whither krita -- summary

[enki]

Boudewijn Rempt a écrit :
> Looks like the discussion has run its course, so I want to make a shortish 
> summary, juxtaposing the things mentioned. There were a couple of interesting 
> things noted! But that doesn't mean we've found our direction.
>
> There are quite a number of contradictions:
>
> flexible, comprehensive app  <---------> polish and usability
>   
Yes, though it's not always a contradiction. Sometimes flexibility + 
comprehensive gives usability and polish (for example, the user think 
about something creative, and realise he can combine "bricks" of the 
programs and do it easily, while with another program made for a 
specific use case, he will be stuck, or will have to use very unnatural 
ways to do it).
> platform for experimentation <---------> stable application for users
>   
I think that can be fixed with stable/unstable release and git. It's 
more a problem of workflow than of goal A lot of apps provide 
unstable/experimental plugins.
> creating images              <---------> manipulating images
>   
I have some use cases that mix the two (texture artist, webdesigner, 
matte-painting).
> integrated in koffice        <---------> attractive to artists
>   
I think it's a matter of education/communication. That's why I think 
hiding the programming/technology things to users is bad for most 
projects. When you give the facts to users, they use these to convert 
others users (MacOS users ? Intel Fanatics ? etc.. :p) Instead of saying 
"Krita is a part of Koffice" Let's put it the others way, You install 
Krita, and add powerful new features to it by installing others 
programs/plugins of the koffice suite. The more you install, the more 
it's powerful. I guess Koffice should be presented as a shared 
development platform (like KDE4) more than a suit of apps.
> corel painter                <---------> photoshop
>   
They're not that different, apart from the brush engines.
> competing with gimp          <---------> competing with mypaint
>   
Users don't like to learn a new applications, but they have new needs as 
they progress. Instead of switching to another program, they will ask to 
devs to add their "missing feature".
I'm pretty sure Mypaint will get layer support or new tool because of 
users demands (it happened with others simple sketch apps before). And 
pretty sure that Gimp will becomes a more and more a painterly app. Here 
Krita has an advantage because it has already took this path.
> go all node                  <---------> continue with the current core
>
> Use cases I've seen in the thread:
>
>  * photo manipulation
>  * HDR workflow (for film or for pictures?
>  * illustrations and comics
>  * sketching
>  * integration with movie workflow, blender
>  * web development (what is that, actually?)
>   
I'd add Video game texture artist, it is interesting because it mix 
photos, painting and make use of generator/filters.
> Can all these things work in one application? 
>   
Yes ! But the ability to save different workspaces settings may be 
needed later.
> Reasons to work on Krita:
>
>  * can do experimentation
>  * want to create an app I can use
>  * it's fun to work on 
>  * prefer qt, c++ over gtk, c (I find this a bit disappointing, this can 
> hardly become a compelling reason for people to use the application)
>
> Work flows
>
> And there are differences in the way we work personally that also influence 
> the characteristics of Krita: Cyrille paints using small brushes, I tend to
> use big brushes on big, high-res canvas. That means a very different workflow.
> I love enkithan's comic book artist use-case, and I think we need more of 
> them. (It also makes clear that we need to work on memory consumption and 
> performance first thing! 1000 dpi A4...)
>
> Wishes and todo's
>
> We've got a big todo list that once again is reasonably up to date. There are 
> many wishlist items in bugzilla -- and I haven't looked at them for over two 
> years since there is too much to do already.
>
> So, what's the vision? 
>
> The only way I can resolve the above in a mission statement is something like 
> this: "krita is an platform for experimentation for developers and application 
> that surprises its users." I'm not sure whether this is going to be a banner 
> to conquer the world with! 
>
>   
It's a bit classic, but I'd say it's a : comprehensive, powerful, 
extensible, image editor.