially for the parents :=>

Yes, absolutely. And on a side note, I wish Dave the best for his son and everything, and hope he makes many pictures of him to keep, and to show him later. But he does not have to place those in the Gimp screen shots section, that's it.

I voiced my opinion on this mainly to not leave Dave in a kind of limbo, as if he did something wrong. What he did was not wrong at all.

Again, I have to point out that I never intended to send the mail that Dave quoted to the list - I only thought that he would understand the issues I raised, and right I was.

Best regards, Markus Triska.

Markus Triska wrote:

Dear Carol!

this is the part where you get embarrassed about the weird forwarding and spamming.

I am sorry for the inconvenience that I am causing you all as a new user of the mailing list (and, indeed, ANY mailing list).

When I answered your mail, I did not know that you had also sent it to the list, because I did not look at the mail addresses it was coming from, clicked "Reply" (instead of "Reply all"), and the result was that only you received my answer.

When I found out that you posted that on the list, I forwarded the mail to the list, too. I see nothing "weird" about this, and I have a different idea of "spamming". The result would have been approximately the same if I had used the CC feature.

You don't have to blame yourself for this. Being used to mailing lists where reply-to is set to the mailing list address (assuming that personal replies are rare, and public replies the normal case), I sometimes do this on accident myself.

HTH, Michael

I realize this is off-topic, and that I should not feed the trolls any further, but if these ideas straight out of the dark ages are left unchallenged, it may seem to casual readers of the archives or the list that everybody here agrees with them.

On 22 Apr 2004, at 4:05, Markus Triska wrote:

Sven:

The picture is in no way offensive and anyone who draws a relation to the Dutroux tragedy is either sick himself or overly cautious.

I think we can agree that most of us rather would not have a screen-shot of an adult woman or man, half-naked like this,

I think we can agree that we should not speak for others, lest our ignorance shines through too clearly. I reserve the right to make judgements about nude photos on a case by case basis.

Personally, I have no a priory objection to any form of nudity. I do object against exploitation, but I also object against caving in to distorted morals.

People do not lose dignity when they are shown naked.

in the screen-shots section, albeit professional models who get paid for their job. I do not know why you make a difference for children.

Because there is no loss of dignity for naked children. Whether you are a religious person who follows the teachings of Christ, who said that children are without sin, or whether you actually noticed the Enlightenment that struck Europe a couple of centuries ago, no-one (well, allmost no-one) thinks a photo of a naked baby is wrong, undignified or sexually arrousing.

If I had not mailed Dave, how long would the photo still be around? Maybe his children will be thankful some day, when they understand what was going on, that not everyone has a photo of them with no clothes on.

And maybe if you had not mailed Dave, his children would have been spared of such extremes of narrowmindedness for a little while longer. That would truly have been something to be grateful for.

Given that Dave seems to have understood my point and removed the picture,

I don't know why you think Dave seems to have understood your point; it certainly does not follow from his removing the picture, which was for other reasons:

Dave:
+ when I read this mail, I got defensive a bit - the thought + that someone thought the photo could be viewed sexually kind + of turned my stomach. So I took it down.

In other words, it's not your point, but the fact that you raised it, that you could think of such a gruesome thing, that made Dave take the picture down. Your morals have nothing to do with it; if they had, Dave would probably not have taken the picture in the first place, let alone posted it.

Dear Carol!

this is the part where you get embarrassed about the weird forwarding and spamming.

I am sorry for the inconvenience that I am causing you all as a new user of the mailing list (and, indeed, ANY mailing list).

When I answered your mail, I did not know that you had also sent it to the list, because I did not look at the mail addresses it was coming from, clicked "Reply" (instead of "Reply all"), and the result was that only you received my answer.

When I found out that you posted that on the list, I forwarded the mail to the list, too. I see nothing "weird" about this, and I have a different idea of "spamming". The result would have been approximately the same if I had used the CC feature.

i am curious as to what news markus follows and software he uses and plug-ins that came with the software. what country and the over all ideas of his teachers and parents.

