Thoughts on Krita website presentation

[John Culleton]

On Tuesday 11 September 2007 10:36:29 am Torsten Rahn wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 September 2007 15:38:48 Cyrille Berger wrote:
> > This is because OOo have a short term vision, and they are obsessed by
> > making sure that Writer beats Word, which means the other components
> > receive less love. While I do believe that a good image processing
> > application which works nicely and integrates with a good word processing
> > is a benefit for both applications.
>
> No, it has _nothing_ to do with OpenOffice.
> It has got to do with two things:
>
> 1.) Definition of an Office Suite
> 2.) Perceived self-image of graphics designers
>
> Ad 1.: Target users of office suites are all kinds of "average" people who
> either only create contents for occasional usage or just create the raw
> contents that will later on be post-processed by professionals:
>
> To focus on professional type setting you'd use a _real_ DTP solution (like
> scribus).
> To focus on professional image work you'd use a _real_ graphics suite
> instead (like the ones Adobe and Corel sell).
>
> The thing that will continue to irritate people is that Krita has abilities
> that make it a perfect fit for people who would never ever search in an
> office suite for a professional image processing application.
>
> Of course you can try to "teach" people about it (a hopeless act like
> certain astronomers try to "teach" people that astrology has no scientific
> value) but this will be a windmill fight because you are trying to redefine
> established standards (which is pretty hard) while also trying to promote
> your product.
>
> So trying to redefine an established standard to make your product more
> visible to the right target group is a strange and ineffective idea with
> only little merit.
>
> Ad 2: Graphics designers usually don't really see themselves as part of the
> boring "office crew" (I'm pretty sure that a lot of them would even
> perceive that assumption as an insult, no matter what you might think about
> it).  They see themselves being much more creative having their heads up in
> the clouds.
>
> Torsten
>
> > > I must agree...    I've never used any other aspect of Koffice, and
> > > probably won't --- I have MS Office on my machine via cross-over.   I
> > > admit that I initially thought a little less of Krita since it was 'the
> > > drawing package of Koffice'...     I'd never attempt to use the drawing
> > > package of openoffice to do anything real, and so I wasn't tempted to
> > > use Krita...
> > >
> > > I'm discovering now that it rivals and exceeds the
> > > Gimp in many aspects.
> >
> > Good :)
> >
> > > I'm curious --- how many of the Koffice components does Krita depend
> > > on?
> >
> > Quiet a lot in 1.6 and it's increasing in 2.0. For 1.6 it's mostly
> > architecture (file import/export system, UI, documents...). But for 2.0,
> > it's increasing, the color management library is shared, rich text
> > editing and vector layers will be provided by other KOffice components,
> > etc...
> >
> > But even in 2.0, Krita will be able to be installable as stand alone.
> >
> > > but even if we don't remove the dependancies --- I think having more of
> > > an 'independent' mind-set for Krita might gain more attention.
> >
> > As a marketing point of view, I think we should more make the emphasie
> > for KOffice on the two sets of application, Productivity and Creativity.
> > While Krita is currently the flagship of KOffice Creativity, and Karbon
> > doesn't have enought developers to rival with the bigger player, I do
> > think that having both application able to use the feature of the other
> > one is a strong added value for the user.
> >
> > And the single reason why Krita will be able to use the vector graphics
> > capabilities of Karbon, is because they both use a library which is part
> > of kolib.
> >
> > So if your distribution is forcing you to install all of KOffice just for
> > Krita, you might want to report it as a bug to them.

Actually Scribus is execellent at laying out a brochure or a book cover but is 
marginal on actually doing the typesettng of a book.  The developers are 
working on a kludge to import LaTeX documents somehow, but what they really 
need to do is incorporate the basic TeX paragraph building routines 
internally like InDesign did.  It is more work but it is the ultimate 
satisfactory solution. 

I use Slackware for which Kde is the standard GUI. Gnome is not an option. I 
also have an Uubntu partition just for graphics, because things like 
upgrading to recent versions of Inkscape are such a chore to install in 
Slackware (missing or obsolete libraries etc.).  

Getting back to Krita, if there were a convenient way to upgrade it on my 
Slack 12 partition I would be happy as a clam. But if there is such a way it 
is well hid.  Krita is a young product, and each new version will bring major 
improvements.  


-- 
John Culleton
http://wexfordpress.com
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf