Multi-column dock windows and 2.8 schedule
The code refactorings and clean ups that have been made to enable single-window mode to be implemented has also resulted in improvements to multi-window mode. The most significant is the support for multi-column dock windows, as you can see used in the screenshot above. People having dockables on one screen and an image in full screen on another will probably find this useful, for example. Before this, you could only have one column of dockables inside a dock window.
I also have a fundamentally different but arguably a more important announcement. There now is a schedule for GIMP 2.8 development and thus also an estimated release date, which right now is 2010-12-27. Creating a schedule was not completely uncontroversial. People pointed out that if we have an estimated release date it will surely be misinterpreted as a definite release date, and if we don't meet it, people will be annoyed. People will probably misinterpret, but that is less worse than the current situation where people speculate about dates that are way too optimistic, giving the impression that we are constantly delayed. Besides, without a schedule it is very hard for us to take decisions on what features to include and what features to not include in each release. I think that in the end having a schedule will only have a positive impact on development.
And finally, thanks to Alexia Death for letting me use her graphic in the screenshot above.
posted by Martin Nordholts @ 11:58 AM
26 Comments:
Hello !
I think it's a very good thing to have a schedule for gimp 2.8 (perhaps it is possible to have it for Christmas ?).
It's a little bit a pity to have to wait so long time.
There is no real consequence for an amateur like me, But for a professional, this expectation may seem very long ...
thank's for your excellent work.
Robert
Would money help speed the development? We could perhaps raise money, just like people did with other software.
Good to see some more info about 2.8 and the release date! But I hope that there will be some more 2.7.x releases on the way towards 2.8!
I have a question: Would it be possible to release 2.8 only with the new stuff you added until today. That might mean: 2 or 3 more month polishing things and fixing bugs and calling that 2.8.
The other new features would be for 2.10 which will be released in Q1 2011, for example. That way we users would get the new and really really good stuff half a year earlier.
Of course this would also mean that 2.8 would add so many new things, but IMHO the MDI and the GUI-cleanup alone already justify the 2.8-release!
On thing is for sure: GIMP improved *a lot* from 2.2 to 2.6, thanks for this great application!
Wow, why so loooooong :O ?
Sometimes I have feeling that only you are working on Gimp, I'm happy that you are Gimp developer! Good luck :)
The GIMP deserves the love !
I am most excited about the single window mode... the multi window mode was the one thing that stopped me from using the GIMP.
Porting over more code to GEGL will do the app some good too!
@Jonas: In the GIMP project, money is not spent on code but rather flight tickets for conferences and such, and in that sense money doesn't really speed up development if money is donated to the project as a whole
@Anonymous: Yes there will be more unstable release, 2.7.1 is hopefully out in a few weeks
@Anonymous: We'd rather finish 2.8 cleanly than to have the overhead of making two releases in short time. You can use the development releases meanwhile
I'm waiting GIMP 2.8 since middle of the year 2009, and just thinking that will be released at the end of 2009, or in the first monts of 2010.
but now I need to wait 1 year more!!!! wth :S
this is really bad guys :/
i just hope you devs take seriosly the possibility of hiring a full time developer, paid with donations from people... you're not delayed, you're just taking 2 years per release.
Why is the money spent on flight tickets for conferences?
@Anonymous: Because having core developers meet face to face makes it easier to collaborate, which in turn helps GIMP development. It also generates collaboration between app boundaries, such as OpenRaster.
@Martin I don't think you should have to defend the time line. A year of development for an extensive program like this is not unreasonable.
A couple things people should keep in mind are the size of the program... ie, many, many lines of code, which means sometimes even small changes take a long time; The high quality of previous release states: 2.6 and prior releases were very stable with few bugs; and lastly, this is open source software, so get involved! keep up with the latest changes on git and help out where you can.
Skype? GoToMeeting? anyone?
@Martin The changes so far are looking great! Can't wait for 2.8..
Is there a way of following this blog through rss?
@Nico: Yes, your browser should show an RSS icon in the address bar or maybe somewhere else depending on what browser you have. If it doesn't, change browser.
Hi, there is another tool I would like to have in GIMP, or to be precise I would like the existing IWarp Tool to be enhanced: In Photoshop's Liquify tool it is possible to select which layers are shown in the warping window, so you can see how to transform the layer you're working on so that it fits to the other layers. Extremely helpful for composing work.
For example, I wanted to make a montage where the earth globe melts like ice through the fingers of a human hand. Couldn't match the shapes to the fingers because I couldn't see them.
Would it be much work to implement that?
@Anonymous: Probably not, but if I were to improve IWarp I would continue the started work to convert it into a proper-tool so one can warp the canvas directly:
"implement IWarp paint tool to replace the plug-in"
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162014
I think the release date is very reasonable. People at the Blender community are watching the development of blender 2.5 for years now and they never whined about the indefinite release date, because they can actually use the latest improvements if you compile from svn. I believe the GIMP community has a lot to learn from the Blender community.
I certainly find it interesting that Krita has created a fund-raising campaign to raise funds to pay a full time developer... they started with an easy 3 month goal and donations easily exceeded it (at 150% of the goal now).
While I appreciate the efforts of volunteer contributors (it's an amazing product), why not also leverage a paid developer... certainly everyone would be energized by faster progress (including doners)
Hey, so when's 2.7 coming out? Or are we skipping that version? hehe
P.S. The Gimp site only shows 2.6.8, so that's why i was wondering :)
Hey, I replied to you in the web mailer about making that gimp community! I think create.gimp.org would friggin amazing to use for the subdomain! :D
@Joe: GIMP 2.7.* are development releases. The work we are doing now will eventually be released as GIMP 2.8.
Related to the development releases, is there a website where I could find Windows installers for some 2.7.x dev versions ?
Or a website where I could find step-by-step instructions on how to compile GIMP sources on Windows ? (I'm not a programmer at all so I'm totally ignorant in this kind of things)
Thank you in advance for any piece of advice!
Here's discussion about paying to develop: https://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/lists/gimp-developer/2010-January/024046.html
Some opinions:
"I don't think that donations can speed up GIMP development. On the contrary, paying some developers for their work is more likely going to demotivate others."
"GIMP team has been through this before with GEGL in early 2000s and it really didn't work."
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