Krita presentation

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005, Michael Thaler wrote:

> Hello,
>
> my Linux User Group is organizing a Linux info event and I volunteered to give
> a talk about Krita there.

Cool!

>In the first part of my talk I want to present
> some general informations about Krita and I also like to introduce the
> developers of Krita. To this end, it would be very nice if you could answer
> some of the following questions:
>
> - Pleaese introduce yourself: (what is your name, where are you from and what
> is your profession)

Boudewijn Rempt, from the Netherlands. Software engineer developing a commercial
mobile agent platform, focussed on medical applications.

> - When did you first hear of Krita, why did you get involved with Krita and
> what are your contributions?

* Years ago, when it was announced as the next best thing in Photoshop clones; circa
1999, years before I though I could even begin to handle C-like languages.
* I started hacking on Krita because I bought a Wacom tablet (because I needed some
maps done for a novel I was writing) that wasn't supported all that well by the Gimp,
so I started looking for a codebase I could add tablet support to.
* Actually working paint tools and lots of sound initiatives that other, more capable
people were able to bring into fruitition. And some vision and sustained interest.

> - Is Krita the first free software project you are working on or did you work
> on other projects?

No, not quite. I worked on the System window decoration for KDE and the Kura
natural language description and analysis application before Krita.

> - How much time do you usually spend working on Krita?

Three to four evenings a week, and at least one hour every day.

> - What motivates/keeps you motivated to work on Krita?

The responsibility, and the fact that I learn a lot from just hacking on it, and the
ultimate vision of a free software application that is neither a photo editor nor
a vector munger, but something quite new: an application that enables the user
to create images with stuff, instead of pixels.

> - Where does Krita has its strengths? What do you think is still missing badly
> in Krita?

Krita is flexible and has a cohoerent, easy to understand code base, but it misses
stability, features and users.

> -What are your future plans for Krita?

Add an easy-to-use user interface paradigm based om the artist's toolbox, add
various simulations of real artist's materials and at the same time ensure Krita
never crashes and remains interesting to hackers to work with: the Gimp messes
with pixels and has a high barrier to entry: I want Krita to mess with artist's
mediums and tools, and to have a low barrier to entry. If you've got a weird idea,
Krita will give you a solid base to implement it on.

>
> In the second part of the talk I will show Krita. I read that it should be
> possible to paint with filters. How does this work? I think it would be very
> impressive to show that. Also there is a Wet-Sticky filter, but for me it
> does nothing? Is this supposed to work?

Not yet... I got sidetracked, as I always will, by other things that don't work. It
will offer a kind of "paint" that flows and sticks and mixes and mingles all on its own...
But first I need to get the paint box working. And perhaps the cmyk color model with
the color management system. And the selections. And perhaps the...

Etcetera....

Anyway, please spell-check this mail before using in any literal context, it's late, and I'm
typing this on a computer with a barely legible screen.

Boudewijn