Maybe in 50 years from now, you can buy my biography if you are interested, which will perhaps contain a time-line of how my habits and opinions changed over time. By now, I have no intention to make my habits public. I think you will understand that I will not publicly announce the ideas of my teachers, relatives and other persons I am associated with (even if they are or were not alive any more, and even if they do or would coincide with my own), for several reasons, the simplest maybe being that they are nobody else's business. About the only hint about the programs I use that I ever gave in a program documentation was that I used SUSE Linux, and even that has changed by now, so in hindsight, this information was of no use to anyone, and I don't see the point.

Of course, if you are interested in how I can accomplish this and that with some programs, maybe I can help you. In fact, I will maybe write a tutorial for the Gimp in the future, because I think I have achieved now some skill in the area of photo enhancing.

i just see a different image totally. is it software? is it because i try to have no interest in seeing bad things (unless i have a solution)? is it because i am a product of the evil american culture that i cannot see anything bad about this image?

while i appreciate someone else being the new person to really abuse the mail lists (try cc and one time multiple mailings). ((check to see if it is sent to the list or not)). (((forgive me when i screw up, sometimes -- all i get is mail list mail))) and send the email carefully. more carefully than me.

I do think that I send mail carefully. Do not assume that the possibility that the boy was Dave's child had not occurred to me before. However, I see no reason why this should change anything, except maybe giving hints to the explanation of Dave's reaction, and maybe not. I would have sent my mail to Dave also if it was not his boy, but for example my own daughter or son.

i am so confused about the problem with the image.

You do not have to be confused any more, the pic you are talking about is gone. If I had known that my initial mail to Dave would appear on the list, too, I would have phrased it differently so that everyone can follow my reasons. Given that I wanted to mail Dave directly, whose mind and thoughts I knew a bit from the mailing list, I formulated it as I saw fit to make myself understood by HIM, not by anyone else. As I see it, my mail was enough for him to make him understand what I wanted to communicate.

That having said, I want to end now this discussion which I did not want to happen and would not have started myself in the first place. This is the Gimp developer list, not a psychotherapy session.

Best regards, Markus Triska.

Sven Neumann wrote:

Perhaps we should ask ourselves then why the same questions are asked over and over again. "that has been planned for some time now" is an answer that shows that the question shouldn't have been asked in the first place. Now, why is it asked then? That's the point we should worry about. If questions that appear as badly researched turn up, this is a clear sign that the information isn't easily available.

Every mailing list I subscribe to has this problem. People simply find it easier to ask a human expert on a mailing list than to search for answers in documentation. I'm not aware of any projects that don't have this problem. Sure it's not great - sure we'd prefer if people spent an hour researching a problem before they post - sure we'd like people to say more than "It crashed while I was using it" in their bug reports.

However, it seems to be a part of human nature to prefer to reach out and ask someone than to do 'due diligance' before they do so. We are evolved to communicate - it's what makes us human.

This is ALWAYS going to happen and no amount of additional documentation is going to make a significant dent in that.

The problem is in how people react to those kinds of requests.

On most of the lists that I participate in, people groan, roll their eyes and then answer the question politely. If you know the answer, it takes about the same amount of typing to answer a simple question as it does to flame the user and tell him to RTFM. It doesn't really increase your workload, it makes the user happier, it keeps the list as a friendly, helpful place and life is good.

On this list, the reaction is invariably hostile.

The only reason to give a hostile and non-helpful response is because you hope to change the behavior of the supplicant. You will do that - but it won't change him into someone who reads the manual next time. It'll change him into someone who thinks the GIMP developers are a bunch of anal primadonna's.

Gimp-developer is a HORRIBLE place to hang out and talk about GIMP - and that's a VERY bad thing for attracting new developers.

Now that's something that we can try to change. The fact that mailing-lists are a place for random flame-baits and sometimes harsh words on the other hand is probably not going to change ever.

There are occasional harsh things happening on every mailing list - that's true - but this one (out of maybe a dozen I read) is by far the worst.

So IMO the things we need to consider are: - how can we make gimp development more transparent? - how can we publish short and long term plans and roadmaps? - why is there no maintained user FAQ? - why is the mailing-list archive not working?

I don't think any of those things are the issue.

- how can we be more friendly/tolerant on this list? - why do so many threads descend so rapidly into hostility?

----------------------------------------------------------------------- The second law of Frisbee throwing states: "Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!"...it turns out that this also applies to writing Fragment Shaders. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Baker (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail) L3Com/Link Simulation & Training (817)619-2466 (Fax) Work: sjbaker@link.com http://www.link.com Home: sjbaker1@airmail.net http://www.sjbaker.org

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 10:49:02AM +0200, Dave Neary wrote:

Markus Triska wrote:

That I didn't do that has, apparrently, made the list an even more intimidating place, and I now have to accept that I have aggravated the problem I was hoping we could address. I should have followed my own advice, and considered the person who sent me the mail before I mailed to the list. I apologise for not having done that, and ask Markus to excuse my behaviour.

i dunno. he got everything he asked for. it did not even make sense to me and he got it.

this human being should be on the gimp users list. it is polite and nice there.

i have a bad opinion of someone who so easily gets to change things on an established list. if you want a friendly mail list about gimp, gimp-user list totally fullfills this.

is this person with the smutty mind a developer?

carol

Dave Neary wrote:

I owe Markus a public apology for forwarding this on to the list.

Bravo! I was confident that you would do the right thing, and you have not disappointed me.

Best, -- Bill

______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Sent via the KillerWebMail system at primate.ucdavis.edu

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 08:33:07 -0500, "Stephen J Baker" wrote:

Sven Neumann wrote:

Perhaps we should ask ourselves then why the same questions are asked over and over again.

[... good points snipped ...]

This is ALWAYS going to happen and no amount of additional documentation is going to make a significant dent in that.

The problem is in how people react to those kinds of requests.

Yes, I agree. We can try to change the "others" by providing better documentation, FAQs, clear roadmaps, etc. But maybe we should first check if we can change ourselves.

On most of the lists that I participate in, people groan, roll their eyes and then answer the question politely. If you know the answer, it takes about the same amount of typing to answer a simple question as it does to flame the user and tell him to RTFM. It doesn't really increase your workload, it makes the user happier, it keeps the list as a friendly, helpful place and life is good.

On this list, the reaction is invariably hostile.

We should all try to make some efforts to follow a policy such as: "if you cannot reply to someone in a polite way, then don't reply at all". This means that some questions may be ignored and this list may be rather silent from time to time, but I think that it would be better to do that than to scare potential contributors.

We are all used to the strong language and very direct communication used on this list. Most of us can handle it. But for someone who joins this list for the first time, this place does not look very friendly. This is not the first time that some people say that they do not like the gimp-developer list.

By the way, we had a very similar discussion at GIMPCon2003.

We can improve our image to the "outside" by providing better documentation, list archives, and generally better communication towards GIMP users and potential developers... But we should also think a bit more about how we discuss things on this list. Even when we are in a bad mood. ;-)

So IMO the things we need to consider are: - how can we make gimp development more transparent? - how can we publish short and long term plans and roadmaps? - why is there no maintained user FAQ? - why is the mailing-list archive not working?

I don't think any of those things are the issue.

There is no such thing as _the_ issue. All of these are important factors, and we should try to improve them. But I agree that we should not forget about our own behavior on this list, which may make any of the improvements cited above irrelevant because people run away after reading a few messages.

- how can we be more friendly/tolerant on this list? - why do so many threads descend so rapidly into hostility?

Yes, there are definitely some things that we can improve...

-Raphaël

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 12:34:10 +0200, Dave Neary wrote:

- A list of active developers would help, along with their domains of expertise. The GIMP's been around for nearly 10 years now, and the full list of contributors doesn't really emphasise who's doing the main body of the work.

Well, this information is supposed to be in the files MAINTAINERS and PLUGIN_MAINTAINERS. However, both files are relatively out of date. But they also suffer from another problem: they are not dynamic enough and it is unlikely that they would ever accurately reflect who is working on what and who is responsible for what.

The problem is that people come and go, and someone who was active on some part of the code three months ago may be gone now or may have shifted his/her focus to some other part of the code. Nobody dares removing someone else from the MAINTAINERS file even if they have not contributed anything in the last two or three years. These files are useful for historical reasons, but not very helpful for those who want to know who is currently responsible for what part of the code. On the other hand, we cannot say that there are no rules and everybody is free to hack on any part of the code without consulting anyone, because that would quickly lead to chaos.

Currently, I think that having a look at the ChangeLog is the best way (although cumbersome) to figure out who is working on what. Maybe we could make this easier by processing the ChangeLog automatically, analyzing who is working on what and publishing a list of the top contributors to each part of the code in the last N months (e.g., stats per directory in the source tree). That would not be perfect, but maybe it would be better than what we have now because this would be updated automatically. Some time ago, I wrote a script that parses the GIMP ChangeLog files and tries to figure out who are the most active developers. Maybe I should try to hack it a bit more.

- The roadmaps (when they change) should be announced on the list, stored on developer.gimp.org and linked to from www.gimp.org somehow.

The roadmaps, IMHO, should be time based rather than feature based (as we have discussed in the past), [...]

I also agree with time-based roadmaps. Although it could be a bit frustrating to postpone some features if they are not ready in time, time-based roadmaps have the advantage that everybody knows when the deadlines are and (hopefully) what the criteria for inclusion are.

Although feature-based roadmaps can be nice for the main developers, they can be frustrating for those who would like to join us and contribute something, but have to postpone their contribution over and over again during a feature freeze while they see other small features being added to the program. Maybe I am exagerating a bit, but I think that we should keep that in mind: feature-based roadmaps give more power to the main developers but may have a negative impact on potential contributors. That's one of the reasons why I think that time-based roadmaps would be better.

-Raphaël

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Carol Spears wrote:

while i appreciate someone else being the new person to really abuse the mail lists (try cc and one time multiple mailings). ((check to see if it is sent to the list or not)). (((forgive me when i screw up, sometimes -- all i get is mail list mail))) and send the email carefully. more carefully than me.

Eeeeek! I feel like I am reading sentences written in scheme!

:-P ;-) :-)

Rockwalrus

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Carol Spears wrote:

i have a bad opinion of someone who so easily gets to change things on an established list.

If I recall correctly, it was Dave who was asking for changes to the list, or rather, a return to the civility that once was here.

if you want a friendly mail list about gimp, gimp-user list totally fullfills this.

There is no reason why gimp-developer can't fulfil it as well. Besides, what if someone wants a friendly list to talk about gimp development related issues?

is this person with the smutty mind a developer?

I don't think he has a smutty mind, just is painfully mindful of those that do. And there should be no chinese wall between the developers and the users. How else can the developers know what the users think, need, and want? With no feedback, it's hard to know if changes to the gimp make it more useful and usable.

Rockwalrus

Dear Carol!

i dunno. he got everything he asked for. it did not even make sense to me and he got it.

Oh yeah, and I got so much more too, thank you very much.

this human being should be on the gimp users list. it is polite and nice there.

i have a bad opinion of someone who so easily gets to change things on an established list. if you want a friendly mail list about gimp, gimp-user list totally fullfills this.

is this person with the smutty mind a developer?

Carol, maybe the hint I provided before was to weak for you to notice. I did not expect *you* to understand my points. That is why I mailed Dave, and not you, and he did.

I am sorry that you have a bad opinion about me, and that maybe you think I have a "smutty mind". Maybe if I had mailed Dave at a different point in time, catching him in a different mood, things would have turned up more brightly. I am very sad that I get to know you all when you are accusing me of the worst things one can think of.

Again, I apologize for all the inconvenience and chaos that my private mail to Dave has caused.

Best regards, Markus Triska.

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 02:31:38PM -0700, Nathan Carl Summers wrote:

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Carol Spears wrote:

I don't think he has a smutty mind, just is painfully mindful of those that do. And there should be no chinese wall between the developers and the users. How else can the developers know what the users think, need, and want? With no feedback, it's hard to know if changes to the gimp make it more useful and usable.

it is a discussion of what appears on a gimp user based web site. bolsh mailed it to the list he reads.

actually, what has happened here is that developers have made decisions for users. this time it happened because someone with a users concerns was joined to the wrong list.

so, for what ever reason, good or bad, right or wrong -- the user web site has once again been commandeered by the developers and changed for absolutely no good reasons.

i have much more respect for the developers who are receiving gimp-user mail. i have no idea why developers who do not participate on the gimp-user list are making decisions for the gimp-user site.

i am not even in a bad mood and i am saying once again, for shame. all of you.

carol

Hi,

Raphaël Quinet writes:

Currently, I think that having a look at the ChangeLog is the best way (although cumbersome) to figure out who is working on what. Maybe we could make this easier by processing the ChangeLog automatically, analyzing who is working on what and publishing a list of the top contributors to each part of the code in the last N months (e.g., stats per directory in the source tree). That would not be perfect, but maybe it would be better than what we have now because this would be updated automatically. Some time ago, I wrote a script that parses the GIMP ChangeLog files and tries to figure out who are the most active developers. Maybe I should try to hack it a bit more.

That sounds like something that should be done using the CVS information, not by parsing the ChangeLog. Perhaps have a look at statcvs, a CVS Repository statistic analysis tool.

Sven

From: Sven Neumann
Date: 23 Apr 2004 13:10:00 +0200

Raphaël Quinet writes:

> Currently, I think that having a look at the ChangeLog is the > best way (although cumbersome) to figure out who is working on > what. Maybe we could make this easier by processing the > ChangeLog automatically, analyzing who is working on what and > publishing a list of the top contributors to each part of the > code in the last N months (e.g., stats per directory in the > source tree). That would not be perfect, but maybe it would be > better than what we have now because this would be updated > automatically. Some time ago, I wrote a script that parses the > GIMP ChangeLog files and tries to figure out who are the most > active developers. Maybe I should try to hack it a bit more.

That sounds like something that should be done using the CVS information, not by parsing the ChangeLog. Perhaps have a look at statcvs, a CVS Repository statistic analysis tool.

I have a script that I use to auto-generate a change log from a CVS repository that's used to generate the Gimp-Print change log. It coalesces multiple commits close in time that have the same log message and handles branches correctly (i. e. if the sandbox being used is on a branch, it logs all versions leading up to the branch). I can post it if anyone likes, or it can be extracted from the Gimp-Print source as scripts/mkchlog.

Hi,

Robert L Krawitz writes:

I have a script that I use to auto-generate a change log from a CVS repository that's used to generate the Gimp-Print change log. It coalesces multiple commits close in time that have the same log message and handles branches correctly (i. e. if the sandbox being used is on a branch, it logs all versions leading up to the branch). I can post it if anyone likes, or it can be extracted from the Gimp-Print source as scripts/mkchlog.

That script will probably not work well with the style of CVS log messages that we use. Also the information we need here is not in the CVS log message nor in the ChangeLog. All that's needed is information about who changed how many lines in which files at what time.

Sven

On Friday 23 April 2004 08:10, Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

Raphaël Quinet writes:

Currently, I think that having a look at the ChangeLog is the best way (although cumbersome) to figure out who is working on what. Maybe we could make this easier by processing the ChangeLog automatically, analyzing who is working on what and publishing a list of the top contributors to each part of the code in the last N months (e.g., stats per directory in the source tree). That would not be perfect, but maybe it would be better than what we have now because this would be updated automatically. Some time ago, I wrote a script that parses the GIMP ChangeLog files and tries to figure out who are the most active developers. Maybe I should try to hack it a bit more.

That sounds like something that should be done using the CVS information, not by parsing the ChangeLog. Perhaps have a look at statcvs, a CVS Repository statistic analysis tool.

Would not that turn up just those who have CVS access? Maybe a mix of both.
Maybe split contributors in developers and small contributors. That way, one looking on the about dialog would not have to wait ages to see your name and Mitch's, for example.

Sven

Hi,

for those of you that are into statistiscs, have a look at this:

http://libresoft.dat.escet.urjc.es/cvsanal/gnome-cvs/index.php?menu=Modules&module=gimp

Sven

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 10:03:49 -0300, "Joao S. O. Bueno" wrote:

On Friday 23 April 2004 08:10, Sven Neumann wrote:

Raphaël Quinet writes:

Currently, I think that having a look at the ChangeLog is the best way (although cumbersome) to figure out who is working on what. [...] Some time ago, I wrote a script that parses the GIMP ChangeLog files and tries to figure out who are the most active developers. Maybe I should try to hack it a bit more.

That sounds like something that should be done using the CVS information, not by parsing the ChangeLog. Perhaps have a look at statcvs, a CVS Repository statistic analysis tool.

Would not that turn up just those who have CVS access? Maybe a mix of both.

Yes, and that's why I wrote the program parse_gimp_changelogs.pl in 2002. It scans the ChangeLog file(s) and for each entry, checks if the text mentions the name and/or e-mail address of some other person or the name of a patch file (e.g. gimp--.patch.gz). In this case, the author of the patch is credited for the update more than the one who commited the patch.

That script was not very clean, though: it made some bad assumptions about how to find user names in comments and map them to the corresponding person. But that's why I said that "maybe I should try to hack it a bit more"...

Maybe split contributors in developers and small contributors. That way, one looking on the about dialog would not have to wait ages to see your name and Mitch's, for example.

Hmmm... But then we could have endless debates about where we draw the line between developers and small contributors. Do we include only Sven, Mitch and Yosh as the main developers? Or do we take the top 20 contributors as developers? Or the top 50? Or...?

Anyway, I don't think that we were discussing how to rank the various GIMP contributors, but rather how we can present to the users or potential contributors a summary of who is working on what. That should probably be grouped by "what" rather than by "who". In other words, we should try to generate automatically a list of contributors to each "area" of the GIMP. These areas could follow the layout of the source tree (sub-dirs in app and other top-level dirs) or could be grouped in a slightly different way.

-Raphaël

On 23 Apr 2004, Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

for those of you that are into statistiscs, have a look at this:

http://libresoft.dat.escet.urjc.es/cvsanal/gnome-cvs/index.php?menu=Modules&module=gimp

Obviously, the top 21 on that page should get special privileges. ;)

Rockwalrus

On Sat, 2004-04-24 at 01:59, Nathan Carl Summers wrote:

Obviously, the top 21 on that page should get special privileges. ;)

Why not make it the top 25? ;)

Brix

Hi,

about ten days ago I wrote:

Since "Copy Visible" is a script, it can't be moved next to "Copy". At least not with the current menu system. Mitch is currently replacing it with GtkUIManager. We will see if it offers a better solution.

The good news is that this problem has indeed been solved by the port to GtkUIManager. The new GTK+ API allows for named placeholders in the menu hierarchy. This allows to group the menu items so that plug-ins and scripts can register into the group they belong to. They still get added at the end of the group but that's not necessarily the end of the menu. The current CVS version now has "Copy Visible" next to "Copy" :)

In case anyone cares, here's an excerpt from the XML file that defines the image menu:

This stuff is found in the new toplevel source directory "menus".

Sven

Hi Sven,

Sven Neumann wrote:

In case anyone cares, here's an excerpt from the XML file that defines the image menu:

This stuff is found in the new toplevel source directory "menus".

Cool! Looking at "Copy visible", you register a menu entry in "/Edit/Copy/Copy _Visible". Do placeholders act the same as menus?

Cheers,
Dave.

Hi,

David Neary writes:

Cool! Looking at "Copy visible", you register a menu entry in "/Edit/Copy/Copy _Visible". Do placeholders act the same as menus?

Well, we are all new to this but it looks as if that's the case.

Sven