Why I love(d) Krita to be part of Calligra (was: Re: After 2.9.7)

[Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen]

On Monday 31 August 2015 03:46:23 Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 30. August 2015, 20:36:06 schrieb Boudewijn Rempt:
> > Long mail :-) Sven already said a lot of what I wanted to say. The thing
> > is, with KOffice 2.0, we actually got further along the road to making
> > fine-grained composite document possible. We got further than Apple,
> > IBM or Microsoft with projects like Taligent, Opendocs or OLE. Sure, we
> > made architectural mistakes, but to very large extent, the result works.
> 
> Which is what seems so great about Calligra for me :)
> 
> > With Calligra Gemini you can already combine hand-written annotations
> > with your document, for instance.
> 
> Oh, not noticed that, how can one do that? I saw voice and pre-made
> stickers, but pen input based option is at least not visible to me in the
> UI, also not on a touch device. Which code to look out for?

  The scribbling only works for on-canvas presentation things, not for 
documents in general - it is indeed only pre-made stickers (and stylised 
sticker type things with a small amount of text), not full blown scribble-
everywhere support.

> Then, Calligra Gemini seems rather dead, no commit since it was imported :/
> But I have hopes that I can sit together with leinir at Randa next week :)
> and revive this former beauty (rotten in master ATM) or at least see how to
> rescue the QtQuick bits for other usages.

  That is absolutely happening, yes - i use Gemini daily, and would be more 
than a little sad to see it go away :)

> > There are just two gotchas: the first is that for all of that, Krita's
> > specific strengths aren't needed, but on the other hand, a lot of
> > ballast. There are at least two image filter implementations in Calligra
> > next to Krita's, and those are more suited for compound documents,
> > for instance.
> 
> Not sure how things are ballast if they are done behind proper abstraction
> layers. What do you mean "filters" in "image filters"?
> 
> > The other is that the users aren't there. It was a grand vision, and
> > one that's really attractive to software developers, but users care
> > about one thing: getting the job done asap, so they can quit the word
> > processor and go back to doing their real work. And they're right.
> 
> IMHO the users are not here, because most of Calligra's apps were never
> ready as editors, due to being crashy as hell, losing data and having
> incomplete features, especially compared to their usecase rivals.
> The code was/is fine for loading and viewing documents. Both confirmed and
> reinforced by the commercial products made from Calligra code, as you said.
> And that is also why I picked up the Okular plugins of Calligra, to make
> this viewer power available to more players.
> But the code for document manipulation and storing seems to never have seen
> a similar care. Krita is the happy exception here.
> 
> The other problem is also that development of the core has stalled. Krita
> started to do workarounds to the existing core instead of seeing how to
> coevolve the core with the other apps, from what I saw. Surely also because
> of lack of interest of developers for other apps.
> 
> Then, my real work would rather be in the "word processor" or even something
> bigger. Because it's not just a few lines of text that I do. I am talking
> about rich content. That is why I am here in Calligra. See below.
> 
> So, I don't see at least this gotcha.
> 
> > That's another difference between Krita and office applications. Office
> > applications, unless you happen to be a novelist, support doing work, are
> > not tools to do the actual work. You use krita to produce the deliverable
> > you send to a customer, you use Words to create the accompanying invoice.
> 
> Perhaps that's where you miss my needs :)
> I am not interested in a software to just drop a few lines of text onto a
> sheet. And still I am not a novelist. No.
> I am interested in a software that allows me to create my long and content-
> rich reports, backed from database and other external sources, to create my
> leaflets, to create my hangout for the blackboard, invitation cards, content
> enriched letters to friends, tutorials, sheets with drafts for UI and
> architecture of software, drafts for garden design, costume drafts, etc.
> pp. With all kind of content types, wildly mixed on the same sheet.
> (He, I did the xfig import filter for a reason, like I started on the
> CorelDraw one)
> 
> Something where LO, Scribus or Inkscape do not cut it, for different
> reasons.
> 
> Having to write completely different software for reports, for leaflets, for
> hangouts, for invitation cards, for letters, for tutorials, for room
> concepts, for costume drafts, etc. seems insane to me. I still have the
> hope and many ideas, how reusable fine-grained components for the different
> kind of content types should allow to assemble working shells optimized for
> a certain main document type. Like one for doing long reports. And another
> for doing invitation cards. And a third for costume drafts.
> Like I can setup my real world desk or bench for different document types,
> by placing the usual content material and working tools in reach.
> 
> I did not clean up Calligra code and worked hard to push it together will
> all over the Qt5 hurdle for nothing, there would be lots of more enjoyable
> things in life to do ;) No. Hopefully I qualify not as mad, but I have a
> long TODO list for Calligra libs, and some code drafts. And now we are
> almost past intial Qt5/KF5 port, I so look forward to finally go for
> improvements.
> 
> And as I said elsewhere, my "word processor" will need color correctness.
> Because it can contain colorful content (even if just a photo), and I
> dislike it if things look different on different devices or on paper.
> Others might not, I do. And thus it is important to me :)
> 
> Cheers
> Friedrich
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-- 
..dan / leinir..
http://leinir.dk/