[dot] KDE at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2008

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1211531334/

From: Boudewijn Rempt <boud at valdyas.org>
Dept: tired-but-exhilarated
Date: Friday 23/May/2008, @01:28

KDE at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2008
======================================

   Two weeks ago, the third edition of the Libre Graphics Meeting
[http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org/2008/index.php?lang=en] was held in
at the Wroclaw University of Technology, Wroclaw, Poland. Sponsored by
KDE e.V., Boudewijn Rempt, Cyrille Berger and Emanuele Tamponi from the
Krita project and Gilles Caullier from the Digikam project attended this
yearly conference on free graphics software.
    Libre Graphics Meeting 2008 Group Photo (photo by Alexandre
Prokoudine)
     The Libre Graphics Meeting brings together developers of free
graphics software in the widest sense of the word as well as the users:
artists, photographers, designers and publishers. Whether you are
interested in fonts, photography, panoramas, digital art, mathematics,
colour theory, vector libraries, applications, file formats,
interoperability, user interaction, typesetting, text layouting, 3D
modeling or animation, or all of those, the Libre Graphics Meeting is
the meeting to attend. This year's program
[http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org/2008/index.php?lang=en&action=program]
had a particularly good mix of introductory and in-depth presentations.
No topic was left unexplored, and the great thing is: everyone was
talking to everyone and came home with new ideas, new initiatives for
cross-project cooperation and integration.

     The LGM is one conference that proves that free software is capable
of innovation: one of the highlights certainly was Emanuele Tamponi's
presentation on colour mixing as demonstrated in Krita. While
unfortunately not taped, his presentation of the new alpha-sigma colour
space for realistic mixing of colours grabbed the interest of people
from many other projects. Likewise, Pablo d'Angelo demonstrated the
enfuse feature in his panorama stitching application Hugin
[http://hugin.sf.net]: the ability to adjust the lighting of a panorama
while blending, which is another innovation proprietary applications are
only now copying. Raph Levien's Spiro curve mathematics
[http://libspiro.sourceforge.net/] was demonstrated in Fontforge
[http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/] and Inkscape
[http://www.inkscape.org]: drawing beautiful curves the easy way. During
the OpenICC [http://freedesktop.org/wiki/OpenIcc] BOF session, Cyrille
Berger presented his work on OpenCTL [http://openctl.org], the free
software implementation of the CTL pixel manipulation language. OpenCTL
is important for making it possible to paint on images that use HDR
color models.

     Boudewijn Rempt presented an overview of natural media simulation:
the academic field, the proprietary offerings and the free software
efforts. Natural media simulation, going beyond programmable brushes and
effects, could bring serendipity back into digital art.

     With Gilles Caullier presenting Digikam for the first time at LGM,
the scene was set for a meeting of many projects involved in the digital
photography world: DCRaw's [http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/]
Dave Coffin was present, as was UFRaw's [http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/]
Udi Fuchs, and Raw Studio's [http://rawstudio.org/] Anders, Anders and
Anders and relative newcomer Phatch.
 [http://photobatch.stani.be/]
     Simultaneously with the Text Layout Summit for which Harfbuzz
[http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/HarfBuzz] developer Behdad
Esfahbod was present, the Scribus [http://www.scribus.net] team
presented the latest developments. Last year's LGM organizer Louis
Desjardins from Montreal took us through the entire process of creating
a document to output as a PDF. Here again, free software is gaining
features beyond what proprietary applications offer, such as precise
support for language rules.
 Most talks were taped [http://www.river-valley.tv/conferences/lgm2008/]
by Kaveh Bazargan, whose successful Kerala-based publishing business
runs entirely on free software. Still, his use of a Mac and OS X for the
recording served to show the need for good quality free video recording
and editing applications.

     Next year's edition might well be in Singapore, but no matter where
LGM will be, it is the most important event for everyone involved in
free graphics software. Everyone working on a graphics application or
library, from Qt to Kolourpaint, from Krita to KPhotoAlbum, from Digikam
to Karbon, from Quasar to Okular, should consider attending